12 June 2009: "AltBro Baptism"

This post is about mimetic desire. Carles recounts a fable about aspirants for the same cache of social capital, fighting each other to occupy the same rung of the youth culture ladder.

We felt threatened by one another–not sure why. Maybe it was because we would ‘have crushes’ on the same girls. Maybe it was because we had a similar fashion sense. Maybe it was because we had the same fave band–Animal Collective. Maybe I felt threatened by the new bro in town because he was kinda like a mirror, held up to my face, and the things I didn’t like about him were the things I didn’t like about me.

Desire is always mimetic -- the model other shapes the desires that then seem to the subject to have preceded the encounter with the other. Of course the ensuing antipathy masks a deeper desire not merely to emulate but to possess the other, to merge with the other in a homosocial apotheosis. The consummation of relations would need expression as a purifying ritual if not as the sexual act: "Maybe we could help one another become better bros.... Maybe he was just like me–and that’s not a bad thing." Hence the evocation of baptism, inspired by the humorous photo Carles has chosen for this disquisition. It resembles the forbidden homosexual act, betokens ejaculation on and in the other without causing undue anxiety to the subject hyperconscious of his masculinity, and the threat his emulative desires pose.

But to leave the analysis there would be to miss the subtle undercurrent of Girardian anthropology that surely Carles meant to cue us to consult by his alluding to both doubling and religious ritual. Girard argues that mimetic desire causes violence and desire to be linked perpetually in the subject's mind -- the desire to become the other is inseparable from the desire to destroy him. The question is what do these "bros" sacrifice to prevent them (and the whole community of likeminded bros) from destroying one another. Carles suggests, much like the late Eve Sedgwick, that women will become the sacrifice -- when Carles has his altbro lout declare that he and his monstrous double may "date the same lil cunts together", we detect in the derogatory profanity the dehumanization and banishment to the state of Agambenian excpetion of the future victim as well as the barely suppressed urge to violence -- that between them they can destroy the spirit of the women they encounter and thereby preserve their tenuous relationship with each other. No doubt the manner in which they would humiliate women would be steeped in the trappings of ritual -- perhaps knowing high-fives during a "skipole" session will serve the purpose and protect their love from the threat of recognizing itself.