Lefebure on Rene Girard

7/31/2019 Lefebure on Rene Girard

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THEChristianCentury

Victims, violence and the sacred:The thought of Rene Girard

by Leo D. Lefebure

RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS promise to heal thewounds of human existence by uniting humans toultimate reality. Yet the history of religions issteeped in blood, sacrifice and scapegoating. The

brutal facts of the history of religions pose stark questionsabout the intertwining of religion and violence. How does vi-olence cast its spell over religion and culture, repeatedly luring countless "decent" peoplewhether unlettered peasants or learned professorsinto its destructive dance? Isthere an underlying pattern we can discern?

The French literary critic and anthropol

ogist Rene Girard has provided a compelling set of answers to these questions. Heclaims to have discovered the mechanismthat links violence and religion. The extentofhis claim is even more audacious: he believes that in the mechanism linking violence and religion lie the origins of culture.

A growing number of biblical scholars,theologians, psychologists and economistshave turned to Girard s wide-ranging theory to understand their respective fields.His works have been widely read in his native France, and international conferenceshave explored the implications of his theory for different fields. Robert Hamerton-Kelly and James G. Williams have interpreted the Bible in light of Girard s theory. Catholic theologian Raymund Schwager has used Girard s proposal extensively in his theological reflections. Working closelywith Girard, French psychiatrists Jean-MichelOughourlian and Guy Lefort have proposed an "interdi-vidual" psychology which stresses the radically social nature of the self and interprets phenomena such as desire,possession, hysteria, trance and hypnosis in Girardianterms. French economists Paul Dumouchel, Jean-Pierre

Dupuy and Andre Orlean have interpreted such economic problems as the market, competition, scarcity, wealthand monetary value in light of Girardian theory. The Colloquium on Religion and Violence meets regularly to explore the application of Girard s ideas to a wide range ofareas, and the colloquium s journal, Contagion: Journal ofViolence, Mimesis, and Culture, publishes research on Girardian theory. A recent book by Gil Baillie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, has brought Girardsideas to a larger audience in the U.S.

According to Girard, human culture has been founded

Cultures

that

do not

practice

sacrifice

may still

target

certain

individuals

as scapegoats

on two principles, which he calls "mimetic rivalry" and the"surrogate victim mechanism." Mimesis refers to thepropensity of humans to imitate other people both consciously and unconsciously. Girard developed a mimetictheory of the self in his early workas a literary critic {Deceit,

Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure

[French, 1961; English 1965]). Such novelists as Cervantes,Stendhal, Dostoevsky and Proust taught him that humanslearn what to desire by taking other people as models to im

itate. Aware of a lack within ourselves, welook to others to teach us what to value and

who to be.Girard observes that the desire to ap

propriate another persons possessions,loves and very being may seem innocent atfirst, but it poses a fundamental threat tocommunity life. In imitating our models,we may come to approach their power andthreaten their own positionin whichcase they quickly become rivals who tell usnot to imitate them. When we imitate themodels thoughts, there is harmony; whenwe imitate the models desires, the modelbecomes our obstacle and rival.

Mimesis thus inexorably leads to rivalry,and rivalry leads sooner or later to violence.From his study of mimetic desire in the

modern novel, Girard turned to the relation of violence andthe sacred in early cultures, especially in primal religionsand Greek tragedy. In 1972 he published La Violence et leSacre (English: Violence and the Sacred, 1977), a work thatranged widely through the fields of ethnology and anthropology. In Girard s judgment, the conflicts that result frommimesis repeatedly threaten to engulf all human life. Escalating violence renders humans more and more like eachother, leveling distinctions and sweeping people up into

ever greater paroxysms of violence. Mimesis leading to violence is the central energy of the social system.

DURING THE course of evolution, Girard believes,

I a long series of primal murders, repeated end-' lessly over possibly a million years, taught earlyhumans that the death of one or more members

of the group would bring a mysterious peace and discharge of tension. This pattern is the foundation of whatGirard calls the surrogate victim mechanism. Often thedead person was hailed as a bearer of peace, a sacred fig-

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ure, even a god. Fearful that unrestrained violence wouldreturn, early humans sought ritual ways to re-enact and resolve the sacrificial crisis of distinctions in order to channeland contain violence. "Good violence'' was invoked todrive out "bad violence." This is why rituals from aroundthe world call for the sacrifice of humans and animals. ForGirard, the sacred first appears as violence directed at asacrificial victim, a scapegoat. Every culture achieves stability by discharging the tensions of mimetic rivalry and violence onto scapegoats. Scapegoating channels and expels

violence so that communal life can continue. As mimetictensions recur, a new crisis threatens, and sacred violenceis once again necessary.

