Mosaic Distinction and Mimetic Doubling: Monotheism through the lens of the Mimetic Theory of Rene Girard.
Anthony Ekpunobi, CM,
anthonyekpunobi@gmail.com
Doctoral Student, Theological Faculty, University of Ljubljana.
According to Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory, prohibitions are dictated by the violence of previous crisis, and they are fixed in place as a bulwark against similar outbursts. The primitive society understands the undeniable nature of violence and the substitution capable of diverting its attention in the surrogate victim. The Decalogue has the full status of a prohibition against violent outburst. Girard observed in I See Satan Fall Like Lightening that the Decalogue – from the third to the last- is devoted to prohibiting violence against one’s neighbor. The distinction between true and false in religion, Mosaic Distinction, because tradition ascribes it to Moses, does not present a prima facie prohibition informed by violence.
The discoveries of Sigmund Freud and James Henry Breasted of the coexistence of two types of monotheisms in the Old Testament scripture and a preexisting moral standards superior to the Decalogue in Egypt respectively, reveals a crisis of identity between Egypt and Israel. In Mimetic Doubling, rivals are entangled in such intensity as to mirror each other in the back and forth exchange of desire. The focus of this work is to expose the mimetic violence prohibited by the Mosaic Distinction and its resemblance with Girardian Mimetic Doubling.
Key words: mosaic distinction, mimetic doubling, suggestion-imitation, misrecognition, monotheism, mimetic desire.
Introduction: Mimetic Doubling
Mimesis is a human natural form of exchange. Rene Girard specified that mimetic desire is always a desire to be Another. (Girard, 1976:83). In I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, Girard writes that we do not each have our own desire, one really our own…. Truly to desire, we have recourse to people about us; we have to borrow their desires. (2001:15). The triangular nature of desire nullifies a linear movement of desire from subject to object-subject-desire, and establishes a mediated desire -model-obstacle. Mimetic desire opens a person to relationship through acquisition. Desire is relational. Relationship is the exchange of desires. Jean-Marie Oughourlian affirms that, every desire is born from a relationship; it emerges from within it. (Oughourlian, 2010: 19). Desire is born in an unconscious contact with another known as the model, as explained earlier. Thus, the unconscious imitation of the model’s desire through the object is the entire picture of human relation. Human desire is interdividual because we desire according to the other i.e. the model. The interdividual nature of mimesis presupposes that we are constituted by the other. (Girard, 2001:137n.2). In desiring like the other, the self is realized. Desiring according to the other often leads to conflict.
Rene Girard observed that the principal source of violence between human beings is mimetic rivalry, the rivalry resulting from imitation of a model who becomes a rival or of a rival who becomes a model. (Girard, 2001: 11). This is mimetic doubling; the rivals mirror each other in the mimetic process. Rivalry does not arise because of the fortuitous convergence of two desires on a single object; rather, the subject desires the object because the rival desires it. In desiring an object, the rival alerts the subject to the desirability of the object (Girard, 1979:145). The reason is that the subject desires being something- identity- he himself lacks and which some other person seems to possess. The subject thus looks to that person to inform him of what he should desire in order to acquire that being.
Girard articulates mimetic doubling thus;
We found earlier that mimetic rivalry tends toward reciprocity. The model is likely to be mimetically affected by the desire of his imitator. He becomes the imitator of his own imitator, just as the latter becomes the model of his own model. As this feedback process keeps reinforcing itself, each constitutes in the other’s path a more and more irritating obstacle and each tries to remove this obstacle more and more forcefully. Violence is thus generated. Violence is not originary; it is a by-product of mimetic rivalry. Violence is mimetic rivalry itself becoming violent as the antagonists who desire the same object keep thwarting each other and desiring the object all the more. Violence is supremely mimetic. (Girard, 1996: 11).
