Violence and the Sacred - René Girard

Shore’s own judgments and connections

Nobody wants anything purely from within. Desire is mimetic: we come to want a thing by imitating someone else who already wants it.

Put simply Girard: we don't want things purely on our own. We want them because someone else does, and we copy that wanting ("mimetic" desire). Shore's example: a toddler wants whichever toy the other child holds.

The sacrificial crisis is "a crisis of distinctions": cultural order is nothing but a system of differences that fixes who each person is relative to everyone else.

Put simply Girard: when rivalry spreads until it threatens a society (the "sacrificial crisis"), what breaks down is distinctions. A culture's order is nothing but a system of differences that fixes who each person is relative to others.

The violence of a sacrificial crisis is resolved only when the rivals turn away from each other and together expel a scapegoat, a surrogate victim.

Put simply Girard: the violence ends only when the rivals stop fighting each other and turn together against one victim, a "scapegoat", and drive that person out.

Killing or expelling the surrogate victim unifies everyone against that one figure; the act works as a purge, and through it order returns.

Put simply Girard: killing or driving out the scapegoat unites everyone against that one person. It works like a cleansing, and through it order comes back.

Double transference: the one victim is held responsible both for the disorder before the killing and for the peace after it, the pharmakos, poison and remedy in one.

Put simply Girard: the crowd blames the same victim both for the chaos before the killing and for the peace after it. He calls this "double transference". The victim becomes the "pharmakos", at once poison and cure.

Myth, in Girard's strict sense, is the scapegoat's murder recounted by the murderers, told so as to sanctify it: the violence was necessary to expel worse violence.

Put simply Girard uses "myth" in a narrow sense: the killing of a scapegoat as told by the killers, told to make it holy, as if the violence was needed to drive out worse violence.

Girard seduces the way Marx does, Shore thinks: by totality. Inside the system everything seems explained, as though glasses had been put on and the world's hidden secrets appeared.

Put simply Shore thinks Girard is seductive the way Marx is: his system seems to explain everything. Inside it, it feels like putting on glasses that reveal the world's hidden secrets.

Girard stands to Lévi-Strauss a bit as Heidegger to Husserl, in Shore's analogy: Lévi-Strauss has more scientific neutrality; Girard, in a darker key, finds structuralism too cut off from life.

Put simply Shore's comparison: Girard is to Lévi-Strauss somewhat as Heidegger was to Husserl. Lévi-Strauss is the more scientifically neutral; Girard, in a darker mood, finds structuralism too cut off from real life.

Structuralism decenters the individual: on Eagleton's gloss, myths do the thinking, running through people rather than arising from any one consciousness or aiming at any particular end.

Put simply Eagleton's account of structuralism: the individual is no longer the center. Myths do the thinking, passing through people rather than coming from any one mind or aiming at any goal.

Shore sorts thinkers into those who dismantle systems and those who build them, and places Girard firmly among the builders, with Hegel and Marx.

Lévi-Strauss, Girard objects, stops at signs that point only to other signs; analysis has to push through the structure to the anterior human reality underneath.

Put simply Girard's objection to Lévi-Strauss: he stops at signs that only point to other signs. We must dig beneath the structure to the human reality that came before it.

Cultural phenomena, on Girard's summary of Lévi-Strauss, work like languages: signs mean nothing in isolation, only through other signs, so symbolic forms are read from within, never referred beyond themselves.

Put simply Girard's summary of Lévi-Strauss: culture works like a language. Signs mean nothing alone, only through other signs, so cultural symbols must be read from inside the system, never traced to something beyond it.

Nobody wants anything purely from within. Desire is mimetic: we come to want a thing by imitating someone else who already wants it.

Put simply Girard: we don't want things purely on our own. We want them because someone else does, and we copy that wanting ("mimetic" desire). Shore's example: a toddler wants whichever toy the other child holds.

Desire runs on a triangle of subject, mediator and object, and its energy flows from the subject's relation to the mediator; the object itself barely matters.

Put simply Girard pictures desire as a triangle: me, the person I copy (the "mediator"), and the thing we both want. What drives it is my relation to the person I copy; the thing itself hardly matters.

Because imitated wanting converges on the same things, especially scarce ones, mimetic desire turns into rivalry, and rivalry left unchecked turns into violence.

Put simply Girard: since copied desires aim at the same things, especially things in short supply, imitation turns people into rivals, and rivalry left unchecked turns into violence.

Girard calls it the scandal: the mediator whose desire one copies also blocks access to the object, so the same person is admired and hated at once.

Put simply Girard's "scandal": the person whose wanting I copy also stands between me and what I want. So I admire and hate the same person at once.

External mediation, where real social distance separates subject from mediator, restrains rivalry; internal mediation, where that distance has collapsed, lets it escalate toward violence. The two form a continuum.

Put simply Girard: when a wide social gap separates me from the person I copy ("external mediation"), rivalry stays in check. When the gap closes ("internal mediation"), it can escalate into violence. The two lie on one scale.

The sacrificial crisis is "a crisis of distinctions": cultural order is nothing but a system of differences that fixes who each person is relative to everyone else.