In Girard s view, myths from around the world recountthe primordial crisis and its resolution in ways that systematically disguise the origins of culture. Later cultures use judiciary systems to contain violence. But even when cultures nolonger practice sacrifice directly, they still continue to targetcertain individuals or groups as scapegoats so that violencewill not overflow its banks and threaten others. The lynchmob is at the foundation of social order.

According to Girard, every culture arises from the incessantly repeated patterns

of mimetic rivalry and scapegoating. Someauthors, like the Greek tragedians, caughta glimpse of the underlying dynamics ofthe cycle and the arbitrariness of thechoice of victim. But only the Bible, Girard contends, offers a full unveiling of thepattern of violence and a rejection of it.

Girard began his career as a secularthinker unaffiliated with any religious tradition. The course ofhis research and reflection led him to conclude that the Christianrevelation unveils the patterns of violenceand provides the divine response. Having

become convinced that the gospel alone reveals the full truth of the human condition,Girard entered the Catholic Church. Girardexpressed his Christian perspective in Things Hidden Sincethe Foundation of the World (French, 1978; English, 1987),a book composed in dialogical form with Oughourlian andLefort as interlocutors. His later work, The Scapegoat(French, 1982; English, 1986), continues his exploration ofbiblical themes and offers a good introduction to his thought.

According to Girard s interpretation of the Bible, thepeople of Israel were, like all other people, steeped in thesurrogate victim mechanism. But the biblical authors, especially the psalmist, the prophets, and the sages of Israel,

recognized the primordial pattern and denounced it.Many psalms express the perspective of the victims, andthe author of the Book of Job sides with the maligned Jobrather than his friends. The Suffering Servant poems present the age-old mythological drama: a crowd surroundsan innocent victim and heaps abuse upon him. The pointofview, however, has changed. The biblical author doesnot accept the charges; the victim is innocent and is vindicated by God.

Such is also the message of the New Testament. In

Jesus, God appears in history as the innocent victim, whogoes to his death as the scapegoat. Far from demandingvictims, God identifies with the victims and thus exposesthe surrogate victim mechanism as a fraud and deception.God responds to our violence with nonviolent love. Paulsconversion turns on the realization that he is persecutingGod. The realization that God is on the side of the victimsis, for Girard, the center of biblical revelation.

r

The Bibleexposesthe "victimmechanism"asafraud.Godidentifieswith the

victims.

IRARD LAMENTS that throughout its history the

church has largely ignored this message. It hasmisinterpreted the death of a Christ as a sacrificial offering to a God who demands victims. For

centuries the true meaning of the gospel was lost, andChristians continued the cycle of scapegoating others, especially Jews. The anti-Jewish texts of the late MiddleAges offer Girard some of the clearest examples of th$scapegoating mechanism at work.

At last, however, the message has begun to register. According to Girard, modern movements on behalf of oppressed peoples, even though often outside or opposed to

established Christianity, are the heirs of theHebrew prophets and the New Testament.

As Friedrich Nietzsche noted, Christianitysides with victims, not conquerors.

Prior to biblical revelation, Girardclaims, cultures achieved relative levels ofsocial stability through scapegoating certain individuals. Over the centuries the impact of the gospel on culture has largely destroyed the power of the surrogate victimmechanism. Conventional culture is nowin a painful process of disintegration. History as we have known it for millennia iscoming to an end, and we face a dramatic,even apocalyptic, choice: total destruction

or total renunciation of violence.What is striking about Girard s proposal

is the wide range of data that do bear thehallmarks of mimetic rivalry and the surrogate victim mechanism. The insights of great novelists and dramatists into thevolatility of mimetic desire, as interpreted by Girard, are

^"profound and persuasive on an intuitive level. Similarly, theanalysis of the surrogate victim mechanism can find muchevidence in a wide range of cultures. I t is frightening to notehow often social bonding has taken place through the exclusion of certain groups and through periodic violence directed at unfortunate individuals. Lynch mobs and pogromspunctuate human history.

