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Anorexia e Desejo Mimetico
« Ce qui pousse les femmes vers l’anorexie, c’est l’impératif unanime de la société. Cela prend la forme d’un sacrifice organisé. Mais ce sacrifice est inconscient, cela démontre qu’il existe dans notre monde un retour à l’archaïsme le plus effrayant. À une société saine, toutes ces choses apparaîtraient comme un visage de la mort. »
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First published January 1, 2008
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About the author
René Girard
123 books852 followersRené Girard was a French-born American historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy.
He was born in the southern French city of Avignon on Christmas day in 1923. Between 1943 and 1947, he studied in Paris at the École des Chartres, an institution for the training of archivists and historians, where he specialized in medieval history. In 1947 he went to Indiana University on a year’s fellowship and eventually made almost his entire career in the United States. He completed a PhD in history at Indiana University in 1950 but also began to teach literature, the field in which he would first make his reputation. He taught at Duke University and at Bryn Mawr before becoming a professor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. In 1971 he went to the State University of New York at Buffalo for five years, returned to Johns Hopkins, and then finished his academic career at Stanford University where he taught between 1981 and his retirement in 1995.
Girard is the author of nearly thirty books, with his writings spanning many academic domains. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature on his work and his influence on disciplines such as literary criticism, critical theory, anthropology, theology, psychology, mythology, sociology, economics, cultural studies, and philosophy.Girard’s fundamental ideas, which he has developed throughout his career and provide the foundation for his thinking, are that desire is mimetic (all of our desires are borrowed from other people), that all conflict originates in mimetic desire (mimetic rivalry), that the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and the foundation of human culture, and religion was necessary in human evolution to control the violence that can come from mimetic rivalry, and that the Bible reveals these ideas and denounces the scapegoat mechanism.
In 1990, friends and colleagues of Girard’s established the Colloquium on Violence and Religion to further research and discussion about the themes of Girard’s work. The Colloquium meets annually either in Europe or the United States.
René Girard died on November 4, 2015, at the age of 91 in Stanford.
He was born in the southern French city of Avignon on Christmas day in 1923. Between 1943 and 1947, he studied in Paris at the École des Chartres, an institution for the training of archivists and historians, where he specialized in medieval history. In 1947 he went to Indiana University on a year’s fellowship and eventually made almost his entire career in the United States. He completed a PhD in history at Indiana University in 1950 but also began to teach literature, the field in which he would first make his reputation. He taught at Duke University and at Bryn Mawr before becoming a professor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. In 1971 he went to the State University of New York at Buffalo for five years, returned to Johns Hopkins, and then finished his academic career at Stanford University where he taught between 1981 and his retirement in 1995.
Girard is the author of nearly thirty books, with his writings spanning many academic domains. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature on his work and his influence on disciplines such as literary criticism, critical theory, anthropology, theology, psychology, mythology, sociology, economics, cultural studies, and philosophy.Girard’s fundamental ideas, which he has developed throughout his career and provide the foundation for his thinking, are that desire is mimetic (all of our desires are borrowed from other people), that all conflict originates in mimetic desire (mimetic rivalry), that the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and the foundation of human culture, and religion was necessary in human evolution to control the violence that can come from mimetic rivalry, and that the Bible reveals these ideas and denounces the scapegoat mechanism.
In 1990, friends and colleagues of Girard’s established the Colloquium on Violence and Religion to further research and discussion about the themes of Girard’s work. The Colloquium meets annually either in Europe or the United States.
