As someone will obviously never make the cut for any type of academic career, this summary of that direction, taken by someone only five years older than me, incites both jealousy and apathy at the same time. Mostly I’m so cynical that I look at it like, what are her connections that she’s been published so much already, but I’m too lazy to figure it out, by my estimation she’s someone’s daughter, but possibly not a trustie, so there’s that. More importantly is the mention in passing of Rene Girard and his main theories mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism, now it’s no surprise to me at this point that every time I hear the something about memes a giant alarm goes off in my brain like, oh, you’re interested in that, find out about that right now. So I took a moment with Wikipedia to look these things up, much to my personal satisfaction, and now I’ve added Dostoevsky’s The Possessed (The Demons?) to my list of books to acquire and read eventually. Also I’ve reassessed (very quickly and loosely mind you) my entire life in terms of the two aforementioned theories, it fits.