Girard, RenŽ. Violence and the Sacred. Trans. Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Sacrifice 2 aspects of the sacrifical system: sacred ceremony, criminal activity sacred criminal legitimate illegitimate public covert organization of violence whether criminal or sacred: rationalization of violence 3 substitution is the functional practice of the sacrifice (sacrificial substitution) 4 (see notebook) 14 The function of sacrifice is to quell violence within the community and to prevent conflicts from erupting. 15 judicial system takes over the function of vengeance, transforming it to public vengeance regulated by a police system. 16 systems of violent retribution. 17 it is vengeance itself that must be restrained. sovereign and independent body capable of taking the place of the injured party and taking upon itself the responsiblility for revenge. 18 outbreak of violence upsets the social equilibrium. the sacrifical process prevents the spread of violence by keeping vengeance in check. crises amenable to sacrifice: social fabric of community is threatened: dissension and discord, the more critical the situation, the more "precious" the sacrificial victim. 20 policied socius: constant presence of restraining forces--modern man. In 'policed' societies the relationships bet individuals, including total strangers, is characterized by an extraordinary air of informality.... *machinic organization of flow of violence: the judicial system, as much as the sacrifical act, reglates a mixture of violence and nonviolence. judicial system as curative procedure (rather than preventative) 21 system functions best when everyone concerned is least aware that it involves retribution. 22 "As soon as the judicial system gains supremacy, its machinery disappears from sight." judicial system rationalizes reveange. 23 the judicial system never hesitates to confront violence head on, bec it possesses a monopoly on the means of revenge. Thanks to this monopoly, the system generally succeeds in stifling the impulse to vengeance rather than spreading or aggravating it [Rodney King case]. 23 a clear view of the workings of the system indicates a crisis in the system" it is a sign of disintegration. The underlying structure of the legal system is reciprocal reprisal. 24 no difference bet principle of justice and concept of revenge. Only the transcendental quality of the system... can assure the prevention or cure of violence. As soon as the essential quality of transcendence--religious,humanistic, or whatever--is lost, there are no longeranyh terms by which to define the legitimate form of violence and to recognize it among the multitude of illicit forms. legitimate and illegitimate boundaries become unclear. 24 demystification leads to constantly increasing violence--it coincides with the disintegration of that system. 25 3 institutions: retaliatory vengeance, ritual sacrifice, and legal punishment. (all capable of intersecting) 27 practices of exposure as prevention of contamination by violence (allowing third-world populations to starve) 28 impurity and contagion. 30 primitive concept of contagion far broader than pathological view. 31 violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred. We have yet to learn how man succeeds in positing his own violence as an independent being. 33 what? west civ enjoys immunity from virulent forms of violence?? 35 Like violence, sexual desire tends to fasten upon surrogate objects if the object to which it was originally attracted remains inaccessible; it willingly accepts substitutes. And again like violence, repressed sexual desire accumulates energy that sooner or later bursts forth, causing tremendous havoc. ...thwarted sexuality leads naturally to violence, just as lovers' quarrels often end in an amorous embrace. The Sacrifical Crisis 39 impure violence vs sacred violence (purifying vs contagious) **49 the sacrificial crisis results from the disappearance of the difference bet the two; it is a cirsis of distinctions. 52 the ritualistic crisis of all distinctions (bet individuals and institutions). 53 Social suicide 55 the purpose of religion is to stop reciprocal violence 56 dissolution of regulations pertaining to the individuals proper place in society = sacrificial crisis. (serial killer) 57 Wherever differences are lacking, violence threatens. fear of pollution accompanies the dissolution of differences. [HIV] 67 Question concerns the mechanism governing the shift from cultural order to disorder. Origins of myth and Ritual 95 pharmakon: Mimetic Desire 143 when transcendental is reduced to immanence, it is transformed back to mimetic fascination. Reciprocal violence demolishes unanimous violence. reality of the divine rests in its transcendental absence nothing is more banal than the role of violence in awakening desire 144 (sadism and masochism) (mimetic) desire is directed to violence itself, no object 145 first task to identify the rival's position within the system to which he belongs, in relation to both subject and object. the subject desires the object bec the rival desires it. The rival desires the same object as the subject, and to assert the primacy of the rival can lead to only one conclusion. Rivalry does not arise bec of the fortuitious convergence of two desires on a single object; rather, the subject desires the object bec the rival desires it. the subject looks to the rival to inform him of what he should desire in order to acquire that being (as plenitude of being). 