René Girard died on November 4, 2015, at the age of 91 in Stanford.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 27, 2013
One might think that anorexia is too minor a subject for a thinker known for his sweeping examinations of civilization. Think again. Girard makes a strong case that anorexia is a fundamental sign of the mimetic crisis of our time. Could something else hold this position? Maybe, but anorexia does well. Eschewing psychoanalytic interpretations of the disorder that blame individuals and families, Girard argues that this is a social crisis that has engulfed us. Those who have read Girard or about him know the importance he attaches to mimetic desire, the tendency to imitate the desires of other people. These shared desires can easily fall into profound rivalry. In earlier times, only the elite could indulge in such rivalry. In our democratic times, everybody can do it and does it. With anorexia, we have the competition to see who can be the thinnest. If someone dies from starvation to achieve this aim, that dead person is the winner. Girard notes that this competition has gone beyond any competition for mates & has become pure competition. Anorexia shows a society falling into competition of all against all. Not surprisingly, Girard discusses Kafka's prophetic story "The Hunger Artiest." The story has been interpreted as a metaphor for society's mimetic issues. Girard says that this metaphor has turned into " massive existential fact." A lucid introduction by the translator, Mark Anspach and an interview/discussion with René at the end round out this little book. All this is, of course, also a religious crisis. With having rejected the idols of bygone days and the God of love revealed in Jesus, we can only continue to generate our own idols grounded in mimetic desire.
For my discussions of Girard's thought on mimetic desire and society, see my blog at http://bit.ly/Tqbeqw
For my discussions of Girard's thought on mimetic desire and society, see my blog at http://bit.ly/Tqbeqw
July 6, 2022
Cerca de 70 páginas de uma opinião sociológica sobre o que é a anorexia (e bulimia), os seus fatores desencadeantes individuais, familiares, históricos e antropológicos e como se espalha enquanto epidemia. Foca principalmente nas perturbações alimentares como motivadas pela rivalidade que surge da imitação e pela imitação que surge da rivalidade. Achei particularmente interessante a comparação entre a anorexia e o potlatch - "Abster-se deliberadamente de uma coisa [...] é a melhor forma de mostrar que se é superior a essa coisa e aos que a cobiçam". Alguns comentários pareceram-me escritos em tom de ridicularização e com falta de rigor científico e preocupação moral, portanto, apesar de ter achado uma leitura interessante e proveitosa, não consigo dar mais que ★★★. Gostei muito do prefácio do Oughourlian e da introdução do Anspach da edição que tenho (Biblioteca Universal, Edições Texto & Grafia).
June 22, 2025
buuuu psicanálise cheira a mofo!!! a sociedade está na base das pcas e as pessoas são demasiado burras para perceber porque é uma explicação demasiado simplista!! mas eu sou tão hater e tão presunçoso e tão fora da caixa que percebo melhor que todos!!!!!!!!! olhem só blablabla desejo e mimetismo!!!!
pouco rigor, pouco académico, demasiado condescendente. enfim, concordo com a imitação e a rivalidade e todo o arquétipo de magreza e o exagero, mas pautar como algo tão basilar que não pode co existir com outras teorias é mm dúbio tipo cala-te com o modernismo e pós-modernismo que chatoooOoOOO
pouco rigor, pouco académico, demasiado condescendente. enfim, concordo com a imitação e a rivalidade e todo o arquétipo de magreza e o exagero, mas pautar como algo tão basilar que não pode co existir com outras teorias é mm dúbio tipo cala-te com o modernismo e pós-modernismo que chatoooOoOOO
February 7, 2017
Una puta mierda. Podría explicarlo mejor, pero no merece la pena molestarse. Tampoco Girard se ha molestado en informarse antes de reírse durante 60 páginas de una enfermedad.
August 2, 2024
The main ideas were solid, but the Introduction and Forward both explained them just as clearly as Girard's lecture did, without the smug combativeness of his tone of voice. Having only read some quite dry material from him before this, I'm disappointed in his total lack of ethos and empathy in this work. Especially dated was the "interview" included after the lecture, which sounded like little more than three guys in a room talking about women's bodies (because it was). It didn't add anything to the analysis and only piled on more ad-hominem attacks on women which I didn't need to read.
First off, I did appreciate Girard's complaint about the label "anorexia" on the basis of its etymology: the phenomenon (at least in its contemporary usage) is far from a lack of desire, but rather a displaced desire, a hyper-fixation on food to the point that one cannot ingest it (for fear of gaining wait, for fear of "losing" the war against one's waist). This slots nicely into Girard's notion of mimetic desire, namely that people desire things based almost entirely on what others around them do (in other words, as he pointed out, unless people are taught anorexia through unrealistic modern beauty standards, it quite literally doesn't exist in the premodern "wild"). Underpinning his idea of mimetic desire is an absolute dismissal of the faux-rebellious attitude in vogue today. Nietzsche and Emerson have convinced me that not only does essentially no one actually "rebel" in any meaningful way today, but rebellion is also extremely uncomfortable and not desirable in the vast majority of instances.
