Lexington Books
Pages: 348
•
Trim: 6½ x 9¼
978-0-7391-6898-1 • Hardback • November 2013 • $162.00 • (£125.00)
978-1-4985-5057-4 • Paperback • November 2016 • $64.99 • (£50.00)
978-0-7391-6899-8 • eBook • November 2013 • $61.50 • (£47.00)
Vern Neufeld Redekop is a full professor in the School of Conflict Studies at Saint Paul University, Ottawa. He is the co-author of Introduction to Conflict Studies: Empirical, Theoretical, and Ethical Dimensions (2012) and Beyond Control: A Mutual Respect Approach to Protest Crowd – Police Relations (2010).
Thomas Ryba is Notre Dame Theologian-in-Residence at the Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center as well as lecturer in philosophy and religious studies and adjunct professor of Jewish studies at Purdue University. He is the co-editor of For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth (2008) and was North American editor of Religion (2004-2007).
Contextual Introduction: René Girard and the Problem of Creativity
Vern Neufeld Redekop and Thomas Ryba
Part I. CREATIVE MIMESIS: HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: Transforming Intersubjective Space: From Ruthlessness to Primary Creativity and Loving Mimesis
Martha Reineke
Chapter 2: Mimesis and Creativity in Language Origins and Language Acquisition
Christina Biava
Chapter 3: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful and René Girard’s Mimetic Theory
Richard McGuigan and Nancy Popp
Part II. ORIGINALITY AND COMPETITION
Chapter 4: Modern Freedom and Creativity: “truth stripped of its cloak of time . . .”
Andrew O’Shea
Chapter 5: Mimetic Theory and the Question of Originality
Robert Doran
Chapter 6: Mimesis and Immortal Glory: How Creativity is Spurred by the Desire for One’s Ideas to Dominate the Meme Pool
Thomas Ryba
Part III. POLITICS, POWER AND RELIGION
Chapter7: Vox popluli, Vox Dei: The Pantheistic Temptation of Democracy
Wolfgang Palaver
Chapter 8: The Girardian Mimetic Theory and its Reading in a Positive Cultural and Economic Liberal Context
Patrick Imbert
Chapter 9: The Creative Desire for God: Mimesis Beyond Violence in Monotheistic Religion
Thomas Reynolds
Part IV. THEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS
Chapter 10: Lonergan’s ‘Imitating the Divine Relations’: A Theological Contribution to Mimetic Theology
Robert M. Doran, S.J.
Chapter 11: Original Sin, Grace and Positive Mimesis
Petra Steinmair-Pösel
Chapter 12: New Creation Metaphors? Mimesis and difference, creation and ecology
Andre Lascaris
Part V. PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC ISSUES
Chapter 13: Hermeneutical Mimesis
Joachim Duyndam
Chapter 14: The Imitation of the Cellular and Violence Toward the Neighbor
Francis Tobienne, Jr.
Chapter 15: Love vs. Resentment: The Absence of Positive Mimesis in Generative Anthropology
Pablo Bandera
Chapter 16: Nature as a Source of Positive Desire
Robin Collins
This is a highly original multi-author volume about the work of René Girard in understanding openness, creativity and mutuality in relations with other people. Girard’s theory of desire posits ideal personhood as one’s ability to self-actualize through non-rivalry imitations of others without the need to dominate others in the process. Girard’s work is best known for his analysis of inter-subjective violence, but the authors here show the power of his thought to model deeply reciprocal, positive human relations. A must read for all students of Girard — as well as other readers interested in a joyous paradigm for healthy families and societies.
— Mark I. Wallace
Harnessing the insights of some of the leading exponents of Girard's theories and examining all major parts of the creative process, this volume adroitly explores the relation of mimesis to creativity across the board in the humanities and social sciences — engaging fields as diverse as political science, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literary study, religious studies, and theology. As such, it promises an innovative, re-invigorating, and productive set of approaches to questions that have withstood our attention for some two thousand years in the West, confined as they were for most of that time within the works of a few great literary artists.
— Sandor Goodhart, Purdue University