146 the adult is generally ashamed to imitate others for fear of revealing his lack of being. two desires converging on the same object are bound to clash. mimesis coupled with desire leads automatically to conflict. the model and the disciple are rivals 147 orientation of desire is the choice of future models by ritual channeling, cultural order prevents multiple desires from converging on the same object; ritual mimesis regulates conflictual mimesis--mimetic desire=violence=religious pollution 148 unchanneled mimetic desire leads to a self-perpetuating process, when the subject borrows from his model what he believes to be the true object, he tries to possess that truth by desiring precisely what this model desires--he comes in conflict with the rival. the violence itself becomes confused with the goal. **violent opposition becomes the signifier of ultimate desire "the victim of this desire both adores and detests it. He strives to master it by means of a mimetic counterviolence and measures his own stature in proportion to his failure. If by chance, however, he actually succeeds in asserting his mastery over the model, the latter's prestige vanishes. He must then turn to an even greater violence and seek out an obstacle that promises to be truly insurmountable." the obstacle becomes the object of desire mimetic desire is the catalyst for the sacrificial crisis, regulated by the surrogate victim and ritualized mimesis. exchange between adversaries ensues. "Only an act of collective expulsion can bring this oscillation to a halt and cast violence outside the community." 151 152 When the rivalry becomes so intense that it destroys or disperses all its objects, it turns upon itself; kudos alone becomes the ultimate object. Benveniste translates kudos as "talisman of supremacy." *** 153 The transferal of kudos is not simply a subjective matter, though it is not objective either. It involves a relationship in which the roles of dominating and dominated are constantly reversed. There is no point in invoking a master-slave dialectic because the situation affords no stability of any sort, no synthetic resolution. In the end, kudos means nothing. It is the prize of a temporary victory, an advantage no sooner won than challenged. 154 At first glance thymos has nothing in common with kudos--except for one trait, which we would normally consider altogether trivial: its alternating character. When a man possesses thymos he possesses an irresistible dynamism (exaltation). When thymos is withdrawn he is plunged into anguish and despair. Thymos is derived from the verb thuein, which means to make smoke, to offer sacrifices, to act violently, to run wild. Cyclothymia is the psychiatric term designating thymos. case characterized by mimetic desire and a strong competitive drive. forms conceal the reality of the agonistic process. 155 the tragic cyclothymia would engulf an increasing number of individuals if nothing intervened to stop it and would end by plunging the whole community into madness and dissolution. (Thus we can easily understand the terrified response of the chorus, its frantic efforts to remain uninvolved and avoid the contamination of mimetic rivalry.) 156 the premises of madness are sometimes neither more nor less than an exceptional encounter with feelings appropriate to Greek tragedy: an increasingly stressful alternation between moments of superhuman exhaltation and hours when only the emptiness and desolation of life holds any illusion of reality.... A thin thread of remembrance links these alternating visitations and absences, a thread just strong enough to assure the individual's sense of continuity and to sustain those visions of the past that heighten the intoxication of possession but render even more painful the anguish of loss. ...amatory success deprives the sexual domain of its value as a test between the I and the other. the constant shifting back and forth from divinity to nothingness in Holderlin's relationships with others ... describes the plight of the disciple who sees his model transformed into an obstacle and rival. 158 when differences shift back and forth, the cultural order loses its stability; all its elements constantly exchange places. theory of shifting differences. "In tragedy the reciprocal relationship bet the characters is real, but it is the sum of nonreciprocal moments. The antagonists never occupy the same positions at the same time, to be sure; but they occupy these positions in succession. There is never anything on one side of the system that cannot be found on the other side, provided we wait long enough. The quicker the rhythm of reprisals, the shorter the wait. The faster the blows rain down, the clearer it becomes that there is no difference bet those who strike the blows and those who receive them. On both sides everything is equal; not only the desire, the violence, the strategy, but also the alternation of victory and defeat, of exaltation and despair. Everywhere we encounter the same cyclothymia." 