René Girard and the Animation of Dry Bones
An invitation to a live event in DC on March 25
Before I start, an invitation: The Cluny Project is presenting a trialogue between Father
, , and me on March 25 in Heritage Hall at the Catholic University of America from 7-9pm, with a reception to follow the conversation. Father Carr will give a brief talk about his book, followed by a 3-way conversation featuring Michael Miller (who has some major skepticism about Girard, which should be interesting!), then we’ll conclude with fellowship over beverages and light food. This event is free and open to the public. There are still spots left. If you’re interested in joining us, please register here.On a separate note, you can learn more about the METANOIA conference, which I’ll also be hosting May 7-8 in the same location, by clicking here. I’m now happy to announce that a few of the speakers will include David Bentley Hart, L.M. Sacasas (
), and Yale professor Noreen Khawaja.As any longtime reader knows by now, I think that conferences are essentially broken. They are like a 90’s sitcom that has been running for 15 years. We gently giggle at a few moments when the laugh track plays, but for the most part we use them to comfort ourselves. After all, they’re all the same. We know all the characters. Their behavior and jokes are predictable, like a conversation between George and Jerry. There is a keynote, there are ‘panels’ where a few people sit in chairs while a moderator rotates questions among them. There are lanyards. There are lunches with bags of cookies, chips, and bad sandwiches. Talking heads and one-liners while 99% of the attendees sit in chairs and are passive recipients of things they’ve probably heard most of these people say or write about before. Little seems generative to me, except the occasional sidebar conversation if you even have time to have one. Nobody dares to imagine, because the familiar is easy.
I’m working to make these events different, and will continue to experiment until we’ve got it right. We’ll be taking some risks at Metanoia, and continue to push the boundaries as we grow. (Cluny’s recent event, SILENCE, in lower Manhattan, was literally 6 hours of silence on a snowy day in January—that’s it, that’s the whole event.) We’re just going to do things.
René Girard’s greatest works came in the form of 3-way conversations. They are not normal books. His magnum opus, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, is essentially one long Q&A. One of my favorite works, The One by Whom Scandal Comes, is a long interview of Girard by Maria Stella Barberi. Michael Treguer has an antagonistic conversation with Girard that formed the basis of the book When These Things Begin. His book Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture, is a Q&A. And his last book, Battling to the End, is also in conversational format. Girard was “doggedly dialogic,” according to Sandor Goodhart.1 It’s how he operated. What can we learn from that?
The difference between Girard’s conversations and a panel at a conference is like the difference between a live fire and a pre-recorded fireplace video—one generates real heat and unpredictability, while the other just gives the illusion of warmth.
Girard’s dialogues were dynamic, unscripted encounters where ideas clashed and evolved in real-time, whereas most panels are rehearsed performances where participants take turns delivering polished soundbites with little genuine engagement.
Cynthia Haven, in her book Conversations with René Girard—a work entirely dedicated to the conversations that Girard had, paying homage to his dialogical style—explains why the format was so important. It says something about Girard’s approach to truth itself. Girard “had a sense of discovery,” said his former student and future collaborator Sandor Goodhart. “He likes working with people on things. He always spoke in terms of ‘us’, ‘our’, project. What ‘we’re’ doing.” Haven writes:
“Literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin described why that might be so: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction.” And while that interaction can take place between the living and dead, or in poems exchanged between long-distance lovers, or in cybersphere, it is uniquely effective between people conversing face to face. Socrates knew this: he brought people into conflict, and considered himself the ‘midwife’ of the truth that was born that way. To answer any of the big questions in life, and many of the smaller ones, we need to collaborate and work together. Dialogical format liberates thinking and takes it out of the straitjacket, according to Stanford Professor Robert Pogue Harrison…”
I believe that Girard was on to something when he chose to work in the format that he did, and I’m willing to bet on it as one way to get us unstuck from the Groundhog Day of discourse.
I hope to see you in DC.
—Luke
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” —the ‘About’ page of the
Cynthia Haven, Conversations with René Girard; Prophet of Envy