“If there is just one exception, if even one single voice is raised in disagreement with the unison against the victim, then there is no guarantee of a favourable outcome. The drug loses its effect; the group’s unity cracks. If the hatred appears in the least bit lukewarm, doubt may spread, comprising the cathartic effects …
The Victim Who Liberates
“This uniqute situation is a product of biblical influence. But we need not, like Nietzsche, become obsessed by mimetic resentment, so that we look on it as the legitimate heir to the Bible and even as its earliest inspiration. Resentment is merely an illegitimate heir, certainly not the father of Judaeo-Christian Scripture. Beyond the misunderstandings, …
Redemptive Catharsis
“Like a bolt of lightning, the scapegoat mechanism suddenly frees all men without being answerable to anyone except perhaps to the victim himself, who is likely to become an idol after his disappearance” (Girard, Job, p. 75).
Cathartic Sin
“If our translation is correct, Job is describing in this passage the beneficial effect of his unjust persecution on his own community. I know of no other text where that effect is so bluntly articulated (17:6-9). It is the same as the tragic effect, the Aristotelian catharsis, but this is not a theatrical representation, and …
Taking Time to Brood
“Great men are too popular to succumb immediately to the intrigues that proliferate around them. Mimetic rivalry broods a long time in the shadows” (Girard, Job, p. 54).
And Why Their Modern Successors Hate It When a Man Defends Himself
“Job is quite a different question. Job is unthinkable for the Greeks and their modern successors. Imagine an unyielding Oedipus who scoffs at fate, and especially at parricide and incest; who persists in treating oracles as sinister traps for scapegoats, which is what they unquestionably are. He would have the whole world against him — …
The Sanctimonious Veil of Myth
“Why? Because Job protests his innocence to the end. If his ‘friends’ had succeeded in reducing him to silence, the persecutors’ belief in the scapegoat’s guilt would have been unanimous. This belief would have prevailed so totally that every future account of the affair would have been given by people sharing it. We would have …
The Sacred Lie
“Of all the revelatory details offered by the Book of Job, the most extraordinary remains the counterpoint of the two perspectives, made possible by the dialogue format; it resembles a theatrical production, the object of which is not catharsis but the disappearance of all catharsis . . . the author manipulates these correspondences too skillfully …
Serene Assumptions of Guilt
“Myths for which there is no direct proof that they are structured by the scapegoat mechanism; the very fact that are implies that the mechanism is nowhere apparent. This is precisely what we observe in all the speeches that are not by Job. The friends cannot be expected to recognize their own injustice. As with …
Barbaric Lyricism
“Those who create the sacred with their own violence are incapable of seeing its truth. This is what makes the friends totally deaf to the appeals Job is constantly making. The more they participate in violence against the unfortunate man, the more they are carried away by their own barbaric lyricism and the less they …