When mimetic theory is extrapolated into the explanation of all institutions of all human cultures, however,doubts arise about the status of the evidence and the assumptions of the argument. Too often discussions of Girard tend toward an all-or-nothing choice: either uncritical enthusiasm or skeptical dismissal. It is helpful to dis-

Leo D. Lefebure teaches theology at the University ofSt. Mary of

the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. His article on Buddhist-

Christian encounters appeared in the CENTURY October 16.

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tinguish between t he intuitive power of Girard s proposal,which can be quite compelling, and the logical status ofmany of the claims advanced, which remains problematic.Girard has proposed a hypothesis which is most intriguing, but it has by no means reached the stage of empiricalverification, and in many cases it is difficult to see howverification could be achieved.

The theory of the primal murders and the primordialorigin of religion and all human culture in the surrogatevictim mechanism is highly speculative because we lack

adequate data from the period that Girard takes as foundational for all human culture. Girard seeks to reconstructa form of mimesis prior to symbols, a mimesis whichwould take place as the origin of human consciousness andof culture and religious symbolism. However, there remains a gap between what we can reconstruct of the primitive drives of hominids and the emergence of higher cognitive and symbolic capacities. Girard claims to have foundthe missing link, but one wonders whether the power ofmimesis and the effect of the primal murders can really account for the entire range of development of early humans. Was the surrogate victim mechanism really themotor driving the development of the human brain in in

teraction with cultural factors, as Girard claims? How canwe possibly know?

In addition, the link between the putative crisis of distinctions and the first manifestation of the sacred remainstenuous. For Girard, "the sole purpose of religion is toprevent the recurrence of reciprocal violence" (Violenceand the Sacred). Girard also claims that "humanity's veryexistence is due primarily to the operation of the surrogatevictim." Furthermore, he argues that "the origin of symbolic thought lies in the mechanism of the surrogate victim," and that this mechanism also "gives birth to languageand imposes itself as the first object of language." "It is the

Works by Rene Girard

surrogate victim who provides men with the will to conquer reality and the weapons for victorious intellectualcampaigns." All this seems overstated, and it is hard to seewhat would count as verification from the earliest periodsof human existence.

Ml

Dece it, Desir e, and the Novel:

Self and Other in Literary

Structure.

Johns Hopkins University Press,

1965.

Violence and the Sacred.Johns Hopkins University Press,

1977.

To Double Business Bound:

Essays on Literature, Mimesis,

and Anthropology.


1978.

The Scapegoat.


1986.

Things Hidden Since the Founda

tion of the World.

With Jean-Michel Oughourlianand Guy Lefort. Stanford University

Press, 1987.

Job: The Victim of His People .

Stanford University Press, 1987.

A Theater of Envy: William

Shakespeare.

Oxford University Press, 1991.

OREOVER, THE evidence of later ages is itselfambiguous. There are many texts and practicesthat fit Girard s theory rather well, but others areless clear. Joseph Henninger has pointed out

that many cultures have offered bloodless sacrifices, suchas fruits, grains, foods from plants, milk and milk products,and alcoholic libations. These are presented to supernatural beings who often do not need them, and the primarymotives are thanksgiving and homage. Henninger arguesthat the offering of first fruits in many cultures involves intellectual assumptions and emotions that are far removedfrom the scapegoating patterns that Girard identifies.Moreover, there is no evidence that the sacrifice of humans and animals is more ancient than the offering of firstfruits.

Girard s theory risks being a tour de force which explains too much by explaining everything. Girard claims

that most of historical culture is involved in a conspiracy tocover over its origins, and this sets up a logical difficulty inassessing the evidence. If the surrogate victim mechanismappears only in fragmented form, supporters of the theorycan claim that this reflects the attempt to cover over theguilty, violent origins of culture. The problem with such ahidden mechanism is that the claim cannot be refuted.

Questions also arise concerning Girard s interpretation of modern history (a perspective that Baillie hasmade the center of his own work, Violence Unveiled). Girard gives the biblical tradition credit for awakening concern about the plight of victims and for being the driving

force in the development of modern

science and the quest for social justice. Amid the manifold forces at

^ H H play in recent centuries, one factor

is named over and over againthebiblical traditionwhile the role ofother factors is marginalized or dismissed. Certainly, Christianity had amassive influence on the sociopolitical and intellectual history of Europe, but it seems simplistic to positthe subterranean influence of thegospel alone as the driving force ofmodern cultural history, especially

when so much of modern historyunderstood itself as a reactionagainst Christianity.