159 from within the system of contagion, only differences are perceived; from without, the antagonists all seem alike. From inside, sameness is not visible; from outside, differences cannot be seen. When all differences have been eliminated and the similarity bet two figures has been achieved, we say that the antagonists are doubles. It is their interchangeability that makes possible the act of sacrificial substitution. 159 In order for violent unanimity to become a possibility--in order, that is, for the sacrificial substitution to function--their own identity and reciprocity must somehow impose themselves on the antagonists themselves, and triumph within the confines of the system. ...the misapprehension must remain within the system, for otherwise the polarization of violence onto the surrogate victim could not be effected, and the arbitrary choice of that victim would be too readily evident. the mechanism responsible for sacrificial substitution in the crisis-ridden community: ? the misapprehension (of doubles) 160 the Dionysian state of mind erases all manner of differences: familial, cultural, biological, and natural. The entire everyday world is caught up in the whirl, producing a hallucinatory state that is not a synthesis of elements, but a formless and grotesque mixture of things that are normally separate. ...this monstrosity, this extraordinary strangeness of the world...the hallucinatory aspects divert attention from the fact that the antagonists are truly doubles. ...the double and the monster are one and the same being. 161 This transformation of the real into the unreal is part of the process by which man conceals from himself the human origin of his own violence, by attributing it to the gods. 165 the monstrous double senses that he is alien to himself 169 mimetism is a source of continual conflict==by making one subject's desire into a replica of another's desire, it invariably leads to rivalry; and rivalry in turn transforms desire into violence. Freud and the Oedipus complex 170 The identification is a desire to be the model that seeks fuffillment, by means of appropriation, that is, by taking over the things that belong to his father [the other]. 174 mimetic rivalry invariably ends in reciprocal violence mimetic desire is the desire to take on the desire of the model 175 ...the overlapping of desires 180 the mimetic process detaches desire from any predetermined object, whereas the Oedipus complex fixes desire on the maternal object. Freud attempted initially to develop the Oedipus complex on the basis of a desire that is both object-oriented (cathectic) and yet originates in mimesis 3 elements of mimetic desire: identification, choice of object, rivalry 182 the positive feelings resulting from the first identification--imitation, admiration, veneration--are fated to change into negative sentiments: despair, guilt, resentment. Why? In the concept of desire based on mimesis: the model in the identification is a model of the desire itself, and thus a powerful force of opposition. 183 psychoanalysis has been able to grant a reprieve--even apparently to grant new life-to the myth of the individual As an interpretive tool the concept of mimetic revalry is far more serviceable than the Freudian complex. By eliminating the conscious patricide-incest desire it does away with the cumbersome necessity of the desire's subsequent repression. In fact, it does away with the unconscious. The concept explains the Oedipus myth and does so with an economy and precision lacking in the Freudian approach. Why then Freud renounce mimetic desire for patricide-incest? (mimetic desire vs object-desire) Is mimetic desire homosexual?? 185 We are presented, therefore, with a rivalry devoid of preliminary identification (the Oedipus complex) followed by an identification without subsequent rivalry (the superego). 187 mimesis is channeled in such a way that desire will not take its own obstacle as an object. Girard, RenŽ. Violence and the Sacred. Trans Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1977. Origins of Myth and Ritual 92 I contend that the objective of ritual is the proper reenactment of the surrogate-victim mechanism; its function is to perpetuate or renew the effects of this mechanism; that is, to keep violence outside the community. 93 If the unanimous violence directed against the surrogate victim succeeds in bringing this crisis to an end, clealrly this violence must be at the origin of a new sacrificial system. ... the violence directed agsint the surrogate victim is generative, initiating another constructive cycle , that of the sacrifical rite, which protects the community from the destructive cycle of violence and allows culture to flourish. generative violence constitutes the indirect origin of all those things men hold most dear.... 94 the sacrificers are striving to produce a replica, as faithful as possible in every detail, of a previous crisis that was resovled by means of a spontaneously unanimous victimization. transformation of reciprocal violence into a unanimous act. 95 victim considered a polluted object.... why pharmakos was paraded about the city... the pharmakos, has a dual connotation: object of scorn and quasi-religiousaura of veneration pharmakon in classical Greek means both poison and the antidote for poison, both the sickness and the cure. 96 community's alternating pattern of order and disorder,. The modus operandi of violence--sometimes reciprocal and pernicious, sometimes unanimous and beneficial-- is then taken as the model for the entire universe. 