In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FROM SACRIFICIAL VIOLENCE TO RESPONSIBILITY: THE EDUCATION OF MOSES IN EXODUS 2-4 Sandor Goodhart Purdue University When toward the end of his life Moses tried to stave off death, God said to him: "Did I tell you to slay the Egyptian?" (Midrash in Plaut 383) I. Education in Plato and Judaism The word "education", of course, comes from the Latin, educare, meaning "to lead out" or "to (...) bring up," and both its Latinate morphology and the semantic value it assumes in English reflect its peculiar history. To "lead out" implies in the first place leadership, which is to say a relationship between one designated as a "leader" and another (or others) designated as the "led." The notion of leadership also entails a movement through which the leader propels the led, namely from a region designated as "inside," to another designated as "outside." Within the Western context, which is to say, within the Western European historical experience which traces itselfback through the romance language speaking countries to Rome and ultimately to Greece, the primary articulator ofthe notion of education we have inherited is, of course, Plato. Although Plato's Republic is nominally about justice, and even more specifically the "just" state, commentators have long pointed out that it is really about education (see, for example, Havelock). How shall the guardians ofthe state that we shall term "just" be educated?, Plato's interlocutors ask themselves. In this regard, of course, Plato was challenging the educational system already in place at the time at the head of which was Homer and the Homeric epics, and substituting for an older oral culture founded on an elaborate system of mnemonics another founded more decisively upon writing and the alphabet. Some have argued that in place of a aural or Sandor Goodhart1 3 hearing-centered culture Plato was inaugurating a visual or video-centric cultural organization, and much work is currently being done in this area (see, for example, Ong). What was Plato's educational solution? It was an appeal, in short, to the true, to the language of reason, and to the realm of the ontological as the context in which the true could be defined. The true, as the phenomenological tradition has taught us, may be regarded as the separation of that which has being from that which does not have being, that which only appears or seems to be from that which truly is. Reason in this context is the method or modality ofthinking by which such difference or distinction between the true and the false becomes articulated. Education may then be said to be the process by which all of this occurs, by which one learns to separate appearances from reality, the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable, and thereby the process by which one avoids slavery. For at bottom the enemy for Plato remains slavery and the goal remains freedom from its ravages. Plato, for one, defines his program in specific opposition to Greek tragedy, which he takes among the species ofmimesis or of mimetic poesis that he cites to be the worst threat to his program of absolute difference. The tragic poets leave us without an antidote, he tells us, to its irresistible seductions. Even the best of us—by which he would certainly include Socrates, who has been educating these young men about the processes of education—go to the theater, follow the theatrical performance with enthusiasm, beat their breasts along with the players, and finally praise as most worthy those playwrights who most enable this enthusiasm to take place. The distinction between the true and the mimetic, between the true and the imitational or representational, between that which has being and that which only shadows being, is always on the verge of collapsing in this context. And as a consequence the only safe state, Plato tells us, is the one that excludes theatrical performance from its premises. There is no place in the present context to develop any further the complicated relationship Plato has with his predecessors, and I have hinted at this relationship elsewhere (see Goodhart 261). Suffice it to say that Plato remains in this regard the master in Western circles ofall... (shrink)

The dominant narrative today of modern political power, inspired by Foucault, is one that traces the move from the spectacle of the scaffold to the disciplining of bodies whereby the modern political subject, animated by a fundamental fear and the will to live, is promised security in exchange for obedience and productivity. In this essay, I call into question this narrative, arguing that that the modern political imagination, rooted in Hobbes, is animated not by fear but instead by the desire (...) for glory and immortality, a desire that is spectacularly displayed in the violence of the modern battlefield. I go on to argue that Hannah Arendt, writing in the ruins of the Second World War, rethinks the modern legacy of political glory. I claim that Arendt's reflections on violence and glory, which she rethinks from her earliest writings on violence in the 1940s to her later reflections on war in the 1960s, offer the possibility of a new political imagination wherein glory and the desire for immortality is now rooted in the responsibility of bearing an enduring world. (shrink)

We argue that limiting the theory of extreme self-sacrifice to two determinants, namely, identity fusion and group threats, results in logical and conceptual difficulties. To strengthen Whitehouse's theory, we encourage a more holistic approach. In particular, we suggest that the theory include exogenous sociopolitical factors and constituents of the religious system as additional predictors of extreme self-sacrifice.

This article explores the allusive strategy of the late second-century cento-tragedy Medea attributed to Hosidius Geta, which recounts Medea's revenge against Jason using verses from the works of Virgil. It argues that the text's author recognized a consistent strand of characterization in earlier treatments of the Medea myth, whereby the heroine's filicide is presented as a corrupted sacrifice. Geta selectively uses verses from thematically significant episodes in the Aeneid—the lying tale of Sinon and the death of Laocoön; the murder of (...) Priam; the suicide of Dido—at key points to foreground the theme of pseudo-sacrificial violence. Geta's use of Virgil evinces a keen appreciation both of the symbolism of the broader mythic tradition in which his text is situated and of the original narrative contexts of the verses he recycles. The article's findings contribute to a growing recognition of the creative potential afforded by the cento technique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sacrificial "As-If" and Avuncular HilarityLiving by MéconnaissanceWiel Eggen (bio)INTRODUCTION: THE CURIOUS QUESTIONAt my departure for anthropological fieldwork in the Central African Republic (RCA), just after Girard's seminal work La Violence et le sacré had come to upset my structuralist tutors in Paris, I was given a list of penetrating questions to probe in the field, since my research was to be conducted in an area known for (...) its a-cephalous traditions with little or no political or religious centralization.1 The prime critique concerned Girard's apparent return to a bluntly utilitarian vision of myth and religion as the mental framework of society's ritual foundations, in line with Durkheim's functionalist analysis of archaic religion, which was finely reworded in Lord Raglan's recent preface to a cluster of Hocart's articles titled The Life-Giving Myth.2 The approach had come to dominate, as a way of unraveling outdated transcendentalist claims, and also underpinned Freudian and Marxist attacks on religion. After Kant's Critique of Pure Reason had given the lie to any claims of access to transcendent realms, the deontological view of religion as society's functionalist toolbox for orderly [End Page 69] conduct became dominant. But, inspired also by such "masters of suspicion" in human sciences, structuralism had set out even beyond that utilitarian perspective. In a decisive bolt of relativism, it took myths to be a mere mental ordering of daily observations into a logical frame, independent of any ritual or social utility. So, how could Girard once again declare social control via rituals to be religion's true aim, allot a prime role to sacrificial rites, and, most alarmingly, thereby raise the suspicion of aiming to rehabilitate Christian dogmas?I was urged to go and check this theory on sacrifices, scapegoating, social rivalry, and on the shaping of archaic society, its forms of authority, and even sacred kingship. Reflecting on the questions, though, I noted that they overlooked a critical point in Girard's hypothesis, which I read as reverse functionalism. In fact, Girard viewed religion's social function and the issuing cultural regulations as rooted in a radical "lie," or in what he labels méconnaissance. Worded in evolutionary terms, he hypothesized not so much a kind of Darwinian utilitarian adaptation, but rather the alternative of "exaptation," or what has been called an oblique functionalism.After I had learned enough of the Banda language to start my research, though, my schedules were thrown in disarray on my first evening in the village that was to be my starting point. It presented me with a curious quandary. The village of Wademi, some 25 km north of Ippy, in the sparsely populated wooded savannah, was home to two exogamous patrilineal clans that straddle a little river and sit on a dirt road constructed by the colonial power for the collection of cotton. To oversee this two-clan unit a chief had been appointed with the title of makonji, a loanword from the national Sango language. This gentle, friendly man had offered to host me in his own cemented house and organized a welcome for me in the customary way of staging a pleasant storytelling session, punctuated with joyous songs and dances, lasting well into the night. Most of the stories and songs figured Tere, the famous trickster figure, who resembles Ture in neighboring Azande-land, well documented by E. Evans-Pritchard.3 The enjoyable, moonlit session was shot through with outbursts of laughter. It brought the two clans together, including the women and children. Before turning in, the makonji's junior son, who had been assigned my assistant and interpreter, came to convey his father's sincere but puzzling query, whether Tere actually was the same as Jesus Christ. Actually, his French name in Banda phonetics implied so: Christ Jésu = Tre se te jesu; and "Jesu Christ = Jesu Tre."4 Taken by surprise and much in need of some rest after a rather demanding day, I politely asked to let the issue rest till the morning.This question was all the more disturbing, as Christians were wont to call Jesus the Lord, and relate this to chieftaincy... (shrink)

Religion has become a vital resource for attempts to rethink the meaning of the political. This article rehearses the efforts of two recent figures, René Girard and Giorgio Agamben, to transform the political by renewing its connection to religion. Both thinkers struggle to escape politics as defined by Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction. Girard and Agamben do clash ideologically, but their inquiries into sacrifice and messianism take similar courses. Regarding origins, Girard argues for the sacrificial crisis as the common parent (...) to religion and politics. Conversely, for Agamben, the Roman figure of homo sacer distinguishes politics from religion. With respect to the future, Girard's messianism installs Christian belief as the only way to move beyond violence. By contrast, Agamben steers Pauline messianism toward the efforts to displace sovereignty and reopen the political. I conclude that Agamben breaks with Schmitt while Girard reinscribes his politics at a higher level. Key Words: Giorgio Agamben • Rey Chow • Christianity • René Girard • homo sacer • messianism • politics • sacred • sacrifice • Carl Schmitt. (shrink)

