René Girard and Giorgio Agamben: Convergent and Divergent Political and Theological Prospects

Unfortunately, categorical violence (violence wrought against a scapegoat minority, like ethnic cleansing and genocide) is a perpetual human problem. Although many thinkers concerned themselves with the issue of categorical violence, I would like to discuss René Girard (1923–2015) and Giorgio Agamben (born in 1942), two contemporary thinkers who present intriguing perspectives on categorical violence. Rather than viewing violence as an external element of societal life, they discuss the societal function of categorical violence while situating a sacred victim at the heart of their theories. Girard and Agamben are an unlikely pairing. Girard is renowned for his socio-anthropological mimetic theory, while Agamben is known for his political philosophy. However, despite these different perspectives, Girard's mimetic theory and Agamben's political philosophy share some intriguing similarities. For example, both thinkers employ an archaeological (anthropogenetic) methodology and situate their thoughts against the background of Judeo-Christian concepts such as messianism, revelation, and apocalypse...