97 animal sacrifice mimesis of an initial collective murder 98 metamorphosis of reciprocal violence into unilateral violence 100 unanimity is a formal requirement; the abstention of a single participant renders the sacrifice even worse than useless--it makes it dangerous. 101 the ritual victim is not substituted for any particular member of a community, or even the community as a whole--it is always substituted for the surrogate victim (who serves as a substitute for all members). 102 the original act of violence is unique and spontaneous. Ritual sacrifices, however, are multiple, endlessly repeated. All those aspects of the original act that had escaped man's control--the choice of time and place, the selection of the victim--are now premeditated and fixed by custom. The ritual process aims at removing all element of chance [serial killer] The sacrifical process is as fully adapted to its normal function as collective murder is to its abnormal and normative function. mimetic character of sacrifice with regard to the original generative act of violence 113 I maintain that the original act of violence is the matrix of all ritual and mythological significations. ... Between this instance of complete originality and the mechanical repetition of rites at the other end of the scale, we can assume the existence of an infinite nuimber of intermediary forms. 114 that certain religious and cultural themes pervade a vast area does not exclude the possibility that truly spontaneious collective violence, working through one of the intermediary forms and endowed with real creative powers on the mythic and religious level, might occur in many places. 115 fundamental importance of transformation of bad violence into good and the fundamental inability to solve the mystery of this transformation.... 117 All these motifs serve to conceal and disguise rather than reveal the violent elimination of differences. This violence is the suppressed matter of the myths-- not suppressed desire, but terror of absolute violence. [G's rereading of Freud's reading of Oedipus myth] Totem and Taboo and the Incest Prohibition 206 All in all the modern crisis, like all sacrificial crises, can be defined as the elimination of differences. 215 roots of incest prohibition are embedded in generative violence. Freud first to link the problem of prohibitions to that of sacrifice and first who sought to resove the two problems by means of the collective murder. If F's explanation of sacrifice must be adjusted in favor of the surrogate victim, then we must assume that the same will apply to his account of incest prohibitions. LŽvi-Stauss, Structuralism, and Marriage Laws [method] 238 The essential characteristic of structuralim is that it puts the emphasis on positive regulations. If the prohibition and the regulation constitute two opposite poles of the same object, there is good reason to inquire which is the essential one. LŽvi-Strauss poses this very question, and resolves it in favor of the regulation.... [method] 241 Ethnological structuralism works at uncovering differences everywhere. Superficially, it might be said to be the simple antithesis of an older ethnological approach, that of LŽvy-Bruhl, which refused to see differences anywhere. As long as meaning is healthy, the sacred is absent. 244 Tsimshian Indians myth (myth of reciprocal violence): The only was to avoid contagion is to turn a deaf ear to the appeals of the enemy brothers. the myth shortcircuits the alternating differences--a difference that only ends in similarity. ...a becoming same for those whom violence has already made identical-- turning men into doubles, monsters = sacrificial crisis. 247 The return to differentialted harmony is based on the arbitrary expulsion of the surrogate victim. The other face of generative violence--the return to beneficience following the paroxysm of malevolence. 248 loss of difference is a more comprehensive interpretation of what p/a terms castration. 