:This article revisits Michael Haneke's Caché as a filmic transformation of the traditional bond between sacrificial violence, morality and community building. By drawing mainly on striking correspondences with Jacques Derrida's view of the “mystical” origin of authority and of the limits of moral representation, the article aims to probe into Haneke's strategies of concealment. In so doing, the article proposes a “postsecular” interpretation of the symbolic meaning of the enigmas of the “ghost director” within the film, and of (...) Majid's theatrical self-sacrifice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Violence, Sacrifice, and Conflict Resolution in the Works of Paul Claudel Christopher G. Flood University ofSurrey, England Claudel's career as a writer spanned almost seventy years, from the 1880s to the 1950s. The publication of his collected works now runs to twenty-nine large volumes, excluding his correspondence and diaries, so a brief overview of any particular dimension of his writing must necessarily be reductive. On the other (...) hand, Claudel's work lends itself particularly well to discussion in terms of the relationship between violence, sacrifice and religion. In a valuable study published more than twenty years ago under the title, Claudel et l'usurpateur, Jacques Petit drew attention to the recurrence in Claudel's plays, and in many of his non- fictional writings, of a narrative structure hinging on acts of usurpation and counter-usurpation. There is a pattern of conflictual rivalry, domination and coercion, whereby acts of aggression are ultimately legitimized, or in some sense excused, in the light of a positive outcome, providential necessity and/or reconciliation between usurper and victim. Claudel's world is indeed "a world of violence," as Petit puts it (79, ch. title).1 It is also a world ofreligion: after his return to the Catholic Church in 1890, all of Claudel's major dramatic works intermesh the process of usurpation with themes deriving from his religious beliefs, and the same is true of many of his non-fictional writings. My aim is not to reinvent the wheel by going back over all of the terrain mapped out by Petit. Nor do I intend to rework Petit's empirical model wholesale in the light of René Girard's anthropological model of mimetic desire and sacrificial violence, although there are obvious areas of convergence between them. However, I shall draw implicitly on both, in order to Translations throughout this paper are my own. 160Christopher G. Flood argue that the notion of sacrifice, which is central to the resolution of rivalries in Claudel's major plays, is transformed into an idiosyncratic conception of international conflict resolution in various non-fictional writings which emerge from his forty years of experience in his parallel career as a profes sional diplomat.2 1 shall start with a schematic discussion of certain features of the plays. The first point relates to Claudel's assumptions concerning the mechanisms involved in the outbreak of individual or collective violence. It needs to be emphasized that in his plays the path towards violence is always opened by a withdrawal or weakening of temporal and/or spiritual authority. This allows the crystallization, and the direct expression, of latent rivalries which eventually lead to an explosion of aggression. The causes of the violence invariably center on the fact that one individual or group is in possession of an object which is coveted by another individual or group. The question of whether Claudel himself appears to recognize a mimetic element in this pattern of behavior would be too complex, and too fraught with imponderables, to discuss here, but there are some indications that he does so. Whatever the case, in the absence of authority, rivalry and jealousy engender verbal, and usually physical conflict, culminating in usurpation of the desired object. Thus, for example, in Tête d'or, the elderly Emperor of the unnamed kingdom has neither the authority nor the resolution to defend his kingdom against external invasion, or against the man who saves the kingdom only to usurp the throne and murder the Emperor himself.3 Similarly, in the second version of La Ville, neither Besme, the positivistic scientist and plutocrat who has created the godless City, nor his brother Lambert, the former politician, has the will to maintain or defend the society against the tensions emerging within it. Thus, the City dissolves first into immobility, then revolution. Or again, in the family drama of La Jeune Fille Violaine (second version), the obsessional rage andjealousy ofMara towards her elder sister, Violaine, explodes into coercion, slander, and horrific violence when their father absents himself from the farm for an indefinite period, leaving Violaine to marry Jacques Hury: the fact that Hury loves Violaine, but does not love Mara, makes the latter all the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE IN HINDU RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS Francis X. Clooney, SJ. Boston College Outline I.Violence, Sacrifice and Ritual 1. Some basic attitudes toward the killing of animals 2.Resolving the problem of sacrificial violence by internalization 3.Substitutions 4.Renunciation and nonviolence: an elite pathway 5.Violence andnonviolenceinrelation to vegetarianism: Hans Schmidt's theses?. Traditional Hindu Theorizations of Violence in Mimamsa Ritual Theory and Vedanta Theology 1. The (...) ritual analysis (at Mimamsa Sutra 1.1.2) of the Shyena rite which is performed in order to harm enemies 2.The Vedanta analysis (at Uttara Mimamsa Sutra 3.1.25) of ritual violence in relation to the prohibition of violence??. Violence in the Life of the State HOFrancis X. Clooney, S.J. 1. The royal power to punish (danda) 2.The synthesis of the ideals of brahmin and king a..The distribution and management of violence in the Laws ofManu (1st century CE) b. Policy toward warfare in the Arthashastra of Kautilya 3.The collapse of the brahmanical synthesis—and the emergence of a (seemingly) more nonviolent Hinduism 4.A comment on Gandhi (1 869-1948) and the contemporary emergence of post-Gandhian Hindu perspectives IV.Alternate Views from Outside the Sanskritic Tradition 1. Tamil Wisdom on Violence and Nonviolence: a.Tirukkural (c. 2nd century CE) b.Cilappatikaram (5th century CE) 2.Blood and Goddesses 3.From a Village Perspective a. Some Trouble with Cows b.Mahasweta Devi and the Literary Exposure of Violence V.The Question of a Christian Perspective on the Hindu Treatment of Violence and Religion: Are Victims Necessary? Some Presuppositions: • The following reflections, complex as they are, are governed by a reluctance to simplify Hindu teaching. I seek to avoid the view that the Hindu traditions had only one view of violence and nonviolence. • I use the term "Hindu" loosely and as a shorthand, without claiming that there is a single Hindu tradition, or a single creed shared by all Hindus, or a single attitude toward violence. But neither do I claim that there are simply many traditions without any common elements which justify the appellation "Hindu." • I am reluctant to idealize the Hindu traditions as if nonviolence must necessarily be taken as the epitome ofHindu thought. India's traditions are complex, and require complex treatment. • A serious artificiality of this paper is that I treat Hinduism without simultaneously lookinginto Buddhist andJain materials, though both were traditions with important and enduring commitments to nonviolence. Particularly with respect to the renunciant, marginal components of traditions, one ought not to make overly neat or decisive distinctions Violence and Nonviolence in Hindu Religious Traditions 1 1 1 between the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain theories and practices related to violence and nonviolence. • I attempt to give preference to indigenous discussions ofissues related to violence and nonviolence; the context and mode of thinking are important, notjust the conclusions drawn. I therefore avoid simply mining Hindu texts for an answer to a contemporary question, "What is the Hindu attitude toward violence and nonviolence?" • In most ofwhat follows we must distinguish contexts where "violence" indicates "physical action which causes pain to some living being," from contexts where "violence" indicates "an intention, rooted in anger or malice, to hurt someone." I use the word "violence" for both in order to highlight the complex issues of distinction involved. In considering the Sanskrit formulations, one likewise has to distinguish himsa as "causing pain" from himsa as "intending to harm." • It is often difficult to date ancient texts, and even when one narrows down a date—within 200-300 years—its significance still depends on other, often equally broadly stated dates. Nevertheless, I do offer dates throughout, as summarized here: •ancient Vedic sacrificial practices, from before 1200 BCE •Vedic ritual analyses and reformulations of sacrifices as ritualized acts, in the Brahmanas, from after 1000 BCE •the Upanishadic exploration of the deeper meanings of ritual and interiorized alternatives to ritual, from after 900 BCE •the Buddha, c. 500 BCE •key texts in the theorization of royal power, The Laws of Manu (beginning of Common Era) and Arthashastra (c. 150 CE) •the Tamil wisdom text Tirukkural (100 CE) •Goddess texts as evidenced in Sanskrit formulations, from after 500 CE... (shrink)

Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, and Joel and Ethan Coen’s film adaptation of the same name, deliver two separate critiques of sacrificial violence through their particular renderings of Carla Jean Moss’s death scene, as they correspond, respectively, to the theories of René Girard and Slavoj Žižek. In both film and novel, the chase narrative offers a concrete representation of runaway acquisitive mimesis engendering resentment and cathartic violence. This violence is symbolically manifest in the character (...) of Anton Chigurh. An assassin whose killings often employ a ritual of chance, Chigurh is a symbol for both the violence foundational to culture and the fascinating draw such violence continues to have .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sacrificial and Nonsacrificial Mass NonviolenceJohn Roedel (bio)Have been awake since 2 a.m. God’s grace alone is sustaining me. I can see there is some grave defect in me somewhere which is the cause of all this. All round me is utter darkness.—M. K. Gandhi, diary entry, dated January 2, 1947.1During the last few years of Gandhi’s life, massive rioting verging on civil war tore India apart, despite Gandhi’s (...) best efforts to calm the situation and despite repeated, widespread, politically successful mass nonviolent actions by large segments of the Indian populace in the previous decades. There have been many analyses of the violent births of India and Pakistan, but none that I know of have taken seriously Gandhi’s intuitions of his own responsibility. At most, intuitions such as these have been taken as further evidence of the Mahatma’s profound humility.I will not suggest that Gandhi bore some moral responsibility for this violence, but I will suggest that his (and others’) ignorance of what I will term the sacrificial aspects of mass nonviolence did have a role to play. I will model my distinction between sacrificial and nonsacrificial nonviolence on Girard’s [End Page 221] distinction between sacrificial and nonsacrificial Christianity as presented in Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, and will attempt to use this distinction to suggest how violence might arise out of the practice of mass nonviolence, using the example of the nonviolent movement for Indian independence as an example. I hope that my speculations may also shed light on other puzzling aspects of mass nonviolence, such as the reason why, despite the many political successes of nonviolence, nonviolent movements have never become more widely established, and have for the most part been limited to ad hoc movements.2In Girard’s view, sacrificial practices such as I am proposing as part of mass nonviolence are ubiquitous, destructive, and mostly invisible. Girard writes, “every negation of the other leads... towards expulsion and murder. The basis for all of this lies in the fundamental human situation of a mimetic rivalry that leads to a destructive escalation.”3 That is, every negation of the other contributes to widening cycles of escalation that would lead to the extinction of humanity, were it not for sacrifice, which allows the rivalries to be discharged without consequences onto an individual outside the community—a scapegoat.There is not much agreement about how nonviolence functions or even about what the word “nonviolence” refers to. It will be defined here as a refusal to submit to or inflict violence, where “violence” includes not just physical violence but also verbal and structural violence, such as imperialism and poverty. Within such a definition, fleeing physically or otherwise from violence is a form of submission to the violence, and allows violence the last word, so to speak. Nonviolence is perhaps clearest in a face-to-face encounter with physical violence, as in the many civil disobedience actions of Gandhi’s career. But like violence, nonviolence also occurs in common, even subtle, situations, as in a conversation between friends.Beginning with Gandhi, a distinction has often been made between “strategic” and “principled” nonviolence. Strategic nonviolence is the contingent embrace of nonviolence as a tactic. Principled nonviolence is the unconditional embrace of nonviolence, on the basis of a moral or religious commitment. Gandhi spoke of principled nonviolence as a refusal to submit to or inflict violence out of unselfish love for the opponent. He spoke of strategic nonviolence as a means for achieving one’s goals; in his opinion, this was not really nonviolence at all, but a simulacrum of it. An individual may even sometimes be unable to distinguish the extent to which his own nonviolence is strategic or principled.To distinguish between strategic and principled nonviolence, according to Gandhi, it is necessary to explore the motivations and character formation of the nonviolent practitioner in question. For Gandhi, principled nonviolence [End Page 222] arises out of one’s “relationship to God” and a “deep sense of the intercon-nectedness of all beings.” Gandhi believed that in defense of truth, or in defense of the honor of oneself... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imitation, Violence, and ExchangeGirard and MaussPer Bjørnar Grande (bio)RECIPROCAL VIOLENCE AND THE DESIRE FOR WHAT THE OTHER DESIRESIn this article, I would like to draw attention to the potentially violent outcome of exchange interactions between individuals and groups. Both Girard and Mauss examine violence in a wider social and political process.1 According to Mauss, the smallest difference, such as a lack of reciprocity, may evoke a (...) desire for retribution. Understanding reactions when there is a lack of symmetry, real or illusory, can give us an important insight into the generative mechanisms behind violence. This is why traditional societies tried, often very successfully, to protect individuals through prohibitions and taboos. These prohibitions and taboos were directed against any kind of activity that could possibly result in violent rivalries among the population. The killing of adulterers, thieves, and foreigners can be seen as a way of ridding society of people perceived as having undesirable traits and ridding it of the potential imitation of their bad desires. In this way, a society's violence may function in a protective [End Page 221] and anti-mimetic way. The violence against transgressors is a kind of mimetic anti-mimesis, a way of telling people to follow the rules of society so that they will become mimetically immune to the forces that threaten society.Violent victimizing appears to fulfill a generative function by preventing transgressions, moral cleansing, and restoration of peace. At the same time, however, it bears (unconsciously for the participants) a similarity to what one wishes to expel, namely, the feared violence and negative influence of the person or persons who are victimized. Despite attempts to expel violent transgressions, the attempts themselves are quite similar to the violence they are trying to exorcise. Both Freud and Girard argue that those who conduct a rite of sacrifice are projecting onto the sacrificial victim qualities that reflect some of their own innermost concerns.2 Sacrificial violence, seen from a modern, nonsacrificial standpoint, is a kind of suicide. By killing the other, one also kills something in oneself.In demolishing the victim they are symbolically annihilating aspects of themselves. What is destroyed is destructiveness itself: the feelings of violence and hostility that lie behind attempts to carry out violent activities. Such feelings are antithetical to the ties of friendship that bond a community together, and feelings of violence towards one's peers and associates must be banished if a closely knit community—such as a tribal brotherhood, a spiritual fellowship, or a modern nation—is to survive.3Modern societies are full of these projections of one's own desires onto the other, which expose the modern variant of what is sacrifice, and which are often less physically but instead psychologically violent, yet still victimizing in their attitude of projecting. Terms such as "imitation," "identification," and "comparison" do not have to turn out to be violent—even when a great deal of competition is involved. In this respect, I disagree with some Girardians who claim that imitative desire must be violent and who look back to an insight going back to Heraclitus that violence is the source of all.4 The all-decisive factor is the gradual shift from competition to rivalry, from being allies to becoming enemies. The transition from being competitive friends to rivals comes as a result of imitation. Seen in this way, imitative desire is the generative force behind violence, the snake that turns friends and lovers into rivals.This Freudian act of projection resembles an act of doubling, an intense mimesis of the other that creates doubles. From a Girardian perspective, it is the clash of desire that leads to doubling, and later to violence.5 The imitation of each other's desires will sooner or later cause some kind of violence.6 This doubling does not only have to involve two people; it can be groups, even countries. [End Page 222] But the effect is always negative. Raymund Schwager explains it in the following terms:Whoever is desirous has to expect that the others will too. Whoever succumbs to rivalry arouses the same passion in others. Whoever resorts to violence is imitated in his or... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Starting from a philosophical, literary and historical frame of reference (Heraclitus, Hegel, Tolstoy, and Clausewitz), the paper aims to find a ‘deconstructive’ and anthropo-ethical way out of the binary opposition of war and peace (Levinas and Girard). ‘Apocalyptic reasoning’, inspired by a biblical view of man, gives insight into (in/un)human violence, and opens up a new perspective on necessary and possible conversion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Holy Communion: Altar Sacrament for Making a Sacrificial Sin Offering, or Table Sacrament for Nourishing a Life of Service? Paul J. Nuechterlein Emmaus Lutheran Church, Racine, WI The title spells out the alternative I would like the reader to consider: Is Holy Communion more appropriately considered the "table sacrament" or, as is more commonly accepted, the "altar sacrament "? I will make my preference clear. In Holy Communion, (...) I believe Jesus Christ to be offering nourishment for a different way to live —namely, the way offreely chosen service to others, as opposed to violent domination over others. "Table sacrament" more appropriately conveys the sense of nourishment toward a new life. I will support this positive reasoning in favor of "table sacrament" through an appeal to Christian scripture. I will also suggest a negative reasoning against "altar sacrament," by questioning whether the very reference to "altar" betrays a link to violence, with its base in the blood ofsacrifice. For this negative argument, the support will come primarily from the brilliant and far-reaching theories ofRené Girard regarding the relation between religion and violence. I would like us to consider whether the most obvious point of the relation between religion and violence—namely, rituals ofsacrifice—has been precariously intermingled with the church's practices and experiences of the "altar sacrament." Girard's theories force us to ask: Is not the altar ofsacrifice essentially the site for a ritualized form of collective violence? 202Paul J. Nuechterlein Girard contends that there are overwhelming cultural and anthropological forces that make it difficult for religions to free themselves from such violent underpinnings. He considers that all religions, in fact, are cultural manifestations ofa generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism, a natural human/social mechanism which contains an all-against-all, communitywide violence by means ofan all-against-one act of violence, i.e., a scapegoating. Religion is, according to this theory, the primary cultural institution that forms in the aftermath ofwhat Robert Hamerton-Kelly summarily calls the "Generative Mimetic Scapegoating Mechanism, or "GMSM" event (1994). Institutionalized religion fortifies the relative peace that the event has accomplished through a three-fold structure: (1) laws and prohibitions, established to prevent further outbreaks ofmimetic violence; (2) mythical stories of the GMSM event, told from the perspective of the perpetrators as a means to justify their violence and disguise it behind the veil of the sacred; and (3) ritual reenactments ofthe GMSM event, most commonly in the form of blood sacrifice, that channel any continuing violent impulses into structured, contained releases. We must be bold to ask of each religion, then, the ways in which it manifests and perpetuates the GMSM. This includes Christianity. To the extent that Christians practice religion, we can expect to find effects ofthe GMSM in essential aspects of the church, such as its practice ofthe "altar sacrament." Girardian support for my argument, however, does not end with this negative thesis regarding the "altar sacrament." Nor does Girardian criticism leave us with a wholly negative assessment of the Christian tradition. In fact, Girard himself experienced a conversion of sorts (see Golsan 129-30), as he began to see his basic premises and theories already revealed in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, especially the gospel narratives of Jesus Christ. He came to view the Christian faith—in spite of its susceptibility to the violent forces of religion—as unique in its core message ofrevealing the one true God. Contrary to the gods ofmythology, the Christian message, through Jesus Christ, reveals the true God to be on the side ofthe GMSM's victims. As such, the Gospel ofJesus Christ stands in opposition to the three-fold structure of religion: (1) it frees people from the oppressive systems oflaws and prohibitions;1 (2) it demythologizes the mythical stories told from the perspective of the perpetrators;2 and (3) it 1 A theme of St. Paul and his criticism of the Law? (see Hamerton-Kelly 1992). 2 A theme of St. John's emphasis on Jesus, the Lamb of God, as bearing witness to the Truth? Holy Communion203 makes obsolete the need for rituals of sacrificial violence.3 The Gospel opens up the way for new life, and for rituals that nourish the new... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Sacrificial Ram and the Swan QueenMimetic Theory Fades to BlackBrian Collins (bio)“We speak of a ‘black’ mirror. But where it mirrors, it darkens, of course, but it doesn’t look black, and that which is seen in it does not appear ‘dirty’ but ‘deep.’”—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on ColorThis paper explores the ways in which male and female bodies become the sites of mimetic desire and ritual violence (...) in Darren Aronofsky’s two companion films The Wrestler (109 min, Wild Bunch, 2008, DVD) and Black Swan (108 min, Fox Searchlight, 2010, DVD). Both films (which were originally intended to be one film, explaining their thematic consistency)1 share three elements. First, both explore cultural forms, wrestling and dance, respectively, that punish the body of the performer in a spectacular way. Second, both films end with the ritualistic dying (if not the death) of the main character. Third, in both films, this dying is accompanied by a kind of transformation that can only be called “becoming-animal.”2 Though this last point is much easier to demonstrate [End Page 207] in the case of Black Swan, I will argue that this is also true for The Wrestler. In interpreting these films, I will rely mainly on René Girard’s ideas about mimetic desire and the surrogate victim mechanism, supplemented by Slavoj Žižek’s notion of symbolic death. Symbolic death or “second death” is Žižek’s Hegelian appropriation of the psychoanalytic death drive. The death drive holds a special place for Girard, since he considers Freud’s formulation of the death drive his admission that the Oedipal complex cannot explain the compulsion to repetition, an admission for which he credits Freud’s honesty. In this paper, I demonstrate that pseudo-masochism, Girard’s alternate theory of repetition, and the Žižekian second death are both present in Black Swan and The Wrestler, and that each film plays on the animal/human distinction and ritual transformations of the body to explore these themes.Part One: The Sacrificial Ram“The function of the wrestler is not to win: it is to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him.”—Roland Barthes, “The World of Wrestling,” MythologiesThe Pseudo-Masochistic Body I: Becoming-RamWilliam Golding’s novel Pincher Martin: The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1956) follows a bitter, selfish, and intransigent sailor who finds himself clinging to a rock in the middle of the ocean, the sole survivor of a shipwreck, only to slowly learn that he is not a survivor at all, but is rather trapped like a character from The Twilight Zone in the utter loneliness of the timeless time between his titular “two deaths.” The first death comes when Martin goes down with his ship and the second comes when he is annihilated (possibly; the ending is ambiguous) by the “black lightning,” which Terry Eagleton identifies in his analysis of the book as “the fire of God’s ruthless love, which burns up those who cannot bear it.” Martin’s misotheism is his last defense against the terrifying power of love, and he continues to defy God as the black lightning engulfs him.3 Why the two deaths? Martin is unable to die properly the first time, Eagleton argues, “because he is incapable of love. Only the good are capable of dying. Martin cannot yield himself up to death because he has never been able to yield himself up to others in life.”4 [End Page 208]Randy “The Ram” Robinson, born Robin Ramzinski, (Mickey Rourke), the protagonist of The Wrestler, is, like Pincher Martin, between two deaths, isolated from the rest of humanity because of his inability to connect with others. But while Pincher Martin is defiant and bound for a self-created Hell because of his deliberate rejection of love, Ram is a much more sympathetic character—though no less doomed—because he tries but fails time after time to accept the love of those who could save him. Pincher Martin’s self-created internal obstacle is his hatred of God, externalized through his encounter with the black lightning. But in Ram’s case... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sacrificial Nationalism In Henrik Ibsen's The Pretenders William Mishler University ofMinnesota Even during his lifetime, the ambiguity essential to Henrik Ibsen's dramatic method gave rise to considerable interpretive debate. In the near century since his death new approaches to his work have steadily continued to arise in accord with the changes in critical and literary theory. We have had, writes Charles Lyons in a recent survey, Ibsen "the (...) realist, the iconoclast, the successful or failed idealist, the poet, the psychologist, the romantic, the antiromantic" (4). The extraordinary "hermeneutic generativity" evinced by Ibsen's plays cannot be attributed, in my view, solely to their aesthetic excellence or to changes in critical fashion, but as much or even more to the fact that they touch in a prescient way on conundrums inherent in modern life that are both fundamental and particularly intractable. In The Pretenders, for example, Ibsen composed an artistic meditation on the nature of nationalism which, seen from today's vantage point, can be called prophetic. The question the work implicitly poses might be formulated as follows: Is it possible for modern people to create a nation-state on a basis other than the threat of reciprocal violence? In other words, can a modern state attain to a condition ofpeace that would amount to something other that the mere stasis of fear? And if the answers to this question is negative—the work clearly asks—what will prevent the modern nation-state, which lacks the safeguards and restraints formerly supplied by various institutions of transcendent authority, from falling into desperate conditions? These are questions that are easy, even unavoidable, to pose today when we witness with horror the fires ignited by nationalism around the world. In mid-nineteenth century, however, when Ibsen wrote The Pretenders, the situation was vastly different. Then was the high noon of nationalistic optimism in Europe and America and elsewhere, the euphoric cultural moment when in the wake of the French and American Revolutions small 128William Mishler elites in numerous countries were shifting their spiritual and philosophical allegiance from outmoded agencies of order (religious, humanistic, transnational ) to the ethnically ordered collective. The story of this shift is a familiar one, no doubt, but one whose lessons only now are becoming fully apparent. In mid-nineteenth century Norway, nationalist enthusiasm was the order of the day. Accorded its independence from Denmark in 1814, and with it the end to 400 years of subjugation, Norway had good grounds to be enthusiastically self-preoccupied. Its historians engrossed themselves in the fervent recital of the national past, its artists worked to create works that celebrated the Norwegian spirit and projected images of future national greatness. In short, as the literary histories designate it, this was Norway's period of National Romanticism, and it was in this atmosphere that Ibsen in 1850, age 21, began composing plays. For the first dozen years of his career all of his plays were written in the National Romantic mode. It is true that his first play, Catalina, takes its subject matter from Roman history, but it is a Roman history largely stripped of its specificity and adapted for purposes ofpsychological allegory. Ibsen's next four plays all use material drawn from Norway's history and folklore. The Pretenders, begun in 1858 and completed in 1864, was the last and by common consensus the greatest of these. The most Shakespearean of Ibsen's plays, its plot material was taken from Norwegian historian P. A. Munch's account of Norway's civil wars in the thirteenth century. Ibsen chose the climactic moment when several of the deceased King Sverre's heirs were laying claim to the throne, directing his attention to the two major contenders, Sverre's grandson Hâkon and his rival Duke Skule, his maternal uncle and former guardian. The play traces the course of their rivalry from its inception to the final confrontation in which Skule is killed and Norway is united under King Hâkon. From the early days of Ibsen criticism the biographical approach, later amplified by various thematic readings, has been the dominant one to The Pretenders. In this view Skule and Hâkon are seen as vehicles... (shrink)

