Los Angeles Review of Books
Los Angeles Review of Books
Section titled “Los Angeles Review of Books”
Metadata
Section titled “Metadata”- Author: Chris Fleming
- Full Title: Los Angeles Review of Books
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-last-of-the-hedgehogs/
Highlights
Section titled “Highlights”- One of Girard’s notable theses runs contrary to the mainstream in social theory, with its view that human conflict is the result of our incapacity to cope with difference. Girard’s contention is that the opposite is often true — it is not difference but sameness that engenders conflict.
- There is surely little that is more insulting than seeing ourselves as indistinguishable from our adversaries.
- As Adam Phillips once said about psychoanalysis: “like all essentialist theories,” it “makes a cult out of what could be just good company.”