Dante almost got himself petrified during his voyage through Hell.  The furies called for Medusa to appear.

They should have called for Nietzsche and Rousseau. They were equally capable of closing a symbolic order and making it watertight.  When they looked out onto their world, they saw only imitators or detractors.

The furies’ call would have instigated a hilarious scene, where Nietzsche and Rousseau regarded one another, and Nietzsche saw a “theoretical man” and Rousseau saw a “man without reason, full of primitive associations”, before each turning the other to stone, or maybe, before both falling in love.

When Medusa looked out, she saw only women and stones, so intense was her mimetic rivalry.

When Dante looked out, he did not turn anyone to stone.

Dante saw through the eyes of a sinner.  His message was: Do not mimic me.

As a result, he spoke a language (a symbolic order) much larger than himself, a symbolic order that could never close itself off as the imitators imitated and the detractors detracted, because the moment that one looked at the empty space, one saw the only thing that could not be – must not be – “the object that brings us all into relation”: a resurrected corpse.

Yet there He was.

Whenever you see a self-anointed pretender, acting out the total tragedy of Nietzsche or the social science of Rousseau, close your eyes, for fear that your heart will turn to stone.

The pretenders want (they desire) to incorporate you into the fullness of their Nothing.  Either you join them and speak their language or you are portrayed as the enemy of “art” or “science”.

There is no escape from their lapidary transfiguration.

Both Nietzsche and Rousseau, in their own ways, created symbolic orders – specialized languages – that put “something” in the “empty space” left when we stopped living in a world of constrained complexity.

Both Nietzsche and Rousseau, themselves, were keys to their symbolic orders.  Others (unwittingly, because this is what we do) mimicked their desires. Some mimicked in rivalry and some in admiration.

Their (adopted) desires set the stage for their competition to be the suffering servants of art or social science.

When it turned out that our distant ancestors could not survive without helping one another, without bonding to one another, mimesis^constrained came into God’s creation.

We desire the “object that brings us into relation” because that is what allows us “to be alive in the way that we are alive”.  That is our animating principle.

Through this “object”, each one of us finds her own “niche”. We do not even know what we are doing.  We just do it.  Our nature is to find “the object” that brings each one of us into relation.

If that nature defines us as “the image of God”, then by definition, God must be the Object that brings Himself into Relation.

This error prone machination did not operate in our heart of hearts before the Fall.

All of evolved life, up to the point of our departure, paralleled mimesis^constrained, in this most realistic and fantastic sense:

Life sacrificed itself in order to live.

Individuals risked everything.  For what?  Reproductive success?  Yes, and more: the desire to be alive in the way that they are alive.

A simple rule coupled to an animating principle.  Voila, the diversity of life.

Every species learned their desires from others, insofar as others provided their niche.  “The Umwelt” is “the creature being in its niche”; a space that others created in their desire for – their pursuit of – the same “object”; “to live”.

Here we have “the object that brings all creatures into relation” in its wondrous simplicity.

Mimesis^{unconstrained} operates in our Lebenswelt after the Fall.

Just look at modern art.  Look at modern bureaucracy.  Look in your heart of hearts.  What do you see?

You see machinations that stand in the place of “something that once oriented our love of art, of our society, and of our very being”.

You see the machinations of mimesis^{unconstrained}.

Alberg claims to have an intuition for what that “something” was, or maybe, is.

He writes, “read the text with the spirit of forgiveness” and you will begin to see that “something”.

Forgive those who have forgotten.  Forgive those who have placed it under erasure.

Look closely at the consequences of the forgetting and the placing under erasure.

Look at the victims of the forgetting.  Look at the victims placed under erasure.

Look.

At first, you may be overwhelmed by the gross mechanics of forgetting and erasing, forgetting and erasing, veiling the “something” so effectively that it appears as “the empty space that once held the ‘object’ of desire”.

Such are the machinations of mimesis^{unconstrained}.

Mimesis^{unconstrained} operates like an automaton that has lost “the faith of the one who once believed in it”.  It retains an animating principle.  It strains to produce some product; to accomplish some goal.

All it knows is products and goals.  It produces monsters; beautiful, sublime monsters.  Like Nietzsche and Rousseau.

If “modern art” is “the object that occupies an empty space on a wall at the Museum of Art”, then, I suppose, there must be a reason for that empty space to be affiliated with “art”.  There must have been a “something” that once occupied that “empty space on the wall that orients the desires of art lovers”.

The “something” that “once occupied that empty space on the wall” has either been forgotten or placed under erasure, because not even the experts remember or acknowledge what that “something” was.

Similarly, if “Nothing” is “the object that that occupies the empty space in our heart of hearts”, then there must have been a “something” that once occupied “the empty space in our hearts of hearts”.

Similarly, the “something” that “once occupied the empty space in our heart of hearts” has either been forgotten or placed under erasure.

Perhaps, that forgetting and placing under erasure is scandalous.

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, anyone can superimpose ‘himself’ onto the point of transcendence, that is, onto the positive form of Nothing, even “a scoundrel on a rack” (49-52).  This parallels the way that a modernist “work”, by occupying an empty space on a wall in a “Museum of Art”, superimposes itself onto the placeholder for “art”, thereby becoming “art”.

Since any number of fools would sacrifice themselves for “art”, one cannot deny the necessity of experts; that is, of theoretical men (specially trained as to not appear to be co-opting the Platonic tradition), to ensure that the “objects” on display are never so evocative as to provoke impetuous action.

We cannot allow just anyone willy-nilly inadvertently superimposing ‘himself’ onto Nothing.  Only the anointed need apply.

Ironically, last blog described precisely how Girard depicts “conflictual mimesis”.  The rivalry itself becomes the “object that brings all into relation”.

Yet, from all appearances, the rivalry has no content.  The fight is over Nothing.

Thus, mimesis^constrained becomes mimesis^{unconstrained}.

But I am getting ahead of myself.