Wolfgang Palaver in René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, sieves out two characteristics of mimetic desire responsible for the Mimetic Doubling. Firstly, desire is characterized by an inner dynamic that is rooted in self-reflexivity. Secondly, mimetic desire is easily intensified by the resistance of the original model, who attempts to prevent the subject from acquiring the desired object after initial interest, has been displayed. (Palaver, 2013: 128). The identity crisis inherent in mimetic doubling rest on the above. According to Girard, “desire is always reflection on desire.” (Girard, 1978: 328). The reflexive character of desire means a back and forth movement between the subject and the model. The model can become a subject and a subject can become a model. Again, the model will always resist the mimesis of the subject, while the subject will insist on the mimesis of the model’s desire. The resistance by the model and the insistence of the subject both take the form of mimesis. It is violent resistance versus violent insistence. According to Palaver, the model’s resistance makes the original object—over which the struggle began—all but meaningless, as the conflict is now centered on the model’s violence. (Palaver, 2013: 129). Left only with violence, both become rivals mirroring each other, hence the mimetic doubling. The resistance of the model intensifies the desire of the subject while the insistence of the subject intensifies the resistance of the model. Both become contenders of the desire. For Robert Petkovsek, in his article, “Apocalyptic Thinking And Forgiveness In Girard’s Mimetic Theory”, he wrote that for the desire to be fulfilled, the other is not only a model but also a contender, whose interest in the same object awakens rivalry, duels, conflicts. (Petkovsek, 2016). According to Girard, identity can only be established in the hatred of the identical. (Girard, 2001: 22).
The “Interdividual Psychology” championed by Rene Girard, Jean-Marie Oughourlian and Guy Lefort in Things Hidden Since The Foundation Of The World- understand clearly the social relationship of mimetic desire; how one is related to the other in a universal mimesis. Interdividual Psychology builds on the reflexology of desire. The back and forth movement of desire through mimesis constitutes ‘the self.’ Palaver observed that in contrast to the romantic ideal of individual autonomy, Girard and Oughourlian argue that human beings are constituted first and foremost by their relations to others. (Palaver, 2013: 132). A relationship gives birth to desire. This relationship, writes Oughourlian, should not be seen as merely a relationship between two individuals, two subjects, but as a reciprocal movement of back and forth, carving out in each of its poles, by its very motion, an entity that can be designated as the “self”. (Oughourlian, 2010: 31). The real object of mimetic desire is the self. Girard agrees to this when he wrote in the Violence And The Sacred, ‘The reason is that he desires being, something he himself lacks and which some other person seems to possess’ (Girard, 1979: 146). According to Oughourlian, in The Mimetic Brain, ‘Mimetic desire, beyond the object, bears on the very being of the mediator, or model. The illusion consists in believing that it is the possession of such and such an object that gives the model this extra quotient of being that fascinates us and that we covet’. (Oughourlian 2016, 6).
Mosaic Distinction
The expression “Mosaic Distinction” is originally coined by Jan Assmann, a German Egyptologist, in his work Moses The Egyptian: The Memory Of Egypt In Western Monotheism. Mosaic distinction is understood as the distinction between true and false religion. It is ascribed to Moses based on the exodus story of the Old Testament scripture. According to him, “the distinction I am concerned with in this book is the distinction between true and false in religion that underlies more specific distinctions such as Jews and gentiles, Christians and pagans, Muslims and unbelievers. Once the distinction is drawn, there is no end of reentries or subdistinctions”. (Assmann, 1997: 1). Mosaic distinction represent a distinctly new religion, a break from the past. Both the story of the Exodus and the law code are symbolically expressive of the distinction. (Ibid: 4). The principal distinguishing factor is the inherent intolerance embedded in the law code – first and second commandments of the Decalogue that informs it. The law proscribes images as other gods, hence false gods. This distinction is unconnected with prior religions of the time. The mosaic distinction is a counter-religion due to its disconnect with primary religions of old. According to Assmann, it is a counter religion because it rejects and repudiates everything that went before and what is outside itself as “paganism”. (Ibid: 3). The distinction having been made, it stands for every kind of distinction between good and evil.