According to Girard, the massmurders of the 20th century haveoccurred because the gospel has undermined the traditional sacrificialsystem that previously protected societies from outbreaks of unrestrained violence. Now that the sac-

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rificial system is collapsing, the old mechanisms try moreand more desperately to function and so demand morevictims. Whether this adequately explains the mass murders of this century is doubtful. Earlier ages knew massslaughter, but they did not have the technology to kill onthe same scale. If earlier centuries had been able to perform actions like the fire-bombing of Dresden or the nuclear bombing for Hiroshima, they probably would havedone so. Whether the scale of the purges of Stalin or Maoand other mass murders can be explained as due primar

ily to the gospels unmasking of the scapegoat mechanismis unlikely.

GIRARD CONCLUDES his reflections with an appeal about the future. "For the first time/' hesays, humanity faces "a perfectly straightforwardand even scientifically calculable choice be

tween total destruction and the total renunciation ofviolence/' In this apocalyptic context,Girard presents a stirring call towake up, to acknowledge the dynamics of history, to renounce the mmmmmtmtm^^^patterns of violence and scapegoat

ing, and to allow the nonviolent appeal for the gospel to transform theearth. It is a powerful and movingappeal.

However, it is difficult to see howsuch an all-or-nothing choice for thefuture could be "scientifically calculable." It seems more likely that neither alternative will take place, atleast in the foreseeable future .Rather than either a total destructionof human life or a total renunciationof violence, we are more likely to

muddle through with limited conflicts repeatedly breaking out but notescalating to total destruction,whether nuclear or ecological.

One problem in assessing the appeal for nonviolence is that Girarddoes not define exactly what behavior counts as violence. If violence issomething broader than causingphysical injury to another person,then different cultures have verydifferent perspectives on what constitutes violent behavior. The failureto define the meaning of violenceleaves the call for a renunciation ofviolence vague. The dramaticrhetoric of either total destructionor total renunciation of violenceleaves us in a situation in which thevery meaning of effective action isunclear. Is an economic boycott thatseeks to end injustice an act of violence? At what point do economic

sanctions that result in the deaths of children become anact of war? Buddhists pondering the First Precept notethat if you boil water, you commit an act of violenceagainst the microorganisms in it. Girard insists on surrendering the distinction between "good" and "bad" violence, but the lack of a working definition of violenceleaves the concrete means of influencing the course ofevents unclear.

Alfred North Whitehead asserted with his characteristic playfulness: "It is more important for a proposition to

be interesting than that it be true." Propositions for Whitehead are "tales that might be told," visions of possibilitiesrelevant to a particular situation. Even if it turns out thatthe universalizing claims of Girard s theory are not sustainable, his work nonetheless calls attention to widespreaddynamics of cultural and religious life that have too oftenbeen neglected by theologians. For this, we owe him adebt of gratitude.

Works about Girard(or applying Girardian theory)

Knowing Jesus.

By James Alison, O.P. Templegate

Publishers, 1994.

Raising Abel: The Recovery of Es-

chatological Imagination.

By James Alison, O.P Crossroad,

1996.

Violence Unveiled: Humanity atthe Crossroads.

By GilBaillie. Crossroad, 1995.

The Gospel and the Sacred: Poet

ics of Violence in Mark.

By Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly.

Fortress, 1994.

Sacred Violence: Paul's

Hermeneutic of the Cross.

By Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly.

Fortress, 1994.

On the Way of Fr eedo m.

By Roel Kaptein (with the cooper

ation of Duncan Morrow). Columba

Press, 1993.

Models of Desire: Ren6 Girard

and the Psychology of Mimesis.

By Paisley Livingston. Johns Hop

kins University Press, 1992.

Violence and Difference: Girard,

Derrida, and Deconstruction.

By Andrew J. McKenna. Universi

ty of Illinois Press, 1992.

The Puppet of Desire: The Psy

chology of Hysteria, Possession,

and Hypnosis.

By Jean-Michel Oughourlian.

Stanford University Press, 1991.

Must There Be Scapegoats?

Violence and Redemption in the

Bible.

By Raymund Schwager. Harper &

Row, 1987.

Curing Violence.

Edttedby Mark I. Wallace and Theo-

phus H.Smith. Polebridge Press, 1994.

Fragments of the Spirit: Nature,

Violence, and the Renewal of

Creation.

By Mark I.Wallace. Continuum,

1996.

The Self Between: From Freud to

the New Social Psychology of

France.

By Eugene Webb. University of

Washington Press, 1993.

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^ s

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Lefebure on Rene Girard

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