Cult of Novelty, Cult of Deception
Can we return to a culture of external mediation?
This question should not be possible by the works of many so-called Girardian scholars, and yet it is because Girard explicitly states in the work “Innovation and Repetition” that we left the last phase of external mediation around 500 years ago:
From Girard’s work “Innovation and Repetition”:
“In the vulgar tongues, the need for the word appears only in the last phase of external mediation, which I roughly identify with the 16th and 17th centuries.”
and “External mediation gives way to a world in which, at least in principle, individuals and communities are free to adopt whichever models they prefer and, better still, no model at all.”
By these two quotes in this essay, it is clear that external mediation no longer exists in our world. And yet, works from Eric Gans, Johnathan Bi, Luke Burgis, Elias Carr and others say the exact opposite. Something has been lost, but what?
First, Girard has been lost. In the worst interpretation, these people may have betrayed their master in burying his message. In a slightly better but sad interpretation, Girard’s people were lost from Girard and the truth of his works by a simple misunderstanding.
Based on the message of “Innovation and Repetition,” I suspect it is the former. That then drives the question of why Girard didn’t correct the record?
He did. In later essays and interviews, Girard introduced clear statements about the difference between “rivalrous and non-rivalrous internal mediation”, which is the only type of mediation he considered present today.
Another clue in our mystery of the present is the way Girard handled many big questions regarding mimetic theory. He is recorded as explicitly telling a gathering of mimetic theory experts that despite the heavy implications of his theory, that it was important for the theory to grow on its own. From the book Girardians:
At some point in those early years when I was conversing with Girard, I expressed my worry about our slow membership growth. He replied with words to the effect that we shouldn’t have concerns about being “popular” and attracting people for the wrong reasons. His comment reflected his own journey with his “idea,” his concept of mimetic desire and its effects in the generative scapegoating mechanism, which was roundly attacked by many and put him in a minority position in the academic world, particularly when he began to reveal his Christian commitment in published works. If we had grown quickly in appealing to academic fashion we could have soon become entrapped in the mimetic predicaments and sacred violence that characterized the world about us.
I suspect that he means that for any major misunderstandings of his theory, he considered that time and the Holy Spirit would correct the record as long as the information was out there.
As the false theory of a present external mediation collapses, how does the world change? What are the implications of the nuances of external mediation versus rivalrous internal mediation vs non-rivalrous internal mediation?
This essay explores these questions. I am without some of my Girard books and notes at present, so I will update later with more references at a later point.
Defining Mediation
What is meant by mediation, external and internal?
The original definition is given in Girard’s first work from 1965 “Deceit, Desire and the Novel”, before the wider explanation of mimetic theory and interdividual psychology in what is commonly considered to be his magnum opus in “Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World”:
Romantic works are, therefore, grouped into two fundamental categories-but within these categories there can be an infinite number of secondary distinctions. We shall speak of external mediation when the distance is sufficient to eliminate any contact between the two spheres of possibilities of which the mediator and the subject occupy the respective centers. We shall speak of internal mediation when this same distance is sufficiently reduced to allow these two spheres to penetrate each other more or less profoundly.
I am not going to explain the basics of mimetic theory in this article, other than to say the core of the theory is that all humans imitate each other, and group and civilizational conflict can be explained by runaway escalations of dualing imitation by two parties who have each other as model or obstacle or both. Further, a sacrifice is a way to dispel the runaway escalation (at least for a time).
Mediation is a two-step process. Person A admires Person B and takes Person B as a model for behavior. Person B likes to drive fast cars. Therefore Person A acquires a desire to drive fast cars because the desire to be like Person B transits also to the desire to drive fast cars. The desire to drive fast cars is mediated by the channel of Person B.
Referring back to the quote from “Deceit, Desire and the Novel” then, external mediation occurs when the distance between the mediator and subject is such that there is NO contact between the two. Internal mediation is such when there is closeness enough that the Person A and Person B can affect each other.
If we connect back to the original quote about external mediation in “Innovation and Repetition”:
External mediation gives way to a world in which, at least in principle, individuals and communities are free to adopt whichever models they prefer and, better still, no model at all.
This is an extremely strange sentence. In external mediation, what does he mean “free to adopt”?
He clarifies this in reference to the extremes of Nietzsche: “This is how inconsistency has become the major intellectual virtue of the avant-garde. But the real credit for the tabula rasa school of innovation should go to Nietzsche, who was tired of repeating with everybody else that a great thinker should have no model. He went one better, as always, and refused to be a model — the mark of genius. This is still a sensation that is being piously repeated today. Nietzsche is our supreme model of model-repudiation, our revered guru of guru-renunciation.”
Cult of Novelty, Cult of Deception
Girard describes our era as a cult of novelty, and that the last phase of external mediation was almost 500 years ago.
This world we are in has endless models, never satisfying. Endless models. What if we swap the word model with idol? Is it an accident that Girard is highlighting “death of God” Nietzsche as the most extreme actor in the internal mediation only era? Is Girard referring to some kind of true capability of believing or acting in line with a true belief of an external God?
A clue is in this passage:
“To begin with, is there such a thing as ‘absolute innovation’? In the first phase, no doubt, imitation will be rigid and myopic. It will have the ritual quality of external mediation.”