This paper will address Foucault’s analysis of the Hebrew and Christian pastor and argue that Foucault’s analysis of pastoral power in Security, Territory, Population neglects an important characteristic of the shepherd/pastor figure: violence. Despite Foucault’s close analysis of the early development of the Hebrew pastor, he overlooks the role of violence and instead focuses on sacrifice. However the sacrificial pastor does not figure in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew pastor is called to lead, feed and protect the (...) flock, not sacrifice for them. This is not to suggest that the theme of sacrifice is absent in the Hebrew Scriptures but that sacrifice is not a role attributed to the pastor until Jesus’ reinterpretation of the “good shepherd” in Chapter 10 of The Gospel of John.4 In distinguishing the Hebrew and Christian formulations of the pastor, the roles of violence and sacrifice in each can be understood more clearly. Beginning with the Hebrew Scriptures I will demonstrate the importance of violence in the figure of David as the first “shepherd of men”. I will argue that violence and the ability to protect the flock was a significant and determining characteristic of the Hebrew pastor. Contrary to Foucault’s assertion I will demonstrate that sacrifice was not a role attributed to the Hebrew pastor. While the words and life of Jesus provide a new sacrificial paradigm for understanding the “shepherd of men,” it is Paul who provides the foundation on which the practice of the Christian pastor is established in the Church. Therefore I will examine the writing of Paul to demonstrate the way violence operates in the Christian pastorate. I will argue that sacrifice does not replace violence but violence is subsumed in the sacrificial pastor and continues to operate. Finally I will suggest that the introduction of violence into Foucault’s analysis establishes a deeper connection between pastoral power and biopower. Thus, this connection engenders a richer understanding of the tension in Foucault’s work between care and violence in the poles of biopower: to make live and let die. (shrink)

Many proponents and opponents of the Corrida de Toros agree in describing the practice as a sacrifice. This surprising agreement is compounded by a further agreement that the sacrificial victim is the bull. In what follows, I contest both points. Beginning with the later, I argue that the victim is not the bull but the torero, especially the matador. Rather than seeing the corrida as the sacrifice of the bull, it is the deferred sacrifice of the torero, and the (...) crowd is on the side of the victim. Moreover, I argue that once the victim status of the matador has been appreciated, it can serve as the foundation for a new interpretation of... (shrink)

Although the family is the safest environment for each member, sometimes violence and abuse can come from the family members. Violence causes family relationships to deteriorate as in all other relationships among people. Sibling violence, as a form of domestic violence, can sometimes have dire consequences that can result in family breakup, death or long-term loss of one of the siblings. In this study, sibling violence, which has the potential to harm family relations in such (...) a way, will be discussed in the context of two stories in the Qurʾān. It is aimed to contribute to other disciplines that study on this subject by examining the attitude of Islam against this violence, which affects the family, and the solutions of the Qur’ān to sibling violence. These stories in the Qur’ān are the story of Prophet Adam’s two sons who narrate an incident of violence that result in the brother killing his brother, and the story of Prophet Joseph and his brothers who narrate the sibling violence resulting in long-term loss. Both stories provide clues to the prevention of violence in the light of the causes of sibling violence and the behavior of the victim sibling in the development of events. In addition, because of the fact that these stories have taken place in the family of the prophets, they give people the message that sibling violence can happen in any family.Summary: Because of the social nature of the mankind, it must live in structured societies. Family is the medium for him where he is born, raised, socializes and prepares for his future life. It is normal sentiments of love, mercy and tolerance which dominate in a family. But despite this, it is possible for a family member to be a transgressor against another family member’s rights. Emotions like jealousy and hostility can cause violence between siblings. Psychologists generally attribute the source of this kind of violence to the parents’ failure to show equal love and affection to all children. While this is an important cause for violence among the siblings, craving for attention and acceptance from society, trying to achieve material and sensual superiority and desire for social success can incite feelings of envy among the siblings. While feelings of jealousy is unproblematic when its intensity can be considered normal, it can cause psychological imbalance if it increases to the level beyond manageable limits. If the latter case occurs, this produces a state of mind where a sibling becomes capable of committing every act of transgression to another sibling, which is the most important cause for the violence among siblings.Archetypical stories of Cain and Abel, and Prophet Joseph in the Qur’ān provide some clues pertaining to recognition and prevention of violence among the siblings. In these two parables, the real reason for envy does not lie in the other sibling. According to the Qur’ān, the true reason for this envy is attributed exclusively to the transgressor. In the parable of Cain and Abel, source of the problem between the siblings is the sacrificial offering to Allah. While the offering of Abel was accepted, Cain’s was not. Cain felt jealous and threatened his brother with death. Facing with his brother’s threat, Abel stayed firm and peaceful, said to his brother that if he were to attack him, he will not retaliate even for self-defence. He reminded Cain that his envy and anger was not due to him, Abel. Abel reminded Cain that the act that Cain was contemplating was a great sin in Allah’s eyes and that it is punishable by eternal hellfire. Cain, despite these warnings, went on to implement his intention of murder successfully.When we inspect the parable we can see that Abel was free from any guilt on his part for his brother’s envy which is the source of his transgression. His sacrifice was accepted because Abel was among the pious and this doesn’t harm or effect negatively Cain in anyway. Therefore the main cause for the jealousy of Cain is his unworthiness in the eyes of Allah, in reality, the reason is solely Cain himself. Therefore it is totally unfair when Cain put the blame on his brother Abel. By the way of this example, the Qur’ān reminds mankind not to blame others for his problems and to take responsibility. Envy, which is the main reason for violence among siblings, will cloud judgment and prevent clear thinking. In the parable of Cain and Abel, the Qur’ān recommends not to taunt the already jealous sibling by way of words and actions and instead, encourages warning against the grave consequences of evil intentions both in this world and in the hereafter. In the parable of Prophet Joseph, because of jealousy of their father from Joseph, bigger brothers of Joseph planned to kill him but they give up on the idea of killing him and instead they dumped him in a well. Later on in the parable, some merchant finds Joseph and brings him to Egypt. There, Joseph becomes a high ranking statesman and meets with his older brothers. Because of the famine, older brothers are in need of Joseph for food and asks him for it, without knowing that the person they are asking from is their little brother, Joseph. Although Joseph faces with his brothers on a superior position his behavior exemplifies the best course of action to end violence among the siblings. In order to remove animosity and callousness from his brothers’ heart, the gradual plan that Joseph had implemented is a great example for healing the wounds that violence among the siblings can cause. It is unreasonable to expect all the animosity and jealousy that brothers of Joseph held for years to go away completely in a moment. Prophet Joseph did not remind his brothers of their crime, on the contrary he was very generous to them. He brought their father and their brother Benjamin to Egypt and in front of them Prophet Joseph forgave his older brothers for the crimes they had committed against him. In this way, Prophet Joseph prevented his brothers potentially denying every transgression they did if he were to confront them in their first meeting, and made them ready to accept their evil deeds.Parables of Cain and Abel and Prophet Joseph are important for recognizing that envy can destroy the mercy that the siblings innately have for each other. It is understood from the parables that envy must be controlled and violence can’t be realized under any circumstances. It is clear from these parables that violence is never a solution for the jealousy among the siblings. A positive and viable solution would be for Cain to seek Allah’s approval instead of killing Abel and for brothers of Joseph this would be to earn their father’s love and respect. Introspection and analysis regarding possible reasons for jealousy and trying to resolve them and striving to be a better human, sibling, or child is a solution prescribed by the Qur’ān. Also, importance of speaking in a soft tone with the person who is experiencing intense jealousy, avoiding provocative language and behavior and trying every possible way to set this person straight is emphasized. The Qur’ān reminds us through these two parables that the human nature is prone to evil suggestions from the satan and for this reason humans need generous and benevolent help from others in order to clear themselves from these evil temptations. (shrink)

