Dueling to the End/Ending “The Duel”: Girard avec Conrad
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Joseph Conrad’s “The Duel” (1908) is a short story that is usually read as a “historical fiction” concerned with the violence that animated the Napoleonic Wars. But if this tale looks back to past, total wars, it also looks ahead to more contemporary, global wars. In fact, Conrad’s dissection of the intersubjective dynamic of the “duel” via the trope of the homo duplex outlines mimetic principles concerning the “escalation of violence” that resonate strikingly with René Girard’s Battling to the End (2010). I argue that Conrad’s mimetic diagnostic of the mimetic logic of war cuts both ways. On the one hand, Conrad’s dramatization of the Doppelgänger allows him to focus on the unconscious, mirroring pathos responsible for the “escalation to extremes” in abstract war. On the other hand, Conrad suggests that mimesis opens up a way out from the logic of violent escalation outlining what Clausewitz calls a “short-cut to peace.” If Conrad agrees with Girard that violence is mimetic and, at least in theory, has the potential to lead to pathological duels to the end, he also considers the patho-logy that, in practice, is potentially responsible for ending the duel. If Conrad agrees with Girard that violence is mimetic and, at least in theory, has the potential to lead to pathological duels to the end, he also considers the patho-logy that, in practice, is potentially responsible for ending the duel. Reading “The Duel” in the company of both Clausewitz and Girard allows us to articulate the double sides of mimesis, understood both as an infective pathology and as a logical account of mimetic pathos.
Author: Nidesh Lawtoo
Institution: Johns Hopkins University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W636783182