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Anthropologist of violence and religion René Girard, of the French Academy, found in Clausewitz, a benchmark for military strategy, striking similarities with his theses. In his book “Achever Clausewitz” (Carnets nord), he delivers a gloomy analysis: “There is no more intelligent policy, We’re near the end.”
The Point: You’ve found in the works of Clausewitz surprising resonances with yours. Just as his thought is inextricably linked, if not to direct experience, at least in the concrete observation of the Napoleonic wars, were you influenced by the Second World War, which occurred while you were young?
René Girard: It is undeniable. My awareness of events, history, politics, is grew with the totalitarian threat. Born in late 1923, so I had 10 years on arrival in power of Hitler. A child could very well understand that the rise of Hitlerism meant that France was threatened with invasion. My father was very insightful, and was a great reader of the press; a French Radical-Socialist, not an activist [like Paul Doumer T.N.], but an intellectual who was interested in events, exactly what I am now myself. He immediately saw that we witnessed a return of Germany and also that it was impossible to do it again, we would not remake Verdun. Later, he realized, even before the fall of 1941 that it started to go badly for the Germans and that Moscow and Leningrad would perhaps hold out.
Would you say that, although contemporary events, you were aware of the history that you lived?
Obviously! I remember well the militarization of the Rhineland in 1935. If the French had entered Germany, they could have changed the course of events: the Germans were unable to oppose any resistance. But Albert Sarraut [Chairman] and the French government would have been taken for bastards wanting to keep the world from returning back to normal. They were not strong enough mentally to keep going. Subsequently, there has been much criticizing for Sarraut passivity. But it was an impossible situation. Anyway, I kept from this episode the certainty that we were “trapped like rats”, to quote the motto of Celine in “Journey to the End of the Night.”
Have you been, then, directly affected by the Occupation?
As long as I stayed in Avignon, she remained quite bearable. I went in khagne [preparation to university] in Lyon, where my brother was studying medicine. Belonging to a fallen middle class family, I suffered from my social inferiority as compared to my classmates from good families in Lyon. After one week, I’ve had enough and I’m back. I must say that I had already passed my exams by taking courses by correspondence because, as I was rowdy as hell, I had been expelled from the high school. So I prepared at home the Ecole des Chartes [19, rue de la Sorbonne – Quartier Latin T.N.], like my father. I was received in 1942 and I found myself in Paris at a hotel warmed a quarter of an hour a day. Fortunately, after a year, friends brought me to 104 Rue de Vaugirard, this institution run by the Marist Brothers*, where has lived François Mitterrand. Thanks to my clandestine radio station, I was the first to announce the landing of August 6, 1944.
In any case, the issue of violence is central to your work and your theory of mimetic desire. But until then, you’re interested more in myths and literature that in strategy. What brought you to Clausewitz?
Anecdotally, I discovered it in English in an annotated edition by a pilot of the U.S. Air Force. And correspondence with my work caught my eye. Here is a thinker of the nineteenth century that did not have the reputation of being a literary, even if I found it quite a writer. Clausewitz, that’s serious! It smells of sulfur, besides the Germans do not want to hear about it. I would say he has a kind of black prestige. But my theory of mimetic desire has been much criticized to be based solely on literature, which was a way to discredit it.
Whatever the times, literature has something to do with the truth. This is the meaning of the expression of Aragon, the “true lying”. And it is also the thesis of your “Deceit, Desire and the Novel”: Self and Other in Literary Structure”, which in the 60s provoked controversy …
For me, literature is much stronger than the 60’s human sciences, which have totally disappeared. And, basically, the work of Clausewitz is a military romantic lie. In his first chapter, he suggests, without saying so explicitly, that the war has not ceased since the beginning of History, so that human history is that of an inevitable “rise to the extreme”, the reciprocity engendering always more revenge. But he hastens to hide the terrifying aspect of his theory to say that absolute war never happens. In fact, Clausewitz secretly fears a return to the “guerre en dentelle” after Napoleon is dead. He dedicated to Napoleon a fierce hatred and prodigious love: there are hardly better example of mimicry.
He foresaw what we call total war, which is more than a conflict between armies but between whole societies …
Yes, absolute war involves the infinite mobilization infinite Peter Sloterdijk very well analyzed. In his reading of Clausewitz, Raymond Aron tried to rescue political science. Everyone knows the phrase “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Indeed, for him, war and politics are equivalent. This means that the politics does not exist.
For you, the “mimetic rivalry” is the engine of history. What makes you think he gets carried away now?
The world wars were a milestone in the rise to extremes. On September 11, 2001 was the beginning of a new phase. Terrorism today have still to be to thought of. We still does not understand what is a terrorist willing to die to kill Americans, Israelis or Iraqis. The novelty in relation to Western heroism is that it is imposing suffering and death, if required by the suffering itself. The Americans made the mistake of “declaring war” on Al-Qaeda when we do not even know if al-Qaeda exists. The era of wars is over: now, war is everywhere. We have entered an era of transition to universal passage à l’acte. There is no more intelligent policy. We’re near the end.
The Apocalypse is for tomorrow?
Of course not, but in today’s world, many things match with the climate apocalyptic great texts of the New Testament, especially Matthew and Mark. There is reference to the main phenomenon of mimicry, which is the struggle between doubles: city against city, province against province… It is always doubles that are fighting and their fight makes no sense since because it is the same thing on the two sides. In these circumstances I see no more important task than to constantly remind the realism of the Revelation and Apocalyptic texts. But even the Church does not refer to it again. When I was a kid, the sundays after Pentecost Sunday were apocalyptic, and we talked about that in the sermons. We has ceased to preach about it in 1946 after the bomb, it became too hot.
But then, has mankind any option or is it already too late?
We are threatened with death. The Judeo-Christian message is that if we do not reconcile, there is no more sacrificial victims to save our skin. The offer of the kingdom of God is: reconciliation or nothing. Unfortunately, we are doing the second choice by idleness and ignorance. The only solution is to reject all violence, all retaliation. I am not at all sure of being able of doing that, but the Gospels tell us that this is the only way. The tragedy is that one always chooses the short term. We’re all in the position of Louis XV: “Apres moi, le deluge.”
By Élisabeth Lévy
*A Catholic religious order of Brothers whose primary work is the Christian Education of the young, especially the most neglected