Due to the ‘civilizing process’ (Elias), the overall level of violence is decreasing; yet its transforming patterns persist. The article aims at examining the contemporary structures and mechanisms responsible for violence control, while also exploring the newly emerging, naturalized patterns of cruelty. Firstly, René Girard’s mimetic theory is overviewed: while in archaic societies, mimetic crisis is controlled by sacrificial rites, modernization reconfigures this paradigm. Secondly, these transformations are mapped: mimetic desire is channelled into the market processes, while (...) mimetic crisis is managed by the state monopolizing violence. Thirdly, the structural transformations of late modernity upsetting the fragile balance of state and market are analysed: secular scapegoating becomes part of the political toolset, while the private sphere is overwhelmed by undetectable new forms of hurting and self-harming. As a culture of cruelty is naturalized, mimetic crisis becomes a continuous threat, which generates a need for the functional equivalents of sacrificial violence control. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SENOR HIRSCH AS SACRIFICIAL VICTIM AND THE MODERNISM OF CONRAD'S NOSTROMO Andrew Bartlett University ofBritish Columbia One of René Girard's more pithy definitions of mimetic desire reads: "The model designates the desirable while at the same time desiring it. Desire is always imitation ofanother desire, desire for the same object, and, therefore, an inexhaustible source of conflicts and rivalries" {Double Business Bound 39). The notation that desire is (...) an "inexhaustible" source of conflicts hints at the political pessimism expressed more openly elsewhere in Girard's writing. In 1961, he said it like this: "Whatever political or social system is somehow imposed on them, men will never achieve the peace and happiness of which the revolutionaries dream, nor the bleating harmony which so scares the reactionaries. They will always get on togetherjust enough to enable them never to agree" (Deceit 110-11). This is a Girard who, suspicious of political rhetoric, speaks with audacious cynicism even of democracy: "Who is there left to imitate after the tyrant? Henceforth men shall copy each other... Democracy is one vast middle-class court where the courtiers are everywhere and the king is nowhere" (Deceit 119). This Girard has remained consistent in his thematization of the impurity of all political compromises: "men are only capable ofreconciling their differences at the expense of a third party. The best men can hope for in their quest for nonviolence is the unanimity-minus-one ofthe surrogate victim" (Violence 259). Girard's political skepticism seems to be a result of his conviction that arbitrary victims ofviolent unanimity are the "ingredient" in political thought that allows each community to be flattered by the illusion of its political innocence, the illusion of the justifiability of its violence. 48Andrew Bartlett Modem political thought cannot dispense with morals, but it cannot become purely moral without ceasing to be political. Another ingredient must therefore be mixed with morals. If we really tried to identify what this is we would inevitably end up with formulas like Caiaphas': "It is better that this man or those die so that the community may survive" (Scapegoat 116). Political institutions, in establishing power relations between dominant and subordinate people, always exercise force, violence (Beetham 47-48). A perfectly moral politics seems as impossible as a perfectly nonviolent politics. Girard's refusal to plant his feet in the wet cement of any single political party's rhetoric is the outcome, in part, of his preference for a religious perspective on human affairs. The religious is his fundamental category ofanalysis; and religion in Girard's view is not an unenlightened form of belief to be superseded by political wisdom, but rather the fundamental mode of human social organization, the political only a secular displacement of it. I hasten to add that Girard's pessimism about political arrangements arises not from any stoical indifference to their victims, but rather from his respect for victims—a respect that is finally religious in character. A related sub-clause of Girard's political pessimism is the incompatibility ofmimetic theory and "identity politics," broadly defined so as to include nationalist or ethnic politics based on historical grievances and desires for vengeance. I have in mind here Girard's idea that the distinct identity of the surrogate victim is not strictly relevant to the effects of collective violence. Violence belongs to all men, and thus to none in particular. It is futile to look for the secret ofthe redemptive process in distinctions between the surrogate victim and other members of the community. The crucial fact is that the choice ofthe victim is arbitrary (Violence 257). The stabilizing effects of political scapegoating thus depend on the degree of unanimity in the community's violence, not on the identity ofthe victim. The identity of the sacrificial victim is not essential in scapegoating; the essential in scapegoating is the unanimity ofthe collective violence itself (cf. Violence 84, 150). Perhaps because of this priority of violent unanimity over victim identity, Girard has measured his distance from specific political causes (Scapegoat 19-20). We must confront what I would call the formal equivalence of scapegoats. The arbitrary victim of a sacrificial political process may be anyone: scandalously rich or scandalously... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Violence and Birthday PartiesA Girardian Analysis of the PiñataDominic Pigneri (bio)The piñata is a tradition most commonly associated with Latin America, but this party game has a mysterious origin. Some suppose that the origin of the practice was brought to the Americas by the Spanish, who received the custom from the Italians.1 Some say that the Italians, through Marco Polo, appropriated the ritual from the Chinese.2 Others (...) see the Mexican piñata as originating locally in an Aztec religious ritual.3 But looking at this festival activity through a Girardian lens we can see that wherever a custom came into being, it seems that its origins lie in the lethal practice of collective violence. The following description may serve as an exemplar of the tradition:In Mexico, a plain, round clay cooking pot called an olla is decorated and finally almost entirely concealed by ruffles and streamer coverings shaped into animals, stars, etc. It is filled with nuts, sugar cane, fruits and small toys and is hung overhead from a rope. One participant in the game is blindfolded and given a long stick with which he or she tries to hit the pot. Several people (usually children) take turns at being blindfolded and swinging the stick, and finally when someone hits the pot [End Page 209] hard enough to break it, the other players scramble on the ground for the scattered prizes. It is a kind of noisy and happy version of a grab-bag, and the game goes on for quite a few minutes, since a controlling cord is used to swing the pot out of reach of the batters. There are several sing-song chants which the children say as the game goes on with each new target.4While the clay pot is the most traditional, piñatas are also made from other materials, including papier-mâché and cane plants.5 Furthermore, the piñata has a place in many different festivals; it is especially associated with Christmas, Easter, and birthday parties all over the Americas where there is a Latin influence.While the ritual of the piñata contains no explicit violence, the ritual itself contains many of the elements of the scapegoat mechanism René Girard describes in Violence and the Sacred. What Girard describes here is the banding together of society as they focus their internal animosity onto an arbitrary third-party victim. The peace that arrives after this violence is so profound that it is instinctually associated with the divine. This peace inspires a reenactment of this violence as a religious ritual. Therefore, religion functions as the force that keeps internal violence from turning all members of a society against one another. This controlled violence is the safety valve that releases the violence that would otherwise rend the social fabric of a community.6 Religion also veils the violence, which grants peace. It is important that the violence be expressed, but also hidden. Girard says, "Men cannot confront the naked truth of their own violence without the risk of abandoning themselves to it entirely. They have never had a very clear idea of this violence, and it is possible that the survival of all human societies of the past was dependent on this fundamental lack of understanding."7 This is the significance of the ritualism of cultic sacrifice.This relates to our current question of the piñata in the sense that the practice is reminiscent of a sacrificial ritual, especially when the piñata takes the shape of a being like an animal or human person. First, destruction is the initial aim of the activity. The piñata, like the oblation, must be destroyed in some way. This is what grants the ritual its efficacy. Second, there is a need for rubrics, a carefully followed procedure for the desired effect to come about. In cultic sacrifice, this can take place in a variety of ways, from ritualistic washing of the priest and the victim to the exact procedure and order for dissecting the victim. Similarly, as we saw in the description of the piñata above, there is a procedure. The piñata is... (shrink)

René Girard speaks of the return of the religious as a “return of the sacred… in the form of violence.” This violence was inherent in the original “sacrificial system,” which deflected communal violence onto the victim. In this article, I argue that there is a double return of the sacred. With the collapse of the original sacrificial system, the sacred first reappears in the legal order. When this loses its binding claim, it reappears in the (...) political order. Here, my claim will be that Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political is not simply structurally similar to Girard’s conception of the sacrificial system. It is actually a manifestation of this. In this political return of the religious, the religious and the political systems are conflated. What prevents us from seeing this is the self-concealment that is essential to the sacrificial act, a self-concealment that also characterizes its twofold return. (shrink)

The rate at which women and girls have been ‘butchered’ in Africa before and during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that violence against women in patriarchal settings is more tolerable. According to Exodus 21:12, Leviticus 24:17, Deuteronomy 12:312, 2 Kings 17:31 and Isaiah 66:3, murder and human sacrifice are an abomination and defile the land. Unfortunately, it is heartbreaking to note how the murder of women finds justification, as shown in Judges 11:31–40. Ironically, in Genesis 22:13, the sacrifice of Isaac (...) is prevented through the provision of a sacrificial lamb. In this conversational platform, an African women’s hermeneutical lens to Judges 11:31–40 enables one to reimagine female bodies and motherhood as a theological phenomenon. It is proposed that ‘Sharon’s blood’ presents murdered women as Mother Earth’s sacrificial lambs of Africa, whose lives do not go unnoticed by God. Reimagining female bodies and motherhood as a theological phenomenon arguably enables the voices of murdered women to cry for justice from beyond the grave. If ‘the Sharons’ and their unborn babies do not receive justice, the ground continues to be defiled by human blood and remains ‘cursed’ (Mi 6:15). We will plant but not harvest; hence, there is a direct relationship between female bodies, motherhood and Mother Earth. One therefore asks: can scholarly conversational platforms enable murdered women of African descent to cry for justice from beyond the grave, allowing for life to flourish ‘again’? Contribution: This article contributed new knowledge to feminist studies by presenting murdered female victims of gender-based violence (GBV) as the sacrificial lambs of Mother Africa, whose innocent blood continues to cry for justice from beyond the grave. From an African hermeneutical lens, this research article reimagined female bodies and motherhood as a theological phenomenon in order to arguably enable the voices of murdered women to cry for justice from beyond the grave. (shrink)

This paper derives from an interest in murder. This interest began through reading fictional narratives which ceaselessly stage and restage scenes of murder; but it has also become clear that a range of theoretical texts are no less preoccupied with the basic question, ‘Why kill?’. In particular, the three theorists I shall discuss here, Freud, Girard and Levinas, directly address the question of murder, its causes and consequences. In each case, the theoretical question turns out to depend upon a minimal (...) core narrative in which the stakes of murder are crystallized; rival theoretical accounts are thus also bound up in a competition of stories. As this paper traces a common concern from Freud's Totem and Taboo, through Girard's La Violence et le sacré, to Levinas's Totalité et infini, the question ‘Why kill?’ gets entangled with the dynamics of storytelling and the issue of what it means to do theory. (shrink)

The youth in South Africa are subject to unemployment and the pressure to fit into society. The unemployment rate in South Africa is high; therefore, some find themselves desperate for employment and often find themselves hoping and praying for a miracle; hence, the number of churches in South Africa is increasing. People go to church to be prayed for by ministers in a hope to better their lives and that of their families. Some of these young South Africans became victims (...) of sexual harassment, rape and gender-based violence (GBV) at the hands of their pastors. The aim of this article was to challenge the church in identifying ways to break the cycle of perpetrators among pastors and help find the role pastoral counsellors can play regarding both victims and offenders to prevent history from repeating itself. Domestic violence and abuse in South Africa have been investigated by various disciplines. One of the most difficult realities for the church is the existence of clergy who abuse their female congregants. The article will create an awareness of violence against black women at the temple of black churches which is vindicated by Christian faith as miracle and healing. The violence against black women at the temple of the churches is patriarchal violence as male clergy sacrifice them in the name of faith using the bible. Some scholars of Black theology of liberation (BTL) argue that Elmina Castle had a chapel where women trading took place. Elmina Castle had a dungeon that kept black women who were waiting to be sold to a trade master. This article also exposed patriarchal violence that has been engraved on black women using the Bible by male clergy and connected Elmina Castle to Bishops Israel Makamu and Stephen Bafana Zondo to see the position of black women in these temples. Black theology of liberation was used to expose oppression of black women, by black men, in black churches.Contribution: This article aimed to challenge pastoral care givers to remain ethical during pastoral care and counselling to those in need, especially young women. This study was a literature review study. (shrink)

