Conference Report

Inter-American Congress of Philosophy

Carlos Mora
Javeriana University, Bogotá

During the week of October 15, 2019, the Mimetic Theory Study Group of Bogotá,
Colombia, presented some of its work at the XVIII Inter-American Congress of
Philosophy. At the work table hosted by the group, they invited participants to discuss the
complex relations found in René Girard's work with some of the most relevant philosophers
in history, such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel, Nietzsche, and
Heidegger. We sought to discuss, in particular, the relationship of these philosophers with
mimesis, separating it from its reduction to a problem of representation. We intended to
raise it as the core of the understanding of the human, from which the autonomy of modern
reason is questioned.

The displacement of philosophy towards anthropological reflection was explored by

developing Levinas’s assertions of ethics as the first philosophy. The group delved into
Heidegger's position on the forgetting of being: the relationship between being and
violence, between the sacred and violence. Multiple relationships were also traced with
other contemporary philosophers with whom Girard worked and dialogued, such as Serres,
Derrida, Ricœur, Vattimo, Foucault, and Taylor.

The group welcomed the participants to reflect and write, based on a set of papers, from the
perspective of mimetic theory, and to open fields of work within philosophy, anthropology,
ethics, politics, metaphysics, religion, social philosophy, and epistemology, among others.
For example, four of those papers were directed at the relationship between mimetic theory,
contemporary philosophies, and social reality. The texts: "From the scapegoat to the subject
abandoned to his solitude" by Roberto Solarte, "Radical alterity and universal
interpretation: Lévinas and Girard in an ethical anthropology" by Tomas Guevara, "Girard
and Foucault: an encounter between desire and power" by Carlos Mora, and “The humanist,
antihumanist and post-humanist discussion in dialogue with the thought of René Girard” by
Juan Diaz, persuaded the audience to think about human origins based on an excessive and
traumatic experience, which persists in humanity even today; the fact that, around a world
that is currently mostly secularized, aspects of religious and archaic origins are still being
perpetrated within contemporary institutions. Additionally, it was indicated through the
texts that the girardian perspective views culture obeying a sacrificial order or order of law,
and it is shown that it seeks to contain the return of that violent excess, without complete
success; for example, it "permits" violence towards an “illegal” immigrant or a person
deprived of liberty.
Also, based on these social tensions and paradoxes, the authors invited the participants
towards ethical reflection, from the perspective of a way out of violence, understood from
Girard as the incarnation, which culminates as the death of Christ on the cross, as a
sacrifice of God Himself, which takes away the value of any subsequent sacrifice. The
death of God, then, is the death of the sacred and the erosion of the sacrificial or legal order
of cultures. In the same way, the dissolution of the sacrificial system, exposed by Girard,
appeals society to build new ways of relating with the Other, a more extensive
understanding and care for the Other, even through the rupture of the self.

Other proposals revolved around a more theoretical dialogue. Presentations such as

“Literature and Anthropology: Freud's Reading in Girard and Blumenberg” by Natali
Chamorro, invited the audience to think about the relationship between Girard and
Blumenberg based on her contemporary readings of philosophical anthropology,
considering that they took literature as an illuminating input. However, for the author, these
readings are contradictory. Chamorro approaches this contradiction through the reading
made by the two philosophers of Freud and psychoanalysis as a way to understand the role
of literature as mimesis and metaphor. This approach leads to the emergence of the
anthropological question by the two philosophers, based on a doubt pointed out by
Freudian philosophy: the darkness of our desires and how these determine our clearest
forms of rationality and choice. For Chamorro, the two authors find in this question the
origin of contemporary anthropological doubt and its departure from literature and myth.

This reading shows how the two philosophers are talking about two very different ways of
interpreting Freud, even though they use similar terminology. These differences allow us to
think and propose a psychoanalytic approach that permits us to bring closer metaphorology
and mimesis.

Other presentations, such as "Mimetic desire and phenomenology for a philosophy of the
victims ”by Juan Sebastián Ballen and “The phenomenology of literary work and the
mimetic theory of René Girard ”by Javier Sánchez, encouraged discussion on the role of
the phenomenology of René Girard, that is, whether there is one, and if so, to present how
it’s introduced.

Finally, the group invited the participants to read René Girard's work due to its great
relevance in the discussions of the last 50 years not only in philosophy, but also in a
constant dialogue with the humanities, empirical sciences, and social sciences. And finally,
the group highlighted the importance that mimetic theory has, as it’s proven to be a
powerful tool in the dialogue with the natural sciences and the most urgent political, social,
and environmental problems of today.