Put simply Girard: when rivalry spreads until it threatens a society (the "sacrificial crisis"), what breaks down is distinctions. A culture's order is nothing but a system of differences that fixes who each person is relative to others.

The violence of a sacrificial crisis is resolved only when the rivals turn away from each other and together expel a scapegoat, a surrogate victim.

Put simply Girard: the violence ends only when the rivals stop fighting each other and turn together against one victim, a "scapegoat", and drive that person out.

Killing or expelling the surrogate victim unifies everyone against that one figure; the act works as a purge, and through it order returns.

Put simply Girard: killing or driving out the scapegoat unites everyone against that one person. It works like a cleansing, and through it order comes back.

The persecutors feel wholly passive, as if the scapegoat controlled them even as they attack; every cause gets attributed to the victim, none to themselves.

Put simply Girard: the attackers feel they are only reacting, as if the victim controlled them even while they attack. They blame the victim for everything and themselves for nothing.

For Girard, the founding moment of civilization is a collective murder: the group experiences "a supremely evil and then beneficent being," and that experience cannot help gripping it.

Put simply Girard: civilization begins with a group murder. The group meets a being that seems first utterly evil, then, once dead, a source of good, and that experience cannot fail to grip it.

The mob's fundamental misattribution: it shifts its own violence onto the victim, who is then taken to have been its cause.

Put simply Girard: when a crowd turns on a scapegoat, it blames the victim for the violence the crowd itself is doing.

Where Freud has violence repressed into the unconscious, Girard has it transferred outward onto a surrogate victim: projected onto someone else rather than locked in the psyche.

Put simply Shore's contrast: Freud says we push violence down into the unconscious mind. Girard says we push it out onto a substitute victim, blaming someone else instead of locking it inside ourselves.

Double transference: the one victim is held responsible both for the disorder before the killing and for the peace after it, the pharmakos, poison and remedy in one.

Put simply Girard: the crowd blames the same victim both for the chaos before the killing and for the peace after it. He calls this "double transference". The victim becomes the "pharmakos", at once poison and cure.

The victim, though chosen largely arbitrarily, acquires mystical potency through double transference; it merges into what Girard calls the Sacred, taking a godlike role.

Put simply Girard: though picked almost at random, the victim gains a mysterious power, because the crowd credits it with both the chaos and the peace. It merges into what Girard calls "the Sacred" and takes on a godlike role.

Double transference, for Hamerton-Kelly, is the mob misreading its causes: rivalry made the disorder, convergence against the victim made the peace; the victim was catalyst or passive object, never cause.

Put simply Hamerton-Kelly: the crowd misreads its causes. Its own rivalry caused the chaos, and its uniting against the victim caused the peace. The victim was at most a trigger or a passive target, never the cause.

Prohibitions work negatively to prevent renewed mimetic conflict: they tend to fence off goods that cannot be shared peacefully and keep categories apart, sacred from profane, class from class.

Put simply Girard: prohibitions, the "must nots", exist to stop rivalry flaring up again. They tend to wall off things that cannot be shared peacefully and keep categories apart: sacred from everyday, one class from another.

Ritual is prohibition's positive twin, what must be done: it typically recalls or re-enacts the founding sacrifice in a controlled form, reaffirming that sacrifice and the order built on it.

Put simply Girard: ritual is the "must do" that pairs with prohibition's "must not." It usually recalls or re-enacts the founding sacrifice in a controlled form, reaffirming that sacrifice and the order built on it.

Beneath every myth lies a real victim and a real sacrifice; the story is never self-contained, and one can always dig back through it to the killing.

Put simply Girard: behind every myth lies a real victim who was really killed. A myth never stands on its own; you can always dig back through the story to the killing.

Myth, in Girard's strict sense, is the scapegoat's murder recounted by the murderers, told so as to sanctify it: the violence was necessary to expel worse violence.

Put simply Girard uses "myth" in a narrow sense: the killing of a scapegoat as told by the killers, told to make it holy, as if the violence was needed to drive out worse violence.

A myth yields truth when inverted: read it from the victim's side, because for Girard the reality a myth refers to is always located with its victim.

Put simply Girard: to find the truth in a myth, turn it around and read it from the victim's side, because what really happened always lies with the victim.

For Girard, Christianity breaks the mythic tradition: it tells the murder of Jesus from the murdered man's standpoint rather than the crucifiers', so one identifies with the victim, not the crowd.

Girard, on Shore's reading, turns the death of God around: what matters is not God's absence but the killing, that we killed him, and the recognition that we did.

Put simply Shore's reading: Girard turns the "death of God" around. What counts is not that God is gone but that we killed him, and that we recognize we did.

Sacrifice is what culture is built on, yet there is a way beyond it: identifying with the victim is the route past sacrifice and toward truth.

Put simply Girard: culture is built on sacrifice, yet there is a way beyond it. Taking the victim's side is the route past sacrifice and toward the truth.

Hitler is appointed chancellor (January 30, 1933) after the Nazis become the largest party in the 1932 elections.

Show trial of Milada Horáková.

Slánský trial and executions in Prague (Otto Katz among the condemned).

Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque

Violence and the Sacred La Violence et le sacré

Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde

The Scapegoat Le Bouc émissaire

Literary Theory: An Introduction