Perhaps the most powerful connection I made while reading the Forward was how, in a "secular" age with us (and our desires) being "god," eating disorders are really the final frontier, the logical conclusion: if you are your body, and you are your own god, then eating disorders represent a gnostic attempt to transcend even your own body's screaming insistence that you must eat. Such transcendence promises to elevate you above even your own embodied godhood, so of course its extremely alluring. Plus, all the peer pressure doesn't hurt.
I also appreciate how Girard was dismissive of the hermeneutics of suspicion and the underlying assumption that there are secret, hidden causes which only some torturous, byzantine labyrinth of critical theory can explain. In reality, it really is that simple: people see others as skinny and want to be skinny themselves. The competitive aspect explains things better than the multiplicity of "-isms" and critical theories which have produced no quantifiable increase in the quality of living of those they pretend to defend. This shouldn't be surprising, as such frameworks provide no reason to improve things, only to complain all the more loudly and ornately. As the introduction states: "Violent impulses that no longer have a ritual outlet are now channeled into a veritable competition of victims, triggering a sacrificial escalation in the contest to see who can boast of having suffered the most. As Girard has remarked elsewhere, 'the fashion is one of weighing victims.'" The deeply Christian notion of transcending through embracing your suffering has been stripped of its transcendent aspect, replacing it with a compulsive competition.
When we finally get to the lecture itself, he spends most of the first half taking pot-shots against theorists and modernism/postmodernism, but doesn't really explain his starting assumptions or his own logic. We only get some of that in the second half, and we have to wade through insults and jokes which really don't land. He defended capitalism as not the source of the problem but merely a symptom which can quickly and efficiently adapt itself to an excess of abstinence; I somewhat agree with that, but he spoke too flippantly for it to be convincing to anyone but those who already agree with him. Of course it's not the root of the problem, but it also doesn't help at all either.
Sometimes his willingness to offend and be blunt was helpful, as when he correctly pointed out that anorexia and bulimia nervosa are not two separate disorders; rather, the latter is a failed version of the former, where the calories are dealt with post-hoc rather than ante-hoc. However, shortly after this, he rambled in a very stupid way against exercise as something exclusively done by people who hate themselves and who want to lose weight. Sure, weight loss is a side-effect of being active, but it's important for a myriad of reasons, including longevity and mobility, as well as more immediate benefits like strength, flexibility, and mental health.
This all is very unfortunate, because I feel as though I agree with many of his statements, but only partially because he regularly overstates his case. Of course we are a society that has nominally secularized, has been nominally liberated, but we still are deeply, even extremely indebted to our Christian slave-morality. This is what Nietzsche spent most of his career trying to explain to us. Even if we don't make our slave-morality explicit, even if people claim to disown Christianity, we all still cling quite tightly to many Christian and Platonic assumptions. Thus, Girard's statements about the old prohibitions being totally gone are mostly unfounded, as religious people still make up the vast majority of the world population (and even irreligious people are usually conformists). Let's not fall into John Berger's cliched assumption that this is a "secular" age and no one is religious anymore.
I don't know enough about the Potlatch to know if Girard was telling the truth, but I couldn't really follow his argument there, he needed to flesh it out more and use more sources. I did, however, agree with his section on the "nouveau riche" tendencies of Americans, which parallels this disordered approach to eating. He wrote that "To abstain voluntarily from something, no matter what, is the ultimate demonstration that one is superior to that something and to those who covet it." I can attest to this in other domains, and it definitely is the logical conclusion of dieting as well. I also thought he launched an interesting attack against the cliche that premodern people endured widespread starvation and thus always thought fat was ideal, but I'm not so well-versed in history to tell what's the truth. I thought this dismissal was much more relevant and also much more relevant:
One of the real howlers is the current interpretation of religious asceticism as 'an early form of anorexia.' It should be paired with the revealing justification some of our anthropologists provide for infanticide in archaic culture: 'an early means of population control.'