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the "disenchantment of the world."Modern Western civilization, in its curiosity toward the exotic, has avidly studied ritual in other societies, yet has tended to avoid the study of ritual in its own society.2 It is as if the contemporary West feels itself immune to ritual's "anachronistic" or "regressive" nature, which appears to contrast with the West's sense of its own enlightenment or progress. Peter Shaffer's Equus, (...) however, suggests the ritual nature of Modern secular society through the play's portrayal of a psychiatrist's treatment of an adolescent boy who has blinded six horses with a metal spike in a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"MURTHER, BY A SPECIOUS NAME": ABSALOMAND ACHITOPHEVS POETICS OF SACRIFICIAL SURROGACY Gary Ernst Roger's State University d;,uring the late 1670's and early '80s, English political satirists 'participated in the endeavors of the rival factions, Dissenter or Whig and Royalist or Tory, to effect judicial violence. While juries condemned and the hangman executed Catholics as traitors during the Popish Plot persecution, John Oldham suggests in the "Prologue' to (...) his Satires upon the Jesuits that he writes to stoke the mass hatred fueling the slayings (2: 19-22). Such animosity powered this initial Dissenter effort to exclude Charles II's Catholic brother, James Stuart, Duke ofYork, from the throne, and left more than two hundred dead.' And Dryden's vituperative response to the striking of a medal to celebrate the grand jury's dismissal of high treason charges against Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, The Medall (pointedly subtitledA Satire againstSedition) seems to have a clear purpose of inciting Royalists to redouble their efforts to dispatch the opposition leadertothe gallows.2 Judicial slayings ofthis kind are perhaps not surprising in these years ofcrisis and fear. Dissenters like Oldham believed that English Catholics plotted to assassinate Charles, put James on the throne, martyr Protestants with the help of foreign Catholic armies, and destroy both the Protestantfaith and English culture itself; Royalists, on the other hand, saw as ever-looming Dissenter insurrection and another catastrophic civil war to take away their property, power, and perhaps the ' For studies ofthe Plot in this political context, see Miller 169-82; Jones 197-217; Greaves 5-32, and Kenyon's complete volume. 2 Harth studies The Medall as an example of Tory propaganda against the Whigs and supportive of Royal efforts to deliver the earl to the gallows (161-9). 62Gary Ernst life ofthe king.3 Duringthe bloodshed ushering in the two party system, the fatal goals ofsatirists seem quite realistic—and indeed may have been so. Thejudicial persecution ofCatholics consumed victims until the fervorthat Oldham labors to feed burnt out; and, in November 1682, eight months after The Medall found its first audience, Shaftesbury, accused by the crown of new treasons, went into hiding soon to flee England in mortal terror of successful Royalist prosecution. The greatest political satire of this turbulent period, Absalom and Achitophel, responds directly to the recent efforts of Charles's beloved, eldest natural son, the Protestant James Scott, Duke of Monmouth—now "Fir'd with near possession of a Crown " (684)—to displace York in the line of succession. The satire revolves around a depiction ofMonmouth's "War in Masquerade," his recenttour through the west ofEngland to gauge and gain support (682-725). Despite the factthatthe satire clearly posits the threat of national catastrophe, it hardly seems at first as intent upon the death ofthis target as either The Medall or Oldham's Satires seem oftheirs. But, to be sure, it is, although Dryden—committed firstly to York and secondly to king4—carefully conceals both his methods and his intentions against Charles's son. For the purpose ofleading his audience to imitate his attack and carry it from the printed page into the world of action and the courts, he conceives apoetics ofsacrifice that screens his hostilities toward Monmouth from the eyes ofthe very persons he undertakes to mobilized. By appropriating for his satire the cultural phenomenon defined by René Girard as the "scapegoat" or "sacrificial mechanism,"5 Dryden arouses and 3 According to Kenyon, in late 1678, the Commons' inflammatory speeches and addresses to the king gave the impression in the House of Lords that the members of the Commons "seemed intent on fighting the Civil Wars all over again" (129) 4 For a fuller discussion ofDryden's commitmentto York, see McFadden 91, 111 -202; Winn 243-75, and Erskine-Hill 22-5. Daly argues that Mac Flecknoe, written some three years before the beginning ofthe Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81, is an oblique but sustained attack upon Monmouth, a result ofthe laureate's concerns about the king's bestowals ofpower upon Monmouth and the possibility ofthe bastard's eventual succession (655-76). For another discussion that focuses upon Dryden's targeting ofMonmouth m Absalom and Achitophel... (shrink)

L'objet de cette contribution est d'interroger le contexte anthropologique du vocabulaire et de la langue théologique et rituelle que continue à parler Empédocle, au moment où il renverse le Panthéon olympien traditionnel. Contrairement à ceux qui attribuent à la vision d'Empédocle lui-même les éléments théologiques et rituels présents dans le fragment 115, il s'agit de montrer que ces éléments relèvent d'une économie sacrificielle imputée à la religion olympienne et placée sous le joug de Nécessité. En parallèle avec les réflexions orphiques (...) et tragiques de son temps, qu'il remet en perspective, Empédocle dénoncerait notamment l'ambiguïté constitutive du sacré et de la purification qui mine les deux instances que sont l'Alliance et la Querelle en faisant communiquer la Violence et la Grâce de manière à la fois inéluctable et insupportable. À partir des indices offerts par les fragments 30 et 116, une réinterprétation du Cycle empédocléen est proposée qui fait place à l'hypothèse d'une alternance non sacrificielle, vouée aux Charites. The aim of this paper is to question the anthropological context of the theological vocabulary and speech used by Empedocles in his upheaval of the traditional Olympian Pantheon. Contrary to what is often argued by those who assign to Empedocles' own conception the theological and ritual elements present in the fragment 115, we show that these elements belong to the sacrificial economy imputed to the olympian religion and placed under the yoke of Necessity. In a way parallel but also critical to the orphic and tragic thought of his time, Empedocles would denounce especially the constitutive ambiguity of the Sacred and the Purification, which undermines the two instances of Alliance and Quarrel by involving Violence and Grace in a way both ineluctable and unbearable for him. From the indications offered by fragments 30 and 116, a new approach of the empedoclean Cycle is proposed, that gives way to the hypothesis of a non sacrificial alternation dedicated to the Charites. (shrink)

Is biblical messianism essentially androgynous? This paper aims to explore examples of gender-ambivalent characters in the Hebrew Bible and to assert the presence of a trend in the character development of messianic figures.1 This trend indicates intent to subvert mytho-sacrificial social norms, or what René Girard has called the sacrificial world.2 I argue that in the following select texts we encounter the promotion of gender nondifferentiation and equality, at least in certain critical circumstances. In this manner, the Hebrew (...) Bible includes the countercultural assertion that nondifferentiation is not the real threat to cosmos, to life and peace, as the prevailing mythological worldview suggests. Rather it can... (shrink)