From the biblical story of Exodus from Egypt, mosaic distinction stand for the distinction between Israel and Egypt. Israel represents everything that is good – the Jews are the people of God, while Egypt represents everything profane – paganism. The geographical locations of these countries affirm the point of distinction. On the map of physical and political geography, Ancient Israel and Ancient Egypt were two neighboring countries in the eastern Mediterranean. (Ibid). The tale of the Egypt and Israel concerning monotheism is reflected in Manetho’s Aegyptiaca (History of Egypt) and Josephus Flavius’ Antiques Of The Jews, (93 or 94 A.D). We shall rely on W. G. Waddell’s English translation of Manetho (1940). According to John M.G. Barclay’s English translation and commentary on Josephus’ Against Apion, all history has on Manetho is taken from Josephus Flavius, and the Christian chronographers, Julius Africanus (d. 240 CE), Eusebuis (260 -340 CE) and Syncellus (ca. 800 CE). (Barclay, 2007: 335). Throughout this work we shall be cautious of Waddell’s warning that the works of Manetho was used for special purposes, e.g. by the Jews when they engaged in polemic against Egyptians in order to prove their extreme antiquity. (Waddell, 1940: ix). Manetho is an Egyptian priest who lived during the Ptolemaic era in the early 3rd century BC, while Flavius Josephus is a first century Romano-Jewish priest, scholar, and historian whose historical works are based on Jewish revolt. The historical investigations and some subtle discoveries of James Breasted and Sigmund Freud and his sympathizer, Jan Assmann, will help us to display the mimetic doubling between the Egyptians and the Jews of the exodus. We shall begin the historical exploration from Egypt, before and from where Israel was born.
History of Egyptian monotheism
James Henry Breasted’s, A History of Egypt, 1909, is a combination of the works of Manetho and Josephus. Breasted, an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian, confirmed in the Foreword to his work – The Dawn Of Conscience, 1933- of the existence in Egypt of a standard of morals superior to the Decalogue over a thousand years before it was written. (Breasted, 1933: xii). He traced the beginnings of Egyptian monotheism to Ikhnaton, a Pharaoh of the XVIII Dynasty originally known as Amenhotep IV – who initiated a strict monotheism. Sigmund Freud in Moses And Monotheism exposed a monotheism that is traceable beyond the borders of Judaism. His point of departure was a Moses, the political leader of the Jews, their lawgiver and educator, and the man who gave them a new religion called mosaic after him. (Freud, 1939: 31). Freud, like Breasted, linked Moses to Ikhnaton. According to Freud, it was a strict monotheism, the first of its kind in the history of the world- as far as we know- and religious intolerance, which was foreign to antiquity before this and for long after, was inevitably born with the belief in one God. (Freud, 1939: 35). This king undertook to force upon his subjects a new religion, one contrary to their ancient traditions and to all their familiar habits. (Ibid: 34). In his work, Freud embarks on a critic of monotheism especially on the reason behind anti-Semitism. He underscores the point that the struggle against the mosaic distinction could also assume the character of a fight against anti-Semitism. The most out-spoken destroyer of the mosaic distinction was a Jew: Sigmund Freud. (Assmann, 1997: 5). Thus from the outset, the stage is set for the historical saga between the Egypt and Israel.
Freud in his work on monotheism attempted a deconstruction of Mosaic Distinction through historical reduction of making Moses an Egyptian. The religious tradition behind the exodus story is for him a mere ‘cover for enveloping delusions, distortions and misinterpretations’, which psychoanalytical archeology is able to expose. (Assmann, 2006:10). The deconstruction of Freud is similar to Demystification of myths recommended by Rene Girard in order get to the truth of persecution they conceal. I shall limit my research on Freud’s discovery of two Moses’ – “Egyptian Moses” and “Midianite Moses”. (Assmann, 2009: 10). The Egyptian Moses is linked to Ikhnaton while the Midianite Moses is linked with the Sinaitic covenant.