When I looked up anorexia's etymology at the start of reading, I noticed the former point being made in the wikipedia entry and scoffed at it. It's really tenuous and quite pathetic of a claim to make. As for the latter, premoderns didn't have any notion of "overpopulation," so this quite handily justifies his complaints about "the “'moderno-centric' fallacy." Unfortunately for him, however, you can't just keep complaining about it, you have to put something else in its place. Isn't that the classic complaint of conservatives? Ironic that he doesn't provide anything at all to help combat these scary trends in society...
First off, I did appreciate Girard's complaint about the label "anorexia" on the basis of its etymology: the phenomenon (at least in its contemporary usage) is far from a lack of desire, but rather a displaced desire, a hyper-fixation on food to the point that one cannot ingest it (for fear of gaining wait, for fear of "losing" the war against one's waist). This slots nicely into Girard's notion of mimetic desire, namely that people desire things based almost entirely on what others around them do (in other words, as he pointed out, unless people are taught anorexia through unrealistic modern beauty standards, it quite literally doesn't exist in the premodern "wild"). Underpinning his idea of mimetic desire is an absolute dismissal of the faux-rebellious attitude in vogue today. Nietzsche and Emerson have convinced me that not only does essentially no one actually "rebel" in any meaningful way today, but rebellion is also extremely uncomfortable and not desirable in the vast majority of instances.
Perhaps the most powerful connection I made while reading the Forward was how, in a "secular" age with us (and our desires) being "god," eating disorders are really the final frontier, the logical conclusion: if you are your body, and you are your own god, then eating disorders represent a gnostic attempt to transcend even your own body's screaming insistence that you must eat. Such transcendence promises to elevate you above even your own embodied godhood, so of course its extremely alluring. Plus, all the peer pressure doesn't hurt.
I also appreciate how Girard was dismissive of the hermeneutics of suspicion and the underlying assumption that there are secret, hidden causes which only some torturous, byzantine labyrinth of critical theory can explain. In reality, it really is that simple: people see others as skinny and want to be skinny themselves. The competitive aspect explains things better than the multiplicity of "-isms" and critical theories which have produced no quantifiable increase in the quality of living of those they pretend to defend. This shouldn't be surprising, as such frameworks provide no reason to improve things, only to complain all the more loudly and ornately. As the introduction states: "Violent impulses that no longer have a ritual outlet are now channeled into a veritable competition of victims, triggering a sacrificial escalation in the contest to see who can boast of having suffered the most. As Girard has remarked elsewhere, 'the fashion is one of weighing victims.'" The deeply Christian notion of transcending through embracing your suffering has been stripped of its transcendent aspect, replacing it with a compulsive competition.
When we finally get to the lecture itself, he spends most of the first half taking pot-shots against theorists and modernism/postmodernism, but doesn't really explain his starting assumptions or his own logic. We only get some of that in the second half, and we have to wade through insults and jokes which really don't land. He defended capitalism as not the source of the problem but merely a symptom which can quickly and efficiently adapt itself to an excess of abstinence; I somewhat agree with that, but he spoke too flippantly for it to be convincing to anyone but those who already agree with him. Of course it's not the root of the problem, but it also doesn't help at all either.
Sometimes his willingness to offend and be blunt was helpful, as when he correctly pointed out that anorexia and bulimia nervosa are not two separate disorders; rather, the latter is a failed version of the former, where the calories are dealt with post-hoc rather than ante-hoc. However, shortly after this, he rambled in a very stupid way against exercise as something exclusively done by people who hate themselves and who want to lose weight. Sure, weight loss is a side-effect of being active, but it's important for a myriad of reasons, including longevity and mobility, as well as more immediate benefits like strength, flexibility, and mental health.
This all is very unfortunate, because I feel as though I agree with many of his statements, but only partially because he regularly overstates his case. Of course we are a society that has nominally secularized, has been nominally liberated, but we still are deeply, even extremely indebted to our Christian slave-morality. This is what Nietzsche spent most of his career trying to explain to us. Even if we don't make our slave-morality explicit, even if people claim to disown Christianity, we all still cling quite tightly to many Christian and Platonic assumptions. Thus, Girard's statements about the old prohibitions being totally gone are mostly unfounded, as religious people still make up the vast majority of the world population (and even irreligious people are usually conformists). Let's not fall into John Berger's cliched assumption that this is a "secular" age and no one is religious anymore.
