Culture, Religion and Violence: René Girard’s Mimetic Theory

Abstract

This article introduces René Girard’s mimetic theory to examine the relationship between culture, religion and violence. It challenges the way the problem of religion and violence is narrowly conceptualised as a problem of ‘religious violence’ (i.e. religious terrorism and civil war). When the problem of religion and violence is constructed in this way, purportedly to take religion seriously, it does so by not taking culture or politics seriously. It is a limited conception since religion as a concept is always socially, culturally and politically contested, negotiated and constructed. It is not a neutral descriptor of a reality in the world, which causes violence under certain conditions. Moreover, this limited conception of religion fits what critical theorists call a problem-solving approach to theory. It ignores the fact that how, by whom and in whose interests the problem of religion and violence is constructed is itself a form of power in international relations. Therefore, the way the problem of religion and violence is constructed can be challenged as an example of the scapegoat mechanism in mimetic theory, and how it operates in the West as well as in the religion and violence in countries that are the object of Western foreign policy. This is demonstrated in two case studies: the invention of religious violence, and ethno-religious conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s.