Rene Girard, Law, Literature, and Cinema

Eric M. Wilson studied early modern European history at Cambridge University under the direction of Robert W. Scribner, earning his Ph.D. in 1991. From 2000 to 2018, he served as Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, conducting extensive research and publishing on Hugo Grotius. In 2008, he was awarded the degree of S.J.D. from the Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne. Currently, he works as an independent scholar and researcher, with his primary areas of focus being radical criminology, phenomenology, literary studies, and law and literature. His work is highly interdisciplinary and strongly rooted in theory. Wilson has authored a series of works exploring the relationships among national security agencies, organized crime, and paramilitary organizations.

• Rene Girard, Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, and the goat song of Tragoidia.- ‘El sueno de la razon produce monstruos’ or, ‘the dream of reason creates monsters’: Two little piggies went to the Apocalypse in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.- ‘Does anybody know anything about the law?’: White male grown-ups in the wilderness and their regression to the state of nature in James Dickey’s Deliverance.- ‘A little law and order wouldn’t hurt anybody around here’: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and High Noon.- ‘A woman only loves a real man’: Metaphysical desire and the crisis of undifferentiation in Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Rashomon.- ‘I just want to talk…’: Liberalism, generative unanimity, and post-sacrificial scapegoating in 12 Angry Men.- ‘You must always point...’: The Post-Heroic Lawyer as scapegoat and scapegoater in Presumed Innocent, The Verdict, and Cape Fear.- The telling of lies and the casting of lots: Franz Kafka’s The Trial and the eternal un-decidability of the scapegoat.- ‘…Why do we, all of us, have to keep judging and being judged?’: The scapegoat and the scapegoater in Albert Camus’ The Stranger and The Fall.- ‘Out There’: Monstrous doubles and the folie a deux in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.- The Good Murderer Gary Gilmore: The re-sacralization of the scapegoat in the age of public reason.- Spare a Thought for the Hangman: The apocalypse of Rene Girard.