249 We see here the principle behind all "foreign" wars: aggressive tendencies that are potentially fatal to the cohesion of the group are redirected from within the community to outside it. Inversely, there is reason to believe that the wars described as "foreign wars" in the mythic narratives were in fact formerly civil strifes. Sacrificial Substitution 251 the theory of a violence that is sometimes reciprocal, sometimes unanimous and generative, is the first truly to take into account the double nature of all primitive divinities.... [flow theory] 261 (--on endowment of sacred qualities to metal workers in Africa--) The specters of nuclear war and industrial pollution that menace our own society constitute only one illustration--admittedly a dramatic one--of a law that primitive people regzrd as real even if they do not entirely understand it but that we dismiss as fictitious: whoever uses violence will in turn be used by it. The community that sponsors a forge on its outer boundaries is not very different from our own. As long as some profit can be derived from them, the metal workers, or magicians, are left in peace. But as soon as the community becomes aware of some backlash of violence it will shift the responsiblity to those who led the community into temptation, the manipulators of sacred violence. [alchemists] the sacred is violence 262 In certain societies the metal worker, without ceasing to be a kind of pariah, assumes the role of supreme arbiter. In the event of an irresolvable struggle he is called upon to "differene=tiate" the irreconcilable antagonists, thus proving that he incarnates the sacred violence that is sometimes maleficent, sometimes beneficient. all systems founded on sacrifice are a virtually closed system The violent death of a metal worker, a sorcerer, a magician, and in general of anybody who seems to share a particular affinity with the sacred, might be seen as a half-way point bet spontaneous collective violence and ritual sacrifice. 269 the need for some distinction bet the original victim and the ritual victims-- if sacrificial victim belonged to community (as does surrogate victim) , then his death would promote further violence instead of dispelling it. Far from reiterating the effects of generative violence, the sacrific e ouwld inaugurate a new cirsis. But bec certain conditions must be met, an organization capable of meeting them does not inevitably have to come into being. We may wonder if the difference bet the original and the copy, bet the primordial and the ritual victim, does not have its basis in human reason. [serial killer] 270 there are many societies in which the victims are human beings: prisoners of war, slaves, children, even (in the case of the sacred king and related sacrifices) members of the community. In these instances, there seems to be no secon, sacrificial substitution. Connection bet original violence that had surrogate victim for object and ritual imitations that succeeded it .... a first and second sacrificial substitution... The Unity of All Rites 277 cannibalism: mimetic desire as veritable cannibalism of the human spirit in which the violence of others is ritually devoured. 279 the ideology of ritual cannibalism brings to mind the nationalistic myths of our own modern world. 280 A sacrificial cult based on war and the reciprocal murder of prisoners is not substantially different from nineteenth-century nationalistic myths with their concept of an "hereditary enemy." 282 modern mind conceives contagion solely in terms of microbiology... 283 any man deprived of his status is transformed into a monstrous double 295 The most daring provocations and the most shocking scandals have lost all power to provalke and shock. That does not mean that violence is no longer a threat; quite the contrary. The sacrificial system is virtualyy worn out, and that is why its inner workings are now exposed to view. 297 generative violence penetrates all forms of myth and ritual G's theory is an expanded concept of sacrifice: institutions of generative violence replace ritual killing. direct correlation bet elimination of sacrificial practices and the establishment of a judicial system. That discussion, however, preceded the discovery of the surrogate victim. Consequently, it was not firmly rooted in generative unanimity and now appears inconclusive. 298 penal system owes its origins to generative violence 299 legal punishment has an aleatory character readily recognizable in the numerous intermediary forms bet the religious and judicial spheres, notably in the case of the "ordeal".... single mechanism: assures the communities' spontaneous and unanimous outburst of opposition to the surrogate victim. 306 All religious rituals spring from the surrogate victim, and all the great institiutions of mankind, both secular and religious, spring from ritual. Conclusion 309 operating procedures of violent unanimity 310 surrogate vicitm theory over theory of evolution 312 games originate in rites that have been divested of their sacred character 315 surrogate victim theory avoides impressionism of the positivist approach and arbitrary and reductivist schemata of p/a. 317 modern mind still cannot bringg itself to acknowledge the basic principle behind that mechanism which curtails reciprocal violence and imposes structure on the community. 318 We are not dealing with the sort of repressed desires that everyone is really eager to put on public display, but with the most tenacious myths of modernism; witheverything, in short, that claims to be free of mythical influence. We have managed to extricate ourselves from the sacred somewhat more successfully than other societies have done, to the point of losing all memory of the generative violence; but we are now about to rediscover it. The essential violence returns to us in a spectacular manner--not only in the form of a violent history but also in the form of subversive knowledge.