The strict monotheism of Ikhnaton is the first of its kind in the history of Egypt. It is understood as what James K. Hoffmeier in his work Akhenaten And The Origins Of Monotheism, calls the favoring of a god in ancient Egyptian dynasty. (Hoffmeier, 2015: 67). It does not exclude the making of images of the gods. His religious revolution followed a gradual process from polytheism, to henotheism or monolatory (i.e. the worship of one god while not denying the existence of other deities), to monotheism (the exclusive belief in one God). (Ibid: 137). Ikhnaton replaced nuter (god) with Aton. Aton is understood from the heat, which is in the sun. According to Breasted, the new god likewise is called the “lord of the sun (Aton). (Ibid: 361). His monotheism was not new in the sense of a new god; rather it is the abolishment of other gods in favor of Aton, “the lord of the son”. According to Freud, he added something new that turned into monotheism the doctrine of a universal god; the quality of exclusiveness. (Freud, 1939: 37). The abolition of other gods and theirs feast was a disconnect from the social fabric of the Egyptian society hence the deep aversion for the Amarna period. The religious world view of ancient Egypt is such that;
The abolition of the feasts must have deprived the individual Egyptians of their sense of identity and, what is more, their hopes of immortality. For following the deities in their earthly feasts was held to be the first and most necessary step toward otherworldly beatitude. (Assmann, 1997: 26).
The seventeen-year reign of Ikhnaton, the Amarna period meant to the Egyptians the utmost degree of sacrilege, destruction, and horror. A time of divine absence, darkness, and disease. (Assmann, 1997: 26). His name did not feature in the list of pharaohs of the XVIII dynasty.
The monotheism of the Midianite Moses is characterized by a strict intolerance – the abolishment of images. For Freud, this is the Jewish religion as revealed in the Book of Exodus. It is a counter-religion according to Jan Assmann as mentioned above. The point of contention is to determine the reason for the break with the past in the Midianite Moses. What informed the abolition of images?
The plague: Identity Crisis.
Rene Girard writes about the plague motif in all myths. The plague motif illuminates but a single aspect: the collective character of the disaster, its universally contagious nature. (Girard, 1979: 77). The primitive society view contagion not from the point of view of microbiology, but of social status. For them, any change in individual status threatens to become universal. It is the nature of such changes to spread like a disease; the individual becomes the first victim and prime carrier of his own infection. (Ibid: 282). Reciprocal violence is contagious, like a plague, it could contaminate an entire community. It is the character of myth to conceal the persecution of the innocent, the ritual sacrifice of expulsion, which restored order in primitive society. The presence of plague in the exodus from Egypt, peaceful or not, is an indication according to the Mimetic Theory of an identity crisis. Freud rightly identified ‘Exodus from Egypt’ as the starting point of the investigation on the reason for Mosaic distinction. (Freud, 1939: 60). Rather than the psychoanalytic conclusion of repressed trauma drawn by Freud, I prefer the path of Interdividual Psychology, namely the self of desire as the real object of mimetic desire. The self is created in the heart of a relation. The back and forth movement of desire, the resistance and the insistence, constitutes the other, the self.
The Ikhnaton monotheism disrupted the social and cultural life of the Egyptians such that the deep-seated aversion for the Aton religion is as articulated by Orly Goldwasser in his article, “King Apophis Of Avaris And The Emergence Of Monotheism”, as the worship of “no god but one” (Goldwasser, 2006). It represents for them, a time of divine absence, darkness, and disease. Thus, the plague is about religious purity and defilement. Post Ikhnaton Egypt witnessed the development ‘…of devotional spirit and a consciousness of personal relationship with god’ discernible in Aton monotheism. (Breasted, 1933: 312). The infiltration is so deep that elements of intolerance brewed among the people. The Ikhnaton influence of personal relationship and devotion, somehow exclusive, shifting towards aniconism must be purged out of the entire religious system. It breeds a social status of intolerance and exclusion, hence a leprous infection. This confused state calls to mind immediately the Amarna experience, as the only paradigm of divine absence, darkness, and disease. The idea of disease and its purification gave rise to the story of the lepers. Among the historians, only Manetho painted the picture of Egyptian lepers. (Assmann, 1997: 43). This corresponds to the fact that what will later become the Jewish nation was still part of Egypt.
