Conversion, the Self, and the Victim: East Timor and Girard's Mimetic Theory in Dialogue

This essay explores how repentance and conversion are connected to a changing sense of self through the relation to what Rene Girard identifies as the innocence and forgiveness of the victim. It shows how the operations of conscience through Christian faith have anthropological elements that help us to understand repentance, and more broadly, offer paths for approaching the study of complex human phenomenon. This exploration will be undertaken with reference to the story of an East Timorese man, Alexandro, who was an Indonesian soldier during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor (a half-island nation located in south-east Asia) and was ordered to shoot some of his own people during the violence after the 1999 referendum. After this experience, Alexandro went through a process of repentance which will be examined in dialogue with the insights of Girard.