Roberto Farneti (University of Bolzano/Bozen and Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt)
On Twins and other Mimetic Clones: The Politics of Mimesis in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Benny Morris has used the metaphor of the “twins” to stress the symmetry of the polarization between Israelis and Palestinians. Discussing the nature of the terrorist wave leading to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Morris has stated that “the Muslim enemies of peace nurtured and activated their Israeli twins.” Elements of mimetic violence can be gleaned in the arch-conflict of our time, and many observers have stressed the striking, twin-like similarities between the rivals. Mimetic theory has challenged a number of conventional approaches to the nature and springs of human discord, arguing that conflicts often arise when the rivals notice distinctive similarities in the attitude and outlook of one other. And it is precisely when polarization and mimetic antagonism escalate that the rivals begin to perceive one another as one of a kind: in the words of the French anthropologist René Girard, “as the crisis grows more acute, the community members are transformed into ‘twins,’ matching images of violence. I would be tempted to say that they are each doubles of the other” (Girard, Violence and the Sacred: 79). The paper brings mimetic theory to bear on the Israeli/Palestinian war, and shows how a number of wars which are currently escalating worldwide are modeled around this arch-conflict. They display the same mimetic structure and replicate the same pattern of mutual hostility. It is, in fact, the East-West cleavage that the Israeli/Palestinian arch-conflict and the ensuing new wars are eventually widening; it is, in other words—and to paraphrase Morris—the Eastern enemies of peace which activate their Western twins (and the other way around). The war between Israelis and Palestinians is presented as a case in point of a more general pattern: the “tragic struggle of the doubles” mentioned by Girard in his last book Achever Clausewitz.
Roberto Farneti is Assistant Professor of Politics at the School of Economics and Management of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano. A political theorist specializing in Comparative Politics, Political Theory, and the History of Political Thought, Roberto has had visiting research and teaching posts at the University of California, Los Angeles (2003-5), Columbia University (2003), Oxford University (2000), and Brown University (2000). He has published extensively on Thomas Hobbes (in English, in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly and in the Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, ed. P. Springborg, Cambridge University Press). His work has appeared (or will soon appear) in peer-refereed journals such as History of Political Thought (2006 and 2007), Critical Inquiry (2006), Polity (2009), Theory & Event (2008), Philosophy & Social Criticism (2006, 2008, and 2009), The Review of Politics (2009), Philosophia (2009), Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2005 and 2010), and Theoria (2008). He is the author of the book Il canone moderno: Filosofia politica e genealogia (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002) which received a special nomination in the 2003 National Awards for Philosophy. He is currently working on two book-length projects entitled respectively Reframing Political Theory and A Natural History of Europe.
Roberto Farneti is Assistant Professor of Politics at the School of Economics and Management of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano. A political theorist specializing in Comparative Politics, Political Theory, and the History of Political Thought, Roberto has had visiting research and teaching posts at the University of California, Los Angeles (2003-5), Columbia University (2003), Oxford University (2000), and Brown University (2000). He has published extensively on Thomas Hobbes (in English, in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly and in the Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, ed. P. Springborg, Cambridge University Press). His work has appeared (or will soon appear) in peer-refereed journals such as History of Political Thought (2006 and 2007), Critical Inquiry (2006), Polity (2009), Theory & Event (2008), Philosophy & Social Criticism (2006, 2008, and 2009), The Review of Politics (2009), Philosophia (2009), Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2005 and 2010), and Theoria (2008). He is the author of the book Il canone moderno: Filosofia politica e genealogia (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002) which received a special nomination in the 2003 National Awards for Philosophy. He is currently working on two book-length projects entitled respectively Reframing Political Theory and A Natural History of Europe.
Roberto will be occasionally on leave this year as he is the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at the Institut für Politikwissenschaft of the J.W. Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main.