I don't know enough about the Potlatch to know if Girard was telling the truth, but I couldn't really follow his argument there, he needed to flesh it out more and use more sources. I did, however, agree with his section on the "nouveau riche" tendencies of Americans, which parallels this disordered approach to eating. He wrote that "To abstain voluntarily from something, no matter what, is the ultimate demonstration that one is superior to that something and to those who covet it." I can attest to this in other domains, and it definitely is the logical conclusion of dieting as well. I also thought he launched an interesting attack against the cliche that premodern people endured widespread starvation and thus always thought fat was ideal, but I'm not so well-versed in history to tell what's the truth. I thought this dismissal was much more relevant and also much more relevant:
One of the real howlers is the current interpretation of religious asceticism as 'an early form of anorexia.' It should be paired with the revealing justification some of our anthropologists provide for infanticide in archaic culture: 'an early means of population control.'
When I looked up anorexia's etymology at the start of reading, I noticed the former point being made in the wikipedia entry and scoffed at it. It's really tenuous and quite pathetic of a claim to make. As for the latter, premoderns didn't have any notion of "overpopulation," so this quite handily justifies his complaints about "the “'moderno-centric' fallacy." Unfortunately for him, however, you can't just keep complaining about it, you have to put something else in its place. Isn't that the classic complaint of conservatives? Ironic that he doesn't provide anything at all to help combat these scary trends in society...
August 16, 2022
Är mimetiskt begär boven i dramat när det gäller anorexi? Girard reder i röran och använder sig av allt från Seinfeld, historiska slottsdamer och neurologisk forskning för att bygga sitt case. Hade fått högre betyg om han inte hade felaktigt beskrivit ett Seinfeld-avsnitt.
December 3, 2016
As a kind of insider, meaning one who has since early childhood refused eating and expressed its various interlocking-malaise, along with the hyper-perfectionist that performs well in many areas, including the academy, I've yet to come across work that maintains and expresses so clearly, the very deep undercurrents of a space-time as well as Girard.
"More and more critics are beginning to face up to the fact that vigorous novelty is drying up. Modern art is over, and its end was certainly hastened, if not entirely caused, by the more and more anorexic temper of our century."
Our world has flowered awesome mimetic expansion, the balance a few pounds shy of tipping. Incessant incursion of the anorexic-bulimic is also mirrored in the extraction of oil here and damning of water ways. The earth, our larger-self is not free from this metaphysical Other either, there is no escaping, only reshaping.
I urge anyone interested in seeing this game to not privy one's selves of novelty above, below, or outside the web. If you are reading this, find the anorexic-bulimic in you and gently gaze upon its points of conversion.
"More and more critics are beginning to face up to the fact that vigorous novelty is drying up. Modern art is over, and its end was certainly hastened, if not entirely caused, by the more and more anorexic temper of our century."
Our world has flowered awesome mimetic expansion, the balance a few pounds shy of tipping. Incessant incursion of the anorexic-bulimic is also mirrored in the extraction of oil here and damning of water ways. The earth, our larger-self is not free from this metaphysical Other either, there is no escaping, only reshaping.
I urge anyone interested in seeing this game to not privy one's selves of novelty above, below, or outside the web. If you are reading this, find the anorexic-bulimic in you and gently gaze upon its points of conversion.
October 22, 2025
La verdad que he tenido sentimientos encontrados con este ensayo.
Por una parte me ha encantado la crudeza con la que están expresadas ciertas reflexiones. Ha conseguido expresar diferentes puntos de vista de forma que me han hecho pensar y replantearme muchas de mis propias ideas y concepciones.
Por otro lado creo que se ha excedido a la hora de hacer ciertos comentarios con un tono bastante desagradable y a veces peca de tener una visión bastante reduccionista de la anorexia para que concuerde con sus planteamientos iniciales sobre las causas de la anorexia/bulimia/TCAs relacionados con la delgadez.