This article explores the rhetoric of violence in the Buddhist tantras, arguing that it generally falls into two types: violence deployed in a purely rhetorical fashion for the purpose of impressing or persuading the reader; and textual depictions of violent ritual practices, which can, with some caveats, be interpreted as depictions of, and possibly prescriptions for, ritual violence. The former type often includes grandiose or exaggerated instances of hyperbolic rhetoric, often deployed for the purpose of aggrandizing the (...) text or tradition. The article segues to discussions of descriptions of and prescriptions for ritual violence, and explores one of the justifications given for ritual violence, namely that it contributes to, or is excused by, the attainment of a spiritually advanced state of awareness called the “non-dual gnosis”. Here particular attention is paid to violent rituals that involve the creation of effigies or symbolic substitutes for a sacrificial victim. These rituals, rather than involving actual violence, instead symbolically depict it. Yet these rituals are still violent insofar as they are symbolic enactments of acts of violence, and often they are performed with the goal of actually harming the victim who is symbolically represented in the ritual practice. The article concludes with an examination of a strategy for legitimizing such violence by invoking the concept of non-dual gnosis, and suggests that this ethical double standard has actually been used to excuse ethically dubious conduct by contemporary Buddhist leaders. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE BODY AND THE BLOOD: SACRIFICIAL EXPULSION IN A UREVOIR LES ENFANTS Diana Culbertson Kent State University In Scene 6 ofthe screenplay ofAu Revoir Les Enfants the students are at morning Mass and Father Jean is reading the Gospel: "Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh ofthe Son ofMan and drink his blood, you will have no life in you." A student with the (...) curiously ironic name of Boulanger ("baker") faints. François comments to his younger brother Julien, "There's nothing to eat... we can't have breakfast before communion." In the back of chapel sit three new students—Bonnet and two other Jewish boys disguised as Christians, protected from the Gestapo by the monks, but prohibited because of their religious identity from Eucharistie communion. Food as scarcity, as plenitude, and as life functions as the signifier ofvalue and of every victim in Louis Malle's unforgettable portrayal of the loss of innocence in the occupied France ofhis childhood. Access to food was access to life in community—both religious and political—and the exchange offood, for what could not be consumed, plunges the small school society into its death. The cause ofthe dissolution of the school society is a failed sacrifice. The farewell to childhood which the title ofthe film suggests is Julien's entry into the world ofviolence and victims, ofmimetic rivalry, ofsacrificial expulsion, and societal destruction. The angle ofperception (Julien Quentin is Malle's quasi-autobiographical alter-ego) lures viewers out their own innocence and shocks theater audiences once again with the implications of all Final Solutions. Three concentric levels identify the communities in dissolution represented in Malle's portrayal: France under the occupying military force, the school administrators and staff, and the pupils in their charge. At each level the Diana Culbertson47 mimetic conflict is at a different state ofsocietal crisis. At the highest level, the German occupation troops and their collaborators represent a moment of Violence Triumphant, a Monstrous divinity who can impose control over the group by terrorizing everyone. This persecutory violence, which has co-opted the judicial system, drives the community of French people into (at least outward) submission and passivity. When the Monster requires victims, the community must consent to offer them. The persecutor's need for victims in this film has its own demonic rationale: "... to rid France of strangers, of Jews," says Müller, the Gestapo officer in one of the final scenes. When persecutory violence is resisted, however, when someone refuses to offer the designatedvictim for expulsion, the unity ofthe submissive society dissolves. Those who will not conform may suffer the violence of those who find their private well being in an alliance with public persecution. Father Jean, director ofthe school where Malle's scenario takes place, is one ofthe instruments ofresistance. Only the other instructors and staff are aware ofhis activities in the French underground. The audience is admitted to his dangerous secret, even as it observes the contrasting immaturity of the students, especially Julien, who cannot bear to leave his mother and is still wetting his bed. When he asks his older brother, "What is a Jew?" he is given the alimentary explanation: "Someone who doesn't eat pork." In this cultural situation, the Jew is more frequently someone who doesn't eat. Quentin's half truth is only one side ofa more ominous reality. Father Jean, aware of that reality, first appears in the film to introduce Bonnet, the "new classmate" and to show the boy his dormitory bed. As the director leaves, the schoolboys display their own societal dynamics, resuming their customary internecine, frenzied battles and rivalries. They throw pillows; they mock the outsider, focusing their ridicule on his name. Later in a classroom scene, they will hiss, "Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet...."—an apt thematic detail with its allusion to wine and its liturgical translation into blood. In the morning Boulanger leads the attack against the stranger, slipping an icicle behind Bonnet's shirt collar. At recess games disintegrate into private quarrels. Their small brutal society is a microcosm of the larger world of which the schoolboys are apparently innocent but which they are grooming themselves to live in without remorse... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Violence and Difference. Girard, Derrida, and DeconstructionSandor GoodhartViolence and Difference. Girard, Derrida, and Deconstruction, by Andrew J. McKenna; 238 pp. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992, $15.95 paper.McKenna’s book is disturbingly intelligent. I have the impression in reading it that there is nothing that has not crossed the author’s mind regarding contemporary theory, that here is a book of inquiry and thought in the grand tradition of (...) European letters. I am also struck by how few books there are of this high quality, either on Derrida’s work or Girard’s, a lament which is also one of the book’s subtexts.McKenna’s expressed goal is to engage Jacques Derrida’s work with René Girard’s. The project is certainly overdue. Both writers have been working for a long time now on structures of exclusion and victimage, Derrida at the level of language, writing, and signifiers, Girard at that of cultural anthropology and institutional formation. Neither has fully acknowledged—let alone engaged—the other. Girard is almost entirely absent from Derrida’s writing, appearing in the convoluted context of a review of a book by Derrida’s student, Lacoue-Labarthes, containing an essay on Girard’s reading of Plato. Girard repeatedly cites Derrida’s treatment of the theme of the scapegoat and of the supplement—for example, in “Plato’s Pharmacy” (“La pharmacie de Platon”)—largely ignoring Derrida’s primary concern, his critique of philosophic essentialism.McKenna sets out less to right these “baleful circumstances” than to explore them. Through a highly diplomatic “shuttling back and forth between Girard’s and Derrida’s contribution” to our understanding of the foundational occlusionary mechanisms of language and the social, McKenna lays out, definitively in my view, the case for their similarities. But equally evident throughout these chapters both to the reader and McKenna is the “logic of [a] preference” which becomes explicit only in the concluding chapter when he turns to the question of the sacred.For, in McKenna’s view, what Derrida and deconstruction has resisted throughout is its own implication in the very logic of totalization it everywhere exposes, ironically by way of its very persistent and totalizing appeal for dismantling such logic. Derrida’s “systematic indisposition” is “permanent,” “structural,” and “crippling,” “frustrating” its best insights by participating in an antitranscendentalism as old as romanticism and which alone escapes detection, although it licenses the suspicion of all discourse. Deconstructing all philosophy after Plato as literature, Derrida succeeds ironically only in waging Plato’s own battle, recreating the same rigorous synchronic antithesis (philosophy/literature) which is already the stake of Platonic idealism if in reverse polarity.The difference is decisive. Deconstructing philosophic language as writing, metaphor, signifier, text, Derrida repeats the “sacrificial scenario” of philosophy [End Page 252] itself. Mistaking the symptom (the “crisis of all cultural signs”) for the cure, constituting itself as an impossible demand for a “total” or metalinguistic account, deconstructing all language as difference, deferral, or “differance,” deconstruction defers finally to the very representational strategies it exposes. It scapegoats and retrieves in marginalized form the absolute in the face of the antisacrificial staging of truth that great literature posits. What begins as a critique of the widespread “symmetrical allergy to the sacred and to signifiers” concludes on one hand with an exposition of the mechanism of sacralization, and on the other with a via negativa hardly distinguishable from the tradition it opposes, a hypersensitivity to language which may be only the latest version of a transcendental skepticism which has a long and distinguished history in the West, perhaps the history of philosophy itself.One may disagree with McKenna. In fact, in a curious way, not to do so would be to betray the book’s polemical challenge, that we develop a positive knowledge of culture as the product of questioning and examination. But one would be hard put to find a more penetratingly thoughtful study of its topic. It is an example of the practice of intellectual activity at its finest. In an age of mindless epigonism, here is a book about such dangers whose spirit of critical thinking we would do well to emulate.Sandor GoodhartWhitman... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity Wolfgang Palaver Universität Innsbruck Hobbes and equality: his knowledge of mimetic desire When reading Thomas Hobbes we immediately recognize that he was writing in the early years of our modem age. Hobbes's world is very different from ancient cultures. This is most clearly demonstrated by the importance in his political philosophy of equality and individualism, concepts which cannot be (...) found in ancient political discourse. Hobbes fully rejected Aristotle's view that nature made some human beings commanders and others slaves (1984, 211). According to Hobbes, all human beings are equal. The same applies to individualism. Whereas Aristotle's main concern was the polis, not the individual, Hobbes takes the individual as the starting point of his political philosophy.1 The difference between the two views can be seen as a result of the biblical transformation of the world: the biblical message slowly transformed the ancient world as it increasingly replaced ancient concepts of human nature and social life with those of equality and individualism. The biblical impulse did not, however, result in the creation of a peaceful Kingdom of God on earth. Hobbes 's quite doubtful reputation does not stem from his rejection of Aristotle's philosophy but rather from his insight into the deadly consequences ofequality. According to Hobbes, the natural equality of human beings means that all have the ability to kill one another: On Hobbes and individualism, see Louis Dumont 95-9. 58Wolfgang Palaver Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as t. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Acts of Askēsis, Scenes of PoiēsisThe Dramatic Phenomenology of Another Violence in a Muslim Painter-PoetNauman Naqvi (bio)[End Page 50]The Divinity is beautiful and loves beauty. Cultivate the ethos of the Divinity. Askēsis is my glory, and all askēsis is from me.— Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, Sahih al-Bukhari>> Introduction: Presenting the Drama of the Gnostic Ontology of Violence in IslamIn current discourse on violence in Islam, (...) the fundamental importance of the Prophetic distinction—a distinction iterated in a number of hadith, or speech-events of the Prophet Muhammad—between the greater, inner jihad, against the ego (al-jihad al-akbar), and the lesser, outward jihad, against oppression and animosity (al-jihad al-asghar), has often been cited. Even so, an originary measure of the significance of this exemplary distinction—abyssal in its simplicity, disclosing as it does the divinity proper to the divinely ordained imperative of jihad (such disclosure of divinity being the very task and telos of the Prophetic speech-event, its very eventfulness (hadatha)—has hardly been taken or heeded.It has not, to begin with, been explored that both forms strikingly share the violent word, jihad: in Arabic, forceful effort or struggle. It is as if the reality and intensity of these two radically different forms of force are adequated a priori in the Prophetic speech-event—if anything, it is the former, the inner jihad, that has the greater reality, the more violent, imperative intensity. With their difference a matter of degree and quality, the two are at once intimately related and violently real, linguistically leaving us little space for the distinction between the metaphoric and the literal in this demanding economy, language, and ontology of violence.1The line that has been drawn between the two forms of violence in the Prophetic speech-event is not ontological per se—it is the axis of the stage of their dramatic encounter, the battle line of their distinction. This axis, this vertical battle line of distinction, is the strait, but upwardly infinite, dramaturgical space wherein is enacted the gnostic ontology of violence in Islam. It is the axial line of force emanating from Islam’s extraordinary emphasis on the radical purification of one’s intention, one’s very intentionality (i.e., the purification not just of the springing ground of one’s comportment, but of the anterior ground where one receives and apprehends the real as such), in a quest for the demanding Divinity that would hurl the Islamic subject both inside and outside itself in its own endless search and infinite encounter. It is the battle line of distinction that races through the world stage of Islam’s arts, knowledges, and practices—the auratic line of force pulsating through the fields of its charismatic inheritance of generous visions, discourses, and gestures. Indeed, it is the piercing erotic arrow of divine love and mercy that is the subtle motus animi continuus of Islam’s graceful works of poiēsis.For the violent task of askēsis assigned by the great imperative of inner jihad is closely related both to the imperative of beauty in Islam—where the effects of askēsis: virtue and virtuosity, are densely, passionately cathected and imbricated with the beautiful2 by [End Page 51] virtue of the latter’s manifestation of divinity—as well as to the imperative of knowledge, wherein theory and praxis are united in askēsis.3Beauty and its creation—the act of poiēsis —are also, then, violently real, as are knowledge and its effects, since together they all have a kenotically violent askēsis as the condition and telos of their possibility, as the very ground(s) of their emergence and potentiality. Thus, the significance of the greater jihad is (again) to be read potentially, in the entire range of the arts, gestures, habits, and letters of Islam, its artifacts and bodies, where generous, kenotic, sacrificial logics are on display, not just in the lesser archive of jihad (in acts of greater jihad on far bygone battlefields), but in the epic world-panorama of the acts and scenes of askēsis and poiēsis that are... (shrink)

In order to offer a substantive Christian challenge to modern state violence, the particular character of the modern state cannot be ignored. Nor can New Testament teaching on peace be reduced to flat and generalized ethical imperatives. The subtlety of peace is neglected if either of these two tendencies goes unchecked. After thus framing the question of a Christian response to modern state violence, itself the product of Christian agency among other factors, I offer a New Testament challenge (...) to modern state violence along two lines: refusing the sacrificial political economy characteristic of the modern state, laboring instead at a christological dynamic of gift that takes account of the relative position of agents in the inherited distribution of power and expects more from the strong; observing the limits of state representation for addressing vulnerability to violence, indeed its complicity in that vulnerability, and investing in scales of community commensurate with the subtlety of peace. (shrink)

Feminist scholars adopt wide-ranging views of self-sacrifice: their critiques claim that women are inordinately affected by Christianity's valorization of self-sacrifice and that this traditional Christian value is inherently misogynistic and necrophilic. Although Søren Kierkegaard's Works of Love deems Christian love essentially sacrificial, love, in his view, sets significant limits on the role of self-sacrifice in human life. Through his proposed response to one who requests forgiveness, “Do you now truly love me?” Kierkegaard offers a model of forgiveness that subverts (...) traditional ideals of the self-sacrificing and submissive woman while keeping love central. The question asserts self-love, involves redoubling and double danger, and expresses a refusal to imitate Christ's suffering. I propose a reading in keeping with Grace Jantzen's vision for a feminist philosophy of religion, which reads against the grain and “seeks to break through to new ways of thinking that may open up divine horizons.” My reading is further supported by Kierkegaard's contention that everything essentially Christian bears a double meaning. In light of the subversive potential found in the discrepancy between apparent love and actual love, as well as the duty to name the sin of one who has behaved in an unloving manner, I argue that Kierkegaard's philosophy of love resists simplistic understandings of self-sacrificing love. (shrink)

This paper traces the history of accelerationism as a political philosophy, from its inception at Warwick University to its deployment by avowed white supremacists. Probing its philosophical commitment to a both a deterministic philosophy of history and a sacrificial logic of politics, I argue that even the initial elaborations of (non-race-based) accelerationism contained the seed of its development into violent white supremacy. The conclusion assesses a politics of deceleration as a strategy for countering accelerationism, ultimately arguing for the superiority (...) of a Benjaminian politics of the emergency brake. (shrink)

Resumen: Dentro del movimiento sociopolítico mapuche por la autodeterminación que surge en Chile en la década de los noventa, una generación de mapuches de las ciudades comienzan a llevar a cabo proyectos de comunicación y cultura. Allí se vuelve relevante el desarrollo de producciones audiovisuales, estas han jugado un rol fundamental en la disputa por el derecho a la elaboración y circulación de sus propias imágenes y representaciones. El presente trabajo busca establecer el estatuto crítico de algunas de estas imágenes (...) en tanto dispositivos de pensamiento, para abordar la potencia afirmativa e inmanente que implica su irrupción estético-política, y plantearla como contracara de un historicismo teleológico Estado-nacional y como suspensión proliferante de la violencia biopolítica funcional al patrón económico regional de acumulación por desposesión.: Within the Mapuche sociopolitical movement for self-determination which rose in Chile in the nineties, a generation of urban Mapuche began to undertake projects of communication and culture. The development of audiovisual productions, which have played a fundamental role in the struggle for the right to do and to spread their own images and representations, has become relevant there. This paper seeks to establish the status of these images as devices of critical thought in order to address the affirmative and immanent power which this aesthetic-political breakthrough implies. In this way it is stated as a counterpart of the teleological nation-state historicism and as proliferating suspension of the consubstantial biopolitics sacrificial violence of the regional economic pattern of accumulation by dispossession. (shrink)

Contemporary responses to Plato’s Republic rarely examine its complex relationship to festivals and sacrifice. Recovering the importance of the festival to Plato’s concerns, this article reveals Plato’s displacement of the sacrificial violence of ancient Greek festivals with the language and possibilities of money. The first section introduces, through the opening scenes of the Republic, the significance of money in Ancient Greece, particularly its affiliation with the ritual dynamics of the festival. The second section focuses on animal sacrifice, developing (...) the central claim that much of the Republic imagines replacing the power of sacrifice to hold a conflicted polis together with the logic of money to organize and maintain the city. To explore the ramifications of this shift, the third section of the essay turns to the problems of visibility and sacrifice, arguing that the shift from festival to monetary political practice obscures the violence of political and monetary life; an obscurity reproduced in Giorgio Agamben’s neglect of ancient Greece in his account of the relationship between sacrifice and political status. This reading provokes an engagement with the contemporary acceptance of monetary violence leading to the conclusion that the violence and death resulting from monetary practice should be considered political violence, not sacrifice. (shrink)

This is a review essay on Jesse Goldhammer, The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence in Modern French Thought. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005; and Dennis King Keenan, The Question of Sacrifice. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005.

