The Sacred and the Political: Explorations on Mimesis, Violence and Religion

Description

What is the relationship between the sacred and the political, transcendence and immanence, religion and violence? And how has this complex relation affected the history of Western political reason? In this volume an international group of scholars explore these questions in light of mimetic theory as formulated by Rene Girard (1923-2015), one of the most original thinkers of our time. From Aristotle and his idea of tragedy, passing through Machiavelli and political modernity, up to contemporary biopolitics, this work provides an indispensable guide to those who want to assess the thorny interconnections of sacrality and politics in Western political thought and follow an unexplored yet critical path from ancient Greece to our post-secular condition. While looking at the past, this volume also seeks to illuminate the future relevance of the sacred/secular divide in the so-called 'age of globalization'.

Elisabetta Brighi is a Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Studies, POLIS, University of Cambridge, UK. She is the author of Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics and International Relations (2013) and Pragmatism in International Relations (2009), co-edited with Harry Bauer. Antonio Ceralla is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. His recent publications include: 'Religion and political form: Carl Schmitt's genealogy of politics as critique of Jurgen Habermas's postsecular discourse', Review of International Studies; 'Terrorismo: Storia e Analisi di un concetto' (2009); 'Forme della violenza nel sistema contemporaneo' (2010). He is currently co-editing and contributing to the Special Issue of the Journal of International Political Theory on 'Mimetic Theory and International Studies'.

Why is politics so closely tied to death and destruction, and why is religion so often the midwife of sacrifice and ritual murder? This book addresses these questions, relying chiefly on the insights of Rene Girard's mimetic theory, Carl Schmitt's reflections on sovereignty, and Giorgio Agamben's notion of "homo sacer". Bringing together a remarkable collection of essays written by leading experts, the book ends appropriately with a chapter devoted to the present time defined as "mimetic post-modernity or "the age of panic". * Fred R. Dallmayr, Emeritus Packey J. Dee Professor of Political Theory, University of Notre Dame, USA * It is a rare event for such a startling and original collection of essays to appear. Drawing in various ways on Rene Girard's profound meditations on the deeper well-springs of our civilisation, this book reflects not just the work of a man but also the world that he represented and created. The European imagination has always been torn between the sacred and the profane, between the profundity of sacrifice and the violence of victimhood. This is reflected in modern forms of political sovereignty, which imbues both the body and the body politic with a dynamic of repressed and expressed violence, the management of which is the essence of contemporary statecraft. This brilliant collection of articles represent a profound meditation on fundamental questions of our times and therefore illuminates the enduring amalgam of the sacred and the political in all times. * Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics, University of Kent, UK * ...The Sacred and the Political is an excellent and timely collection, putting Girard's mimetic theory into dialogue with some of the most prominent Western political philosophers, ancient and contemporary. The value of this volume is that it fills a gap in Girardian scholarship by further developing Girard's theory in politically relevant ways. * Reading Religion *