True representation of the god: object of desire
The contention was about the representation of the gods. The Ikhnaton monotheism professes ‘no god but one’, an intolerance within an Egyptian world view of material representation of ‘gods’, hence iconism. The inability to reflect this ‘no god but one’ within the iconic worldview is the crisis, the disease, the leprosy. Jan Assmann in Of God And Gods, expressed the inability to reflect ‘no god but one’ within the Egyptian religious worldview. Describing the Egyptian concept of power, he writes;
Power is the dependence of everything created on its creator. Creation generates dependence, which is power. The primacy of one god over all the other gods is grounded in creatorship, and the subordination of all the other gods under this one god is grounded in the dependency of the created on the creator. In other words, the primacy of the highest god lies in the fact the he himself was uncreated. (Assmann, 2008:61).
‘No god but one’ is evil because it prevents the worship to other gods who contribute to the social fabric of society. The gods are social beings, living and acting in “constellation”; a lonely god would be devoid of any power or personality and would have no impact on the great project of maintaining the world. (Ibid: 47). The impetus to purge out the infiltration of the ‘one god’ syndrome belongs to a legendary Egyptian oral tradition as the expulsion of the lepers from Egypt. Assmann claims that this oral tradition predates the Hebrew bible. (Assmann, 1997: 34). Manetho’s account speaks of ‘Egyptian outcasts’. (Ibid: 33). Further, Assmann notes that ‘in the Egyptian version, the “Jews” are shown as lepers, as impure people, atheists, misanthropes, iconoclasts, vandals, and sacrilegious criminals. And in the bible, the Hebrews are retained in Egypt against their will, and they are allowed to emigrate only after divine interventions in the form of plagues. (Ibid: 40).
Iconism and aniconism: mimetic doubling
Iconism and aniconism are mutually exclusive means of ensuring divine presence. (Assmann, 1997: 43). While at this point it is difficult to determine the identity of ‘no god but one’, it is perceivable that the self (no go but one) is an offshoot of a relationship. ‘No god but one’ is constituted by a coexistence of Ikhnaton monotheism and Egyptian polytheism. The tag leprosy is evident of ‘lack of identity’. As we have seen there is no category of understanding for ‘no god but one’. The difference constituted by ‘no god but one’ is terrifying. Rene Girard notes that culture is somehow eclipse when it becomes less differentiated. (Girard, 1989: 14). ‘No god but one constitutes a difference outside of the system of iconism. It is terrifying because it reveals the truth of the system, its relativity, its fragility, and its morality. (Ibid: 21). The only option is expulsion of the elements of confusion of identity. Iconism see in ‘no god but one’ what should not be, a mental aberration, while the opposite party see in iconism the proliferation of the one god. They mirror each other, not able to understand that both represent the two sides of the same coin. The self of desire in this case is ‘the true representation of god’.
