Mimetic Desire and Masochism in Dostoevsky’s Humiliated and Insulted

Abstract

This article proposes an approach to the novel Humiliated and Insulted by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), published in 1861, in light of the Mimetic Theory systematized by René Girard (1923–2015). Starting with a brief consideration of the role of literary works (especially “novelistic” ones, in the Girardian sense of the term) within the scope of Mimetic Theory, the aim is to show how the work of the Russian author occupies a central place in the initial formulation of this theory of human desire, especially in the early studies produced by the French thinker, namely the works Deceit, Desire and the Novel and Dostoyevsky: From the Double to the Unity, published in 1961 and 1963, respectively, which outline the fundamental concepts of the said theory. Beginning with an exposition of this central role played by Dostoevsky’s literature in René Girard’s thought, this paper proposes an examination of the dynamics of the mediations of desire among the main characters in the aforementioned novel as exemplary manifestations of mimetic desire. To this goal, it presents an overview of the functioning of desire according to Mimetic Theory, with emphasis on the concepts of mediator/model, internal mediation, and metaphysical desire, and finally discusses Girard’s notion of masochism, highlighting its specificity in relation to the traditional psychoanalytic approach. Lastly, it establishes a brief comparison between the formulations proposed by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) in his 1924 study entitled “The economic.