I don’t think Girard fully explains how desire functions as
language. Not all desire is mimetic. Some desire originates in an attempt to be
imitated. If I want to be what we may call the alpha male, I may want to win
the mimetic war by achieving the alpha female whom everyone desires. Or I may
want to create desire in others by my desire for the woman not yet on anyone’s
radar, the woman whose eyes are nothing like the sun. In this case I create her
as an object of desire for others only after I have won her, my Helen. And this
speaks of a desire deeper than the desire that is manufactured by mimesis. It
is the desire that generates mimesis. My desire to be the king at the risk of
losing the object my my desire to Paris, at the risk of becoming the sacrifice.
