One major point of criticism that is often inveighed against René Girard’s mimetic theory is that it seems to stem from a culturally pessimistic position. And to a certain extent this criticism is understandable. When we read Girard’s oeuvre his accounts of mimetic desire are largely negative. Think of his descriptions of enemy brothers, where he reminds us that the most intimate relations between human beings can be fiercely antagonistic. Or when he claims that the only cultural mechanism to grant us relative peace is the violent, satanic expulsion of one victim. But then he robs us of even of this relative peace through his reading of the Gospels as the revelation of the innocence of the victim, with the consequence that in our modern day version of the sacrificial crisis we might end up in a situation of violence without end.

And even when within the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R, the society devoted to developing Girard’s theory) there are voices speaking of positive mimesis as an alternative, one wing of COV&R immediately claims that there is no positive mimesis. So are we hopelessly trapped in our conflictive imitations and cycles of violence? Is Girard a cultural pessimist, not come to bring us peace but a sword?

Girard himself has always pointed out that mimesis itself is neither positive nor negative but that it depends on the models whether the effects are positive or negative. And if it seems that he does not outline an alternative to mimetic violence and the scapegoat mechanism, then I would like to suggest it is for a specific reason. For Girard, there is an alternative but it is an alternative that he is very cautious of capturing in specific terms, as this alternative too might be turned into an oppressive ideology of violence.

In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World Girard points to the Johannine Logos as found in the prologue of the Gospel of John, the Logos of non-violence, as being the alternative to the cycle of violence. He distinguishes it from the Greek Logos of philosophy based on reason and states: “The Johannine Logos is foreign to any kind of violence; it is therefore forever expelled, an absent Logos that has never had any direct, determining influence over human cultures. […] The Logos of love puts up no resistance; it always allows itself to be expelled by the Logos of violence.”[1]

In this description one might have the impression that this logos has no power at all to suspend mimetic conflicts that it is of no significance whatsoever. Yet this apparent weakness is exactly its strength. Maybe an illustration of this power in weakness will help us to understand the Johannine Logos a bit better. The recent dystopian film The Children of Men portrays a world in which humanity has become infertile – people have not seen a new born in more then twenty years. But then, in a modern recapitulation of the Nativity story a young woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby in a refugee camp.

At one point mother and child have to walk through a war zone and suddenly the warring parties suspend their fighting because, having not seen a child for more than twenty years, they are in awe of the scene that unfolds before them. The weakness and innocence of the new born child has the power to suspend all violence. It is the light shining in the darkness of mimetic violence. But as soon as mother and child have passed through, the conflicts resume. As in the prologue of John, the darkness has not understood the light.

It is this fragility of the Johannine Logos that lets Girard be wary of formulating a clear alternative to mimetic violence. But it is this Logos of non-violence – which is Christ – that Girard and the Gospels encourage us to imitate. Even if fragile, this is the Logos through which we might find, after a long and arduous journey – peace. It has the absolute power to overcome violence in its weakness– if only we, in our weakness, continue to imitate it.

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