A Pictou resident has used his years as an educator to author a deep and probing subject concerning how society directs its people toward one perceived enemy.
Eric M. Wilson has introduced a book called Rene Girard, Law, Literature, and Cinema to examine the teachings of the renowned scholar concerned with philosophical anthropology.
Girard was born in southern France in 1893 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1947. He first taught at Indiana University, where he pursued a doctorate. He taught at five other institutions, including Stanford University in California, where he died in 2015.
Wilson is originally from Los Angeles and moved with his family to Truro. He pursued doctorate studies at Cambridge University in England and a law degree at UBC. He moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 1998 and taught at Monash University there until 2018. He returned to Nova Scotia and decided in May 2020 to settle in Pictou.
“I like it here, very much,” he said.
Wilson said the book, which includes 11 chapters and a conclusion, contains information that references his years of teaching.
“All the chapters are experiences of my notes and lectures at Monash University,” he said. “It took me about a year to write. I had done quite a bit of research and just tried to tie things together.”
He explained how the book’s thrust includes what Girard referred to as a scapegoat mechanism. He said the choice for people is to have friends or to have no enemies.
“What unifies everything I take in is that everything is based on scapegoats, to unify a community against an enemy or outsider,” he said. “If someone is not out to get you, you’re going to get through life okay.”
Wilson shared why he feels Girard’s work is so vital to helping people figure out society’s functions and failings.
“Girard is important for two reasons,” he said. “No one is really original. Because of imitation, it leads to conflict. Everyone wants to be the model. This is what happened in primitive society. It was in danger of destroying each other. We haven’t come very far. Modern society is much more primitive than it thinks itself to be.”
Of the three subjects the book’s title refers to, films may offer one way to explain the point the book tries to make, and they are familiar ones. Included are westerns like High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and crime-related dramas like Twelve Angry Men, The Verdict and In Cold Blood.
Another example is the suspense thriller Cape Fear in book form and in both movie versions.
Lord of the Flies is among the novels Wilson addresses in his book.
Wilson has demonstrated an appeal for the number 66. The book contains more than 660 pages. It sells in hard cover for $266 and will later sell for $66 in paperback.
