Jeff Russell

I wonder have you read much of Graeber's work? I wonder on what basis you might have judged him to be "arch-Marxist"? And also, what this term means to you?

Yes, as I said, what Girard has to offer is very seductive in some quarters. I think it is because it is very comforting to the Christian view that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus represent a definitive turning point in the history of the world - that all was changed and that nothing after was or could be the same as all that came before it.

Still, his fundamental concept of mimetic desire makes no sense to me. How can we know what a person desires? And presuming we could know the interior state of another person, why would we not (say) want to help them fulfill that desire? What makes rivalry the automatic go-to response. Sure, sometimes... but always? Anyway, the procrustean bed that Girard forces everything into is the idea that the first truly human act was an act of human sacrifice - which murder then unified/bonded everyone who took part. And that this proto-human act was perpetually repeated in ritual and myth, throughout human history, until Christ came along and voluntarily sacrificed himself. And, while I think that it is true that some humans, in some places, have sacrificed one another, this is not true of all humans in all places. Needing to turn the first into the second is where Girard has to "force" his material.