Here he links “rigid and myopic” to external mediation.
A second clue, at the beginning of the work:
“A social and political component is present in all this fear of the new, but something else lies behind it, something religious that is more archaic and pagan than Christian. The negative view of innovation reflects what I call external mediation, a word in which the need for and the identity of all cultural models is taken for granted. This is so true that, in the Middle Ages, the concept of innovation is hardly needed. Its use is usually confined to technical discussions of heresy in Latin. In the vulgar tongues, the need for the word appears only in the last phase of external mediation, which I roughly identify with the 16th and 17th centuries.”
So with external mediation, the: “need for and the identity of all cultural models is taken for granted.”
Why would this be? What occurred during the 16th and 17th centuries that caused this transition? And why does he use the word “phase”?
Perhaps it is the Enlightenment and the emergence of enlightenment-era notions of rationality and the independent self (or demon dependent, following Descartes). What else could he be referring to?
Finally:
“The world of external mediation genuinely fears the loss of its transcendental models.”
Oh.
Let’s look at the wider paragraph of the previous quote about being free to adopt models:
“As I said before, the negative view of innovation is inseparable from a conception of the spiritual and intellectual life dominated by stable imitation. Being the source of eternal truth, of eternal beauty, of eternal goodness, the models should never change. Only when these transcendental models are toppled, can innovation acquire a positive meaning. External mediation gives way to a world in which, at least in principle, individuals and communities are free to adopt whichever models they prefer and, better still, no model at all.”
Now the picture is clear. Being the source of eternal truth, eternal beauty, eternal goodness, the models should never change… Girard is clearly talking of the one true eternal God. The only possible stable imitation is that of God because the only source of eternal truth IS the infinite God of Christianity.
In light of this, the following passage makes far more sense:
“As early as the beginning of the 19th century, innovation became the god that we are still worshipping today.”
Lowercase g! Nothing else needs to be stated.
And then, Girard discusses Bentham using the word “innovational”. Bentham is the inventor of the Panopticon.
And finally Girard claims:
“The new cult meant that a new scourge had descended upon the world — ‘stagnation.’”
Does Peter Thiel’s obsession with stagnation make a little more sense in light of this essay? Or does it become stranger? Why is Peter beating the drum of “stagnation” in his works if Girard, in his genius, clearly states that ‘stagnation’ is a scourge? Might Peter be propping up the specter rather than attempting to move us beyond it? Might Peter be incapable of moving us beyond it?
At best, from Girard in Hamlet’s Dull Revenge:
“after forty years of procrastination he has not yet found the courage to push that button.”
From Girard:
“Does this mean that concrete innovation is back? Before we become too hopeful, we must observe that mimesis returns to us in a parodic and derisive mode that is a far cry from the patient, pious and single-minded imitation of the past. The imitation that produced miracles of innovation was still obscurely related to the mimesis of religious ritual.”
To answer, we can reconnect this passage at the end with a passage at the beginning:
“The reformers see the Reformation not as innovation, but as a restoration of original Christianity. They profess to return to the authentic imitation of Christ, uncorrupted by Catholic innovation. Mutatis mutandis — the humanists feel just like Protestants.”
Is Girard, by outlining a history of the development of the cult of innovation, showing us the path to return to a prior era? Or, is he giving us a new lens on history to see a sacrificial cycle focused on novelty that has persisted even longer than just the Enlightenment, but perhaps under different names?
From Hamlet’s Dull Revenge:
“It is not Hamlet that is irrelevant, but the wall of conventions and ritualism with which we surround the play, in the name now of innovation rather than tradition. As more events, objects and attitudes around us proclaim the same message ever more loudly, in order not to hear that message, we must condemn more of our experience to insignificance and absurdity. With our most fashionable critics today we have reached the point where history makes no sense, art makes no sense, language and sense itself make no sense.”
I am excited to see Peter’s turns in his and Sam’s newer paper titled “Journey to the End of the World” after our meeting in February 2025 when I shared with him several of my new theses and projects including “Can Holy Quests stop Sacred Wars?”
I told Peter at our meeting that day that I thought “Innovation and Repetition” was Girard’s most important work. I told the same to Trevor Cribben Merrill almost exactly one year before, when I asked him “Can we return to a culture of external mediation?” He didn’t have an answer.
I also told Peter about my fuzzy antichrist thesis, and that Catastrophe of the Soul resolved an important problem of being the “antichrist accuser” that he was at risk of becoming with his current frame of talks and actions. And that, enabled by a literal dream, and bound by my understanding of Catastrophe of the Soul and my calling from Lord God, I had a duty to warn him and pray for him because the fate of his soul was (and still is) at stake.
All of our souls are still at stake, and it is only by Lord God’s grace that we will together find a way out of the doom-class problems that befall us.
I am realizing today, almost one year after the meeting with Peter and two years after the meeting with Trevor, that this statement, and both meetings, were even more important than I thought.
It will be interesting to now see how the wider Girard community responds to the need to shift the text of their books, removing references to any kind of present day external mediation, if they are truthfully referencing Girard and his work.
The Enlightenment and the cult of novelty is dead. Girard’s faith killed it.