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June 9, 2025

Mimetic Desire and Resentment as Barriers to Human Fraternity

Event Series: Rome, June 2025

Mimetic desire, as René Girard pointed out, fuels social resentment and conflict within and across societies, producing doppelgangers on all sides of political divides and accelerating the search for scapegoats. How does contemporary politics, with its rival resentments and opposing narratives, relentlessly reproduce the pathology of mimetic desire, and what are possible ways to escape its trap? Is the parable of the good Samaritan, frequently invoked by Pope Francis, a resource? 

Participants

Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra is a renowned Indian author, essayist, and literary critic with a global readership. Two of his prize-winning books, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia (2012) and Age of Anger: A History of the Present (2017), explore the history of colonialism and its enduring legacies in our contemporary global era. Mishra is also the author of two critically acclaimed novels: The Romantics (1999) and Run and Hide (2022). His columns and essays have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The London Review of Books, among other outlets. Mishra is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker whose international bestsellers include Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (1999). Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages and her essays have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Nation, and The New Yorker. In 2021 Klein was appointed as UBC Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia.

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