Abstract

This dissertation attempts to explain the violent history of the West as a function, of the ways in which the project of identity formation is carried out in individuals and in human communities. The work suggests that the "home" site of identity formation, whatever its size and context, may assert itself in the world and over against other alien identity structures according to a "logic of domination" that was communicated in, and is bequeathed by, ancient rituals of violence that were practiced pervasively throughout the early history of Western cultures. ;Rituals of mutilation, expulsion and sacrifice were performed over centuries and perhaps even millennia in early human communities in order to draw upon ritual's perceived power to bring solidity and coherence to disordered communities. These rituals communicated a logic of domination that asserted the identity of the community on the basis of the murder or metaphorical murder of alien persons. This dissertation proposes that these rituals have bequeathed to subsequent generations, through a legacy that inheres in their matter and through the structuring of their conceptual systems, a bifurcated worldview that sees some beings as pure and some as corrupt and infectious. They may have bred in subsequent cultural formations their, logic of aggressive expulsion and their pathologies of defense that assert self-sameness on the basis of countercultural rejection. This dissertation submits that the violent history of the West and the continued explosions of ethnic conflict today may be re-enactments of these early violent performative histories