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These two articles deal with the work of the French literary critic, René Girard,
whose theories have been developed in his books, Violence and the Sacred (1972) and On Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World (1978). Diatkine provides an excellent summary of Girard's main these, with which readers may already be familiar. His theory of mimetic desire would place identification in the role of the primary motivational principle of life. Girard links such desire, which takes another as a model, with violence, since there is an implicit rivalry. Religion, ritual, and the scapegoat are various means society has utilized to control the violence inherent in mimetic desire. According to his theory, sexual love is an accessory consequence of identification. Diatkine is impressed with the analyses of myth and tragedy which Girard offers, once the myth or tragedy has been "processed" through Girard's point of view. However, he suspects that Hellenists and students of mythology probably find as many objections to Girard as analysts would when dealing with Girard's analysis of the familiar Freudian texts. He concludes that Girard offers original and productive ideas but turns them into a sterile dogma. Kofman's article is an extract from her forthcoming book on the woman in the texts of Freud. She cites a passage in the article, "An Introduction to Narcissism," in which Freud commented at length on the narcissism of women and the attraction it has for men. This unassailable libidinal position of the woman is comparable to animals of prey, to cats, to the great criminal as presented in literature, and to the humorist. All these have one thing in common: they attract men and are envied by them for having safeguarded their narcissism and their independence. Kofman finds this passage rather atypical for Freud, who was wont to reduce feminine psychology to penis envy. She regards this text of Freud's as rather Nietzschean and wonders whether this is an influen