Evolution of Desire

Evolution of Desire: A Life of Rene Girard by Cynthia L Haven, 279 pages

More than a biography, Evolution of Desire is Cynthia Haven's argument that Rene Girard deserves to be regarded as one of the most original and powerful intellectual figures of the twentieth century.  In her account of the development of his signature ideas concerning mimetic desire and the scapegoating mechanism, she demonstrates that these theories - despite what he himself might sometimes have implied - arose from personal experience as well as literary, anthropological, and philosophical investigations.  In turn, she exhibits how these ideas were not purely intellectual concepts, but shaped Girard's own life and behavior - most mysteriously, the religious conversion that accompanied and enriched them.

The story she tells is, however, one without great drama.  One of the points of interest is its portrait of a distinctly French intellectual who spent his entire academic career in American universities, and its exploration of Girard's role (for better or worse) in popularizing French critical theories in the US, but this also insulated Girard from the hottest debates surrounding his work, which took place in his native land.  Compensating for this somewhat, the book is also deeply personal - Haven repeatedly reminds us that Girard never understood mimesis as a purely negative mechanism, and it is clear that her friendship with him shaped her own life in ways both obvious and subtle.