← Throughlines of Modern ThoughtTimeline · Network · Throughlines

A term · 8 claims · lectures 20

Scapegoat

bouc émissaire / victime émissaire

The substitute victim, largely arbitrary and innocent, on whom a divided group converges and onto whom its violence is projected.

The 8 claims that turn on it

In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.

Lecture 20Violence and the Sacred - René Girard

GirardL20 · 34:53Core idea

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.

GirardL20 · 35:36Core idea

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.

GirardL20 · 38:01

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.

GirardL20 · 40:09

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.

ShoreL20 · 40:32

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.

GirardL20 · 46:55

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.

GirardL20 · 47:29Core idea

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.

GirardL20 · 51:28

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.

How these claims connect

Links from these claims to others in the course. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.

Girard disputes Lévi-Strauss

Lévi-StraussCultural 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. L20 · 18:29

GirardBeneath 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. L20 · 46:55

Charges that staying at the level of signifiers misses the real victim beneath every myth.

Girard builds on Girard

GirardThe 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. L20 · 34:18

GirardThe violence of a sacrificial crisis is resolved only when the rivals turn away from each other and together expel a scapegoat, a surrogate victim. L20 · 34:53

Says the crisis of distinctions is resolved only by converging on a scapegoat.

Girard turns over Girard

GirardMyth, 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. L20 · 47:29

GirardFor 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. L20 · 50:13

Christianity reverses the mythic vantage point, telling the killing from the victim's side.

Girard turns over Freud

FreudHuman aggression is a standing threat to any society, so living together means constantly suppressing it; the hostility we cannot aim at others gets turned back on ourselves. L9 · 43:03

GirardThe mob's fundamental misattribution: it shifts its own violence onto the victim, who is then taken to have been its cause. L20 · 40:09

Violence is thrown outward onto a victim rather than turned inward and repressed

Related terms

Terms that appear in the same claims.

mythFor Girard, an account of the scapegoat's killing from the killers' standpoint, telling it so as to justify the violence.

sacrificial (mimetic) crisisThe point at which mutual imitation has erased a community's distinctions and reciprocal violence threatens the cultural order itself.

Verdrängung

repressionPushing disturbing desires and memories out of awareness into the unconscious, where they persist; for Freud it underlies neurosis and, on a larger scale, civilization.

das Unbewusste

the unconsciousFor Freud, most of mental life: repressed wishes and memories that drive thought, feeling and symptoms while staying outside awareness; consciousness is only a fleeting surface.