This essay seeks to articulate the process by which sacrifice took on new meanings, symbols, and practices in the context of the war in Afghanistan. It does so by examining five acts and the ‘axial figures’ associated with each of these acts, the first of which centers on the early efforts of Afghan political parties to change the focus of popular esteem from brave deeds to heroic deaths and the axial figure of veneration from the Warrior to the Martyr. The (...) second act is associated with ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam who infused the figure of the Martyr with a sanctity long associated with the Sufi Saint by documenting miracles observed during and after the death of Afghan Arabs who died in the Afghan jihad. The third act involves the Taliban’s deployment of public rituals that altered the focus of sacrificial violence from collective veneration of the Martyr to the punishment of criminals who had defiled the purity of the jihad. The fourth act is associated with Osama Bin Laden who exploited the potential of using bodies as weapons of mass destruction, in the process turning the figure of the Suicide Bomber into one of the key symbols of our age. The fifth and final act discussed here involves the rise of the Islamic State and its synthesis of diverse forms of sacrificial violence, expanding and recasting these elements in a symbolic register derived from popular media and centered around the figure of the Slaughterer. (shrink)

The very idea of humanity seems to be in crisis. Born in the ashes of devastation after the slaughter of millions, the liberal conception of humanity imagined a suffering victim in need of salvation. Today, this figure appears less and less capable of galvanizing the political imagination. But without it, how are we to respond to the inhumane violence that overwhelms our political and philosophical registers? How can we make sense of the violence that was carried out in (...) the name of humanism? And how can we develop more ethical relations without becoming parasitic on the pain of others? Through a critical exploration of violence and the sacred, Ecce Humanitas recasts the fall of liberal humanism. Brad Evans offers a rich analysis of the changing nature of sacrificial violence, from its theological origins to the exhaustion of the victim in the contemporary world. He critiques the aestheticization that turns victims into sacred objects, sacrificial figures that demand response, perpetuating a cycle of violence that is seen as natural and inevitable. In novel readings of classic and contemporary works, Evans traces the sacralization of violence as well as art’s potential to incite resistance. Countering the continued annihilation of life, Ecce Humanitas calls for liberating the political imagination from the scene of sacrifice. A new aesthetics provides a form of transgressive witnessing that challenges the ubiquity of violence and allows us to go beyond humanism to imagine a truly liberated humanity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LABYRINTHINE STRATEGIES OF SACRIFICE: THE CRETANS BY EURIPIDES Giuseppe Fornari The application of René Girard's mimetic hypothesis demands drastic re-interpretation of the history of our culture. The denunciation of sacrificial violence performed first by the Hebrew Bible and then by the Gospels figures as an objective watershed in the evaluation ofcivilizations and historical periods. This new methodological and theoretical situation brings Girard's ideas into conflict with current (...) trends toward relativism. The victim is the reality at the root ofhistory, an extra-historical element that disrupts the circle of interpretation and confronts us as an absolute value demanding our commitment one way or another. The epistemological problems thus become one and the same with a frankly religious need. In an elegant and paradoxical way Girard's thought gives new, vital emphasis to the Christocentric interpretation of human history typical of patristic and medieval thought. In this light, comparison ofour Christian Western civilization with its Classical predecessor becomes crucial. For the Middle Ages Antiquity was not separate from Christianity but itsfigura (préfiguration), in a positive or negative way. Modern culture, however, starting from humanism and the Renaissance, discovered the historical dimension of Classical civilization with ever-increasing admiration until, finally, Neoclassicism set it as the great alternative to modern civilization. This tendency became openly anti-Christian first with the French revolution and then with thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger. The very identity of Western culture is determined by its varying attitudes toward Classical Antiquity and Christianity, to such an extent that the different periods in history could be subdivided accordingly. The comparison is like asking ourselves 164Giuseppe Fornari what we would be without Christianity, or who we are and what Christianity is. The radical nature of these questions and the overall development of our culture therefore confirm Girard's radical, metahistorical model. Classical civilization is the inevitable touchstone for this trans-historical question of identity. The comparison is fascinating and complex, and it cannot be dismissed simply by juxtaposing victimary awareness and blindness. Girard himself in Violence and the Sacred notes the profound investigation of mimetic violence in Greek tragedy and pre-Socratic philosophy.1 Further research of my own into these aspects of Greek civilization confirms and widens the analysis, revealing a surprisingly varied and dramatic picture.2 The most interesting discovery may be that the Greeks had already faced this question of meta-historical identity in relation to the victim. I have chosen Euripides' lost tragedy,the Cretans, to illustrate this: its highly original subject within the corpus of Greek tragedy and its symbolic richness fully justify its choice. The few remaining fragments, which are almost entirely reproduced here, provide enough material for analyses that are necessarily more limited but more complete in themselves and thus more suitable for a single essay. Besides, they possess high literary quality and do not deserve to remain the sole preserve of specialists. The tragedy of the labyrinth Euripides probably wrote the Cretans before 430 B.C. The premisses of the plot are supplied by traditional mythical material. To demonstrate to his brothers that he has a divine right to the kingdom of Crete, Minos asks Poseidon to send a white bull from the sea for sacrifice. The god satisfies his request and Minos's power is confirmed, but he decided the bull is too beautiful to sacrifice. The wrath of the god is not slow to strike the king's family. Minos's wife, Pasiphae, falls in love with the bull and copulates with it. From this bestial union comes the Minotaur, the being, half-man half-bull, which is shut up in the labyrinth. Minos's nonperformance of the sacrifice therefore causes a grave crisis on the island, 1It could be said that the exciting comparison with Classical civilization is one of the inspiring forces of Violence and the Sacred. An analogous direction, as regards Virgil and sacrifice, is followed by Bandera in The Sacred Game (13IfI). See also note 1 1. 2G. Fornari, The Esoteric Knowledge of the Greeks: From Orphism to Tragedy, A SacrificialReading (forthcoming). Labyrinthine Strategies ofSacrifice165 jeopardizing the boundaries between man and animal. The monstrousness ofthe Minotaur represents the breaking-down ofthose differences that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ICONOCLASM in the OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS Peter Goldman Westminster State College ofSalt Lake City Acentral problem for any monotheistic religion is distinguishing worship of the one true God from idolatry in all its forms. René Girard's pioneering interpretation ofthe Judeo-Christian scriptures clarifies this distinction by recourse to an ethical conception ofthe sacrificial: False religion or idolatry is essentially sacrificial, while the Judeo-Christian tradition opposes the (...) class='Hi'>sacrificial in all its myriad forms. As Girard explains, the Passion narrative makes clear that the sacrificial or scapegoat victim, Christ, is innocent. The violence inflicted upon Christ is human, not divine. The Gospels thus reveal the violence that hides behind the sacred. Religious practices that further sacrificial violence are idolatrous, worshiping violence in the guise ofthe sacred.1 The ethical simplicity of the Girardian distinction between true faith and idolatry is complicated, however, by the issue of representation. According to the Old Testament, the one true God cannot be represented by images or figures of any kind, while idols typically take figurai form. From a biblical perspective, therefore, the question ofform is central to an understanding of idolatry. The Old Testament ban on images has never been investigated from a Girardian perspective. In this essay I apply Rene Girard's anthropological insights to the subject oficonoclasm in the Old and New Testaments. More specifically I address the second command-ment, the famous ban on "graven images," and the problem of representing God. From the per- ' For a fuller treatment ofGirard's interpretation ofChristianity in relation to the sacrificial, see his Things Hidden since the Foundation ofthe World 84Peter Goldman spective ofGirard's "fundamental anthropology" there are two basic issues in this regard. The first is the ethical function of the ban on images; how does the second commandment function ethically to preserve the human community in the Bible? Second, is the ban on images sacrificial as understood in Girardian terms? Or is it anti-sacrificial and therefore ethically progressive? The second commandment reads: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth : Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" (KJV, Exod. 20.4-5). At first glance, this commandment might appear as an expression ofthe most primitive form ofreligious taboo. A specific cultural activity is arbitrarily forbidden under threat of punishment. The taboo on images, unlike the law against murder for example, has no obvious moral dimension. Images of any kind must be violently expelled —sacrificed, as it were—for no immediate reason. According to the second commandment, any attempt to represent God or his creation by images is a profane violation of his "jealous" nature; the second commandment therefore often finds expression in the violent destruction ofsocalled idolatrous images. Acts oficonoclasm directed againstthe images of foreign gods are quite common in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, I argue here thatthe second commandment is in practical terms ethically progressive and anti-sacrificial. It actually questions and underminesthe whole sacred-profane dichotomy. Indeed, the ban on images is ultimately a secularizing influence crucial for the development of modernity. I also address the Christian acceptance of divine images, which has often been understood as a reversal of the Judaic ban on figurai representations. In the interpretation of iconoclasm that I am proposing here, however, the image ofChrist on the cross can be seen as a logical development of the second commandment rather than its contradiction. I. The second commandment in context In the Old Testament, the giving of the second commandment is associated with the Exodus from Egypt and the Hebrew rejection of Egyptian religion and culture. In Herbert Schneidau's book Sacred Discontent, he argues persuasively that Hebrew monotheism is first of all a reaction against pagan polytheism. Schneidau writes, "The JudeoChristian tradition defines itselfas opposed to a pagan world which it sees Iconoclasm in the Old and New Testaments85 as essentialIy mythological"(12). Further, "TheHebrews habitually defined themselves negatively, by their differences from their neighbors" (51). Schneidau explains: We find... (shrink)

The interplay between violence, religion, and politics is a central problem for societies and has attracted the attention of important philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and René Girard. Centuries earlier during the Italian Renaissance, these same problems drew the interest of Niccolò Machiavelli. In Not Even a God Can Save Us Now, Brian Harding argues that Machiavelli’s work anticipates – and often illuminates – contemporary theories on the place of violence in our lives. While remaining cognizant of (...) the historical and cultural context of Machiavelli’s writings, Harding develops Machiavelli’s accounts of sacrifice, truth, religion, and violence and places them in conversation with those of more contemporary thinkers. Including in-depth discussions of Machiavelli’s works The Prince and Discourses on Livy, as well as his Florentine Histories, The Art of War, and other less widely discussed works, Harding interprets Machiavelli as endorsing sacrificial violence that founds or preserves a state, while censuring other forms of violence. This reading clarifies a number of obscure themes in Machiavelli’s writings, and demonstrates how similar themes are at work in the thought of recent phenomenologists. The first book to approach both Machiavellian and contemporary continental thought in this way, Not Even a God Can Save Us Now is a highly original and provocative approach to both the history of philosophy and to contemporary debates about violence, religion, and politics. (shrink)