“No god but one” as slavery
The exodus story tells of the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt prior to their expulsion. The inability to contend with the accusation of leprosy is a kind of slavery. The adherents of ‘no god but one’ must have had the trouble of self-expression and self-understanding as the mode of worship finds no category within Egyptian iconism. There is no single icon capable of representing the gods. And the gods cannot be merged in to one. They represent a people who deliberately prevent through their actions the presence of the gods in the society. Their impurity ward off the gods from the earth. The mental imprisonment and torture must have weighed down on them. They must have suffered various kinds of estrangements within the society. Such that the expulsion is welcomed as a freedom to self-identification and definition. They must have insisted on the monotheism that suits well their ‘personal relationship and devotion’. The expulsion left no choice than to define themselves in the familiar line of ‘no god but one’. Moreover, to differentiate from iconism, they had to abolish making of images since it has no mental category. The only point of similarity is iconism, unfortunately, iconism has no definition for ‘no god but one’. Jettisoning iconism and embracing aniconism is the only means of identification. Because identity is achieved in the hatred of the identical. Abolishing of icons and images will give way to a new category of understanding ‘no god but one’. Material representation of the one god has proved in effective, thus must be abolished. The immaterial representation of god marked the beginning of something new. The human mind is set on the path to conceive god without material representation. A sharp disconnect from all primary religion imbued with material representation, iconism or idolatry. Jan Assmann calls it a counter religion as we saw in the definition of Mosaic distinction.
Conclusion
The new nation thus constituted under the mosaic distinction seals itself with a sacred warrant in the Sinaitic covenant. Scott Appleby confirms in The Ambivalence of the Sacred, that Ethnicity serves not only to differentiate and classify peoples but also to evaluate them comparatively, lifting one’s group above others, frequently by invoking a “sacred” warrant. (Appleby, 2000: 60). They are the Jews, the chosen people of God. The Decalogue is the defining prohibitions. The first three prove the divine origin and religious ideology. The other, i.e. the self of desire resulting from Post Ikhnaton Egypt, constitutes Mosaic distinction. It is according to Interdividual Psychology, a mirror of the representation of god, the opposite side of iconism. The rest of the Decalogue bind them together, prohibiting all forms of internal, interdividual conflict resulting from the rivalries of desire. Rivalry is put in check by prohibiting all desires directed toward the neighbor.
References
Appleby, S. 2000. The Ambivalence Of The Sacred: Religion, Violence, And Reconciliation. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Pub, Inc.
Assmann, J. 1997. Moses The Egyptian: The Memory Of Egypt In Western Monotheism. London: Harvard University Press.
—————— 2008. Of God And Gods: Egypt, Israel, And The Rise Of Monotheism. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
—————– 2010. The Price Of Monotheism. Trans. Robert Savage. California: Stanford University Press.
Breasted, J. 1912. A History Of Egypt: From The Earliest Times To The Persian Conquest. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
————- 1933. The Dawn Of Conscience. London: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Freud, S. 1939. Moses And Monotheism. Trans. Katherine Jones. Great Britain: Hogarth Press And The Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
Girard, R. 1979. Violence And The Sacred. Trans. Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
———– 1987. Things Hidden Since The Foundation Of The World. Trans. Stephen Bann, Michael Metteer. California: Stanford University Press.
———– 1989. The Scapegoat. Trans. Yvonne Frecero. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
—————-2000. The Gerard Reader. Ed. James G. Williams. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company.
—————- 2001. I See Satan Fall Like Lightening. Trans. James G. Williams. New York: Orbis Books.
Goldwasser, O. 2006. “King Apophis of Avaris and the Emergence of Monotheism.” In: Timelines, ed. E. Czerny et al., vol. II, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 149/II, 129-133. Peeters: Leuven.
Hoffmeier, J. 2015. Akhenaten And The Origins Of Monotheism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Oughourlian, J. 2010. The Genesis Of Desire. Trans. Eugene Webb. Michigan: Michigan State University Press.
—————– 2016. The mimetic Brain. Trans. Revor Cribben Merrill. Michigan: Michigan State University Press.
Palaver, W. 2013. René Girard’s Mimetic Theory. Trans. Gabriel Borrud. Michigan: Michigan State University Press.
Petkovšek R. 2016. ‘Apocalyptic Thinking and Forgiveness in Girard’s Mimetic Theory’. In: Which Religion, What Ideology? The Religious Potentials for Peace and Violence. Eds. Janez Juhant and Bojan Žalec. Zurich: LIT Verlg.
Waddell, W. 1940. Manetho. London: Harvard University Press.