Por último mencionar que no puedo aprobar ningún libro que tenga que utilizar la cosificación de la mujer en una portada para llamar la atención. Entiendo que quieras poner una imagen impactante con la anorexia ya que es lo que vas a encontrar durante la lectura, pero sobraba totalmente la imagen tan clara de la vagina y el pecho. No considero que tengan que ser ocultadas ni mucho menos, pero creo que el objetivo de enseñarlas no es su normalización sino utilizarlas para llamar la atención del lector. 👎
Por una parte me ha encantado la crudeza con la que están expresadas ciertas reflexiones. Ha conseguido expresar diferentes puntos de vista de forma que me han hecho pensar y replantearme muchas de mis propias ideas y concepciones.
Por otro lado creo que se ha excedido a la hora de hacer ciertos comentarios con un tono bastante desagradable y a veces peca de tener una visión bastante reduccionista de la anorexia para que concuerde con sus planteamientos iniciales sobre las causas de la anorexia/bulimia/TCAs relacionados con la delgadez.
Por último mencionar que no puedo aprobar ningún libro que tenga que utilizar la cosificación de la mujer en una portada para llamar la atención. Entiendo que quieras poner una imagen impactante con la anorexia ya que es lo que vas a encontrar durante la lectura, pero sobraba totalmente la imagen tan clara de la vagina y el pecho. No considero que tengan que ser ocultadas ni mucho menos, pero creo que el objetivo de enseñarlas no es su normalización sino utilizarlas para llamar la atención del lector. 👎
February 26, 2025
La idea principal descansa en concebirnos como seres deseantes del otro y en admitir que la delgadez es un ideal cultural (como tener dinero o ser exitoso). Un impulso lo suficientemente fuerte para extremar la competición en cualquier ámbito, y llevarlo a las últimas consecuencias, siempre y cuando, claro está, sea posible y no nos mate en el camino.
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August 19, 2025<< Avec la fin des derniers interdits religieux, nous avons perdu un merveilleux rituel salutaire, le repas familial, le garde-fou le plus efficace, sans doute, contre la boulimie vomitive. La nourriture industrielle est indubitablement plus facile à vomir que la bonne cuisine de maman>>.
- René Girad, référence de l’ultradroite américaine, qui a fait trop de références à l'empire romain
...
- René Girad, référence de l’ultradroite américaine, qui a fait trop de références à l'empire romain
...
January 27, 2025
Incredible. One of my favourite essays.
“As long as we are not provided with a goal worthy of our emptiness, we will copy the emptiness of others and constantly regenerate the hell from which we are trying to escape.”
“As long as we are not provided with a goal worthy of our emptiness, we will copy the emptiness of others and constantly regenerate the hell from which we are trying to escape.”
December 19, 2020
Um livro breve, algo deambulante na abordagem, mas que dá alguns dos elementos essenciais do pensamento deste autor sobre a importância da rivalidade mimética nos comportamentos sociais.
February 18, 2025
A argumentação de Girard é fraca. Ele diz que as moças de hoje sofrem de anorexia como sintoma de um niilismo pós-moderno (uma ideia de que "menos é mais", que pode ser constatada no minimalismo que tomou conta do design e da arquitetura, e que teria se tornado um ethos pós-moderno), mas não fornece muitos argumentos para sustentar essa hipótese. Não sei nem se chega a ser uma hipótese – está mais para o esboço de uma opinião, orientado pelos pressupostos da teoria mimética. Uma parte interessante é sua tentativa de rastrear os germes de nossa obsessão por magreza, remetendo-a à rivalidade mimética entre mulheres aristocratas. É interessante como hipótese, mas falta rigor argumentativo e acadêmico. A melhor parte do livro são os artigos que acompanham o texto principal, especialmente aqueles que fazem um paralelo com a psicanálise.
February 25, 2022
Girard's mimetic theory gives the impression of cutting through so much fluff, through all the endlessly expanding theories of modern psychology, and getting to the plain truth. It gives simple, believable, and relatable explanations for pathological human behavior - including, in this book, for anorexia and related illnesses. An eye-opener and a must-read, especially for clinicians offering treatments.
March 20, 2013
simply so relevant to understanding our culture. It feels so good, so relieving that someone eventually calls some new (and old) pathologies by their true name, i.e., mimetic fashion, and debunks them with that zest of humor that the subject deserves.
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