[ecrea] Scapegoats, violence, and mimetic theory - 21st International Summer School in Cultural Studies (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

      *SCAPEGOATS, VIOLENCE, AND MIMETIC THEORY*

*21^st INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL IN CULTURAL STUDIES*

*University of Jyväskylä, Finland, June 4−6, 2018*

*Society for Cultural Studies in Finland and the Research Centre for 
Contemporary Culture*

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*https://kultut.fi/summer-school/
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In the present times, the media landscape is loaded with representations 
of violence in which a group attacks another group or an individual. 
Also, venomous and inculpatory ways of speaking are common especially in 
social media such as Twitter. Understanding violence in a broad sense, 
the increase of hate speech and the strong presence of violence in the 
media as well as popular culture challenge interpretations of the 
decrease of violence in the present times. Rather, it could be proposed 
that the ways of violence have multiplied as it nowadays entails also 
various forms of verbal, indirect or latent as well as mediated forms of 
violence. Occasionally violence also seeps into practices that at first 
glance seem to be fighting against it.


Although the phenomena described above vary from direct violence to 
aggressive ways of commenting on it, a common factor can be pointed, 
i.e. scapegoat mechanism. Scapegoat mechanism occurs when a community or 
a group of people seeks release of its violent tensions by projecting 
them into a victim chosen from the margins of the community that the 
group believes to be the origin of its anguish. However, being innocent 
of the actual cause of the group’s hostile feelings, the victim is a 
surrogate victim i.e. a scapegoat. René Girard’s mimetic theory serves 
as a frame for studying scapegoat mechanism. According to Girard, 
violence touches everybody as it is the side effect of universally 
operating mimetic desire which leads to mimetic rivalry and violent 
tensions that seek their release through scapegoat mechanism, as well as 
sacrificial rituals, its mimetic siblings. As a tool for the regulation 
of violence, scapegoat mechanism is of course paradoxical as it operates 
through violence thus producing violence at the same time as it aims at 
preventing its escalation.

In the 21^st summer school of cultural studies the approach to the topic 
is multidisciplinary. The research may focus for example on a media 
text, online discussion, television series, or a literary work. 
Methodologically, various analytic tools may be applied such as 
discourse analysis, ethnography, narratology, and semiotics. Especially 
pivotal in Girard’s theory in this context are the questions connected 
to scapegoats and violence but perspectives focusing more generally on 
mimetic desire, violence, crisis, sacrifice, or religion are welcome as 
well. The topics to be explored include: scapegoats and media, 
scapegoats and politics, religion and scapegoats, mimesis of violence, 
mimetic desire and violence, gender and scapegoat mechanisms, and 
scapegoats and literature/art. Also, the core questions can be 
approached from other theoretical perspectives such as in the contexts 
of the work of Marcel Mauss, Maurice Halbwach, or Georges Bataille. Like 
Girard’s, their thinking can be traced back to the legacy of Émile Durkheim.


The summer school addresses the questions of scapegoats, violence, and 
mimetic theory through lectures and seminar presentations based on the 
latest research. Acknowledged experts serve as teachers, and they will 
deliver open lectures on the topic, and provide commentary on and 
feedback to the student papers presented. The Summer School is a 
three-day intensive period of supervising doctoral candidates and 
discussing research projects in a multidisciplinary group, within the 
joint framework of cultural studies in a broad sense of the term.


All papers will be commented upon and discussed by the distinguished 
summer school teachers:


*Tiina Arppe* is adjunct professor in Sociology specialized in French 
social theory. In her scientific publications, she has studied 
problematics related to the sacred, community, and affect in the work of 
Rousseau, Durkheim, Bataille, Baudrillard, and Girard. Her major works 
include /Pyhän jäännökset/ (Tutkijaliitto 1992), /Affectivity and the 
Social Bond/ (Ashgate 2014), and /Uskonto ja väkivalta. Durkheimin 
perilliset/ (2016). Currently, in a project funded by Kone Foundation, 
Arppe looks into the connections of economy and death in French social 
theory. Arppe has also translated French theory classics as well as for 
example Thorsten Veblen’s /The Leisure Class/ into Finnish.


*Hanna Mäkelä* is University Lecturer of Comparative Literature (fixed 
term) at the University of Helsinki where she took her PhD, which was 
co-supervised at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, in 2014. Her 
doctoral thesis, /Narrated Selves and Others: A Study of Mimetic Desire 
in Five Contemporary British and American Novels/, combines René 
Girard’s philosophical anthropology with the field of  narratology in 
order to demonstrate how Girard’s mimetic theory can be employed as a 
narrative poetics of its own in the context of more mainstream literary 
studies.


Mäkelä is currently working on a postdoctoral monograph on the subject 
of inner change in narrative film. She has published the following 
peer-reviewed articles:  “Horizontal Rivalry, Vertical Transcendence: 
Identity and Idolatry in Muriel Spark’s /The Prime of Miss Jean/ 
/Brodie/ and Donna Tartt’s /The Secret History/” (/The/ /Poetics of 
Transcendence/, Rodopi / Brill, 2015), “Player in the Dark: Mourning the 
Loss of the Moral Foundation of Art in Woody Allen’s /Match Point/” 
(/Turning Points. Concepts and Narratives of Change in Literature and 
Other Media, /de Gruyter, 2012) and “Imitators and Observers: Mimetic 
and Elegiac Character Relationships in Donna Tartt’s /The Secret 
History/ and Siri Hustvedt’s /What I Loved/” (/Genre and 
Interpretation/, 2010, the University of Helsinki Department of Finnish, 
Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies / The Finnish Graduate School of 
Literary Studies).

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*HOW TO APPLY*


Please send your application by*Monday, March 5, 2018* to


minna.m.nerg[at]jyu.fi


Or by post to


Kulttuurintutkimuksen seura
PL 35
40014 Jyväskylän yliopisto


Society for Cultural Studies in Finland
P.O. Box 35
FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä
Finland


Your application should include

 1. An abstract of 500 words, based on the paper you will be presenting.
 2. A short presentation of yourself and your research topic with its
    theoretical orientation, methods, and materials.

The applicants will be notified of the decision by *Friday, March 16.*


Deadline for papers is *Monday, May 21.* Length of the papers is 10–15 
pages. More information on them will be sent out later.


There is a participation fee of 100 euros per person. Fee covers 
coffee/tea and snacks during the seminar.


For more information e-mail minna.m.nerg[at]jyu.fi (or 
eeva.rohas[a]jyu.fi), phone +358 (0)50 599 8842, or visit http://kultut.fi.

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