Abstract

The mimetic theory forged by René Girard is completely closed by its own violence. Given that human violence was contained for centuries, by the victimary mechanism, its deconstruction by the Cross has unleashed a complete and total violence, leading us to the possibility of a real Apocalypse. We show here that this closure is based on a metaphysical view of desire, guiding us from the objet to the being of the model. Since Girard is always confined into metaphysics by his constant use of the paradigm of the image, the presence and, consequently, the idol, we demonstrate that there is still a way out of violence, the same way that is today the way out of metaphysics. With Jean-Luc Marion and his phenomenology of givenness, we oppose the paradigm of the icon to the one of the idol, and therefore the model of the sign to the one of the image. We demonstrate then that global mimetic violence can be stopped if we no longer desire objects and start desiring saturated phenomena, which implies a complete shift in the way we think and receive phenomena.