“Rivalry does not arise because the fortuitous convergence of two desires on a single object; rather, the subject desires the object because the rival desires it. In desiring an object the rival alerts the subject to the desirability of the object. The rival, then, serves as a model for the subject, not only in regard …
Federal Scapegoating
“If the entire community were not already subsumed under a single head, that of the surrogate victim, it would be impossible to attribute to the sacrificial substitution the significance we have claimed for it, impossible to establish a social basis for the institution. The original act of violence is unique and spontaneous. Ritual sacrifices, however, …
The Guilt Sponge
“The city of Athens prudently kept on hand a number of unfortunate souls, whom it maintained at public expense, for appointed times as well as in certain emergencies . . . The rite is therefore a repetition of the original, spontaneous ‘lynching’ that restored order in the community by reestablishing, around the figure of the …
Fear of Radical Contagion
“Men cannot confront the naked truth of their own violence without the risk of abandoning themselves to it entirely. They have never had a clear idea of this violence, and it is possible that the survival of all human societies of the past was dependent on this fundamental lack of understanding” (Girard, Violence and the …
From Cain and Abel Down
“It is not only in myths that brothers are simultaneously drawn together and driven apart by something they both ardently desire and which they will not or cannot share — a throne, a woman or, in more general terms, a paternal heritage” (Girard, Violence and the Sacred, p. 63).
A Brother Thing
“We instinctively tend to regard the fraternal relationship as an affectionate one; yet the mythological, historical, and literary examples that spring to mind tell a different story: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Eteocles and Plyneices, Romulus and Remus, Richard the Lionhearted and John Lackland. The proliferation of enemy brothers in Greek myth and in …
Sacrificial Crisis
“The sacrificial crisis, that is, the disappearance of the sacrificial rites, coincides with the disappearance of the difference between impure violence and purifying violence” (Girard, Violence and the Sacred, p. 49).
Good to be Wary
“There is no such thing as truly ‘pure’ violence. Nevertheless, sacrificial violence can, in the proper circumstances, serve as an agent of purification. That is why those who perform the rites are obliged to purify themselves at the conclusion of the sacrifice. The procedure followed is reminiscent of atomic power plants; when the expert has …
Restrained Vengeance
“Such thinking reflects the ignorance of a society — our own — that has been the beneficiary of a judicial system for so many years that it is no longer conscious of the system’s real achievements. If vengeance is an unending process it can hardly be invoked to restrain the violent impulses of society. In …
Dying Daily
“[T]he dependence of human culture on revenge and victimage is too fundamental not to survice the elimination of the most grossly physical forms of violence, the actual murder of the victim. If the Judeo-Christian ferment is not dead, it must be engaged in an obscure struggle against deeper and deeper layers of the essential complicity …