Stretching Girard’s Hypothesis

What might those who follow the thought of René Girard have to offer to those currently excavating Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe in Turkey? The answer to this question will depend to a great extent on how followers of Girard’s thought, like myself and others in this collection, are able to match the generosity we have been shown by those involved in the discipline. I hope we can do something of this by making Girard’s hypothesis available to people working in the area, clarifying it (especially where notorious misapprehensions about it have arisen), filling out some of its many lacunae (for instance, in the eighty thousand or so years between the arrival of homo sapiens sapiens and the axial era, from which most of Girard’s evidence is derived), and showing that it does at least enable some intelligent questions to be asked of the sort which might lead those working at the “trowel’s edge” to look at elements of what they have seen in a different light.