This session explores the enduring influence of mimetic theory in interpreting both interpersonal conflict and contemporary literature. The first paper engages Stephen Karpman’s “Drama Triangle” alongside René Girard’s theories of desire and opposition, showing how the recurring roles of Persecutor, Victim, and Rescuer in conflict mirror cinematic portrayals of heroism and villainy. By placing Girard in dialogue with conflict psychology and film, the paper suggests that Christian nonviolence offers a counter-narrative to the moral scripts of popular media. The second paper turns to the fiction of Michel Houellebecq, whose novel Submission critiques and yet unwittingly enacts key Girardian insights. Though Houellebecq's narrator dismisses mimetic theory, his fiction reveals characters caught in webs of triangular desire, grappling with the consequences of secularization and political fatigue. Together, these papers offer fresh perspectives on how mimetic patterns shape both our cultural imagination and our understanding of conflict, desire, and ethical possibility.
Psychologist Stephen Karpman argued that people in interpersonal conflicts tend to perform roles: the Persecutor, the Victim, and the Rescuer. This threefold framework structures interactions and simplifies the conflict, often making conflict resolution more difficult. Karpman modeled this "Drama Triangle" on cinematic and theatrical roles, and we can see the resonances between real-world conflict behavior and the depictions of heroes, villains, and innocent would-be victims in popular media. Writing concurrently with Karpman, René Girard made a similar argument about how would-be heroes and villains are locked in relationships of opposition and dependence. This way of framing conflict pervades popular film, and by putting Girard, film studies, and conflict psychology into conversation, we get a clearer picture on the power that the hero-villain-victim picture has over our moral imaginations. The tradition of Christian nonviolence offers a non-heroic approach to ethics in situations of conflict.
This paper treats Girardian themes in the fiction of the French novelist, Michel Houellebecq, considered one of the leading voices in contemporary European fiction. Unlike Jean-Paul Sartre, who famously declared "Hell is other people," for Houellebecq hell seems to be the individual left to his (almost always his for Houellebecq) own devices.
Long a curiosity to Girardians, Houellbecq's most recent novel, Submission, takes up the claims of Girard, especially regarding mimetic or triangular desire, and rejects them wholesale: "Amusing on paper, the theory is in fact false." (p. 335). This paper argues that Houellebecq's portrayal of mediated desire in the main character, Paul Raison, contradicts the narrator's own claims. In addition, it highlights how Houellebecq's insights, while not exactly "novelistic" in the Girardian sense, incarnate several central themes in mimetic theory. These include his understanding of politics, the limits of secularization, and the history of French literature.