The Girard Reader (23 page)

which is used to attribute almost any evil to almost any person. We should therefore

recognize in the poisoning of drinking water a variation of a stereotypical accusation. The

fact that these accusations are all juxtaposed in the witch trials is proof that they all respond to the same need. The suspects are always convicted of nocturnal participation is the famous

sabbat
. No alibi is possible since

____________________

2. Girard here uses the Latin
turba
in the sense of "confused crowd," a crowd on the verge of becoming a mob. -
J. W

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the physical presence of the accused is not necessary to establish proof. Participation in

criminal assemblies can be purely spiritual.

The crimes and their preparation with which the sabbat is associated have a wealth of social

repercussions. Among them can be found the abominations traditionally attributed to the

Jews in Christian countries, and before them to the Christians in the Roman Empire. They

always include ritual infanticide, religious profanation, incestuous relationships, and

bestiality. Food poisoning as well as offenses against influential or prestigious citizens

always play a significant role. Consequently, despite her personal insignificance, a witch is

engaged in activities that can potentially affect the whole of society. This explains why the

devil and his demons are not disdainful of such an alliance. I will say no more about

stereotypical accusations. It is easy to see their character and their link to the first stereotype,

the crisis of undifferentiation.

I turn now to a third stereotype. The crowd's choice of victims may be totally random; but it

is not necessarily so. It is even possible that the crimes of which they are accused are real, but

that sometimes the persecutors choose their victims because they belong to a class that is

particularly susceptible to persecution rather than because of the crimes they have committed.

The Jews are among those accused by Guillaume de Machaut of poisoning the rivers. Of all

the indications he gives us this is for us the most valuable, the one that most reveals the

distortion of persecution. Within the context of other imaginary and real stereotypes, we

know that this stereotype must be real. In fact, in modern Western society Jews have

frequently been persecuted.

Ethnic and religious minorities tend to polarize the majorities against themselves. In this we

see one of the criteria by which victims are selected, which, though relative to the individual

society, is transcultural in principle. There are very few societies that do not subject their

minorities, all the poorly integrated or merely distinct groups, to certain forms of

discrimination and even persecution. In India the Moslems are persecuted, in Pakistan the

Hindus. There are therefore universal signs for the selection of victims, and they constitute

our third stereotype.

In addition to cultural and religious there are purely
physical
criteria. Sickness, madness,

genetic deformities, accidental injuries, and even disabilities in general tend to polarize

persecutors. We need only look around or within to understand the universality. Even today

people cannot control a momentary recoil from physical abnormality. The very word

"abnormal," like the word "plague" in the Middle Ages, is something of a taboo; it is both noble and cursed,
sacer
in all senses of the word. It is considered more fitting in English to replace it with the word "handicapped." The "handicapped" are subject to discriminatory measures that make them victims, out of all proportion to the extent to

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which their presence disturbs the ease of social exchange. One of the great qualities of our

society is that it now feels obliged to take measures for their benefit.

Disability belongs to a large group of banal signs of a victim, and among certain groups -- in

a boarding school, for example -- every individual who has difficulty adapting, someone from

another country or state, an orphan, an only son, someone who is penniless, or even simply

the latest arrival, is more or less interchangeable with a cripple. If the disability or deformity

is real, it tends to polarize "primitive" people against the afflicted person. Similarly, if a group of people is used to choosing its victims from a certain social, ethnic, or religious

category, it tends to attribute to them disabilities or deformities that would reinforce the

polarization against the victim, were they real. This tendency is clearly observable in racist

cartoons.

The abnormality need not be only physical. In any area of existence or behavior abnormality

may function as the criterion for selecting those to be persecuted. For example there is such a

thing as social abnormality; here the average defines the norm. The further one is from

normal social status of whatever kind, the greater the risk of persecution. This is easy to see

in relation to those at the bottom of the social ladder.

This is less obvious when we add another marginal group to the poor and outsiders -- the

marginal insider, the rich and powerful. The monarch and his court are often reminiscent of

the eye of the hurricane. This double marginality is indicative of a social organization in

turmoil. In normal times the rich and powerful enjoy all sorts of protection and privileges

which the disinherited lack. We are concerned here not with normal circumstances but with

periods of crisis. A mere glance at world history will reveal that the odds of a violent death at

the hands of a frenzied crowd are statistically greater for the privileged than for any other

category. Extreme characteristics ultimately attract collective destruction at some time or

other, extremes not just of wealth or poverty, but also of success and failure, beauty and

ugliness, vice and virtue, the ability to please and to displease. The weakness of women,

children, and old people, as well as the strength of the most powerful, becomes weakness in

the face of the crowd. Crowds commonly turn on those who originally held exceptional

power over them.

No doubt some people will be shocked to find the rich and powerful listed among the victims

of collective persecution under the same title as the poor and weak. The two phenomena are

not symmetrical in their eyes. The rich and powerful exert an influence over society which

justifies the acts of violence to which they are subjected in times of crisis. This is the holy

revolt of the oppressed.

The borderline between rational discrimination and arbitrary persecution is sometimes

difficult to trace. For political, moral, and medical

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reasons certain forms of discrimination strike us as reasonable today, yet they are similar to

the ancient forms of persecution; for example, the quarantine of anyone who might be

contagious during an epidemic. In the Middle Ages doctors were hostile to the idea that the

plague could spread through physical contact with the diseased. Generally, they belonged to

the enlightened group and any theory of contagion smacked too much of a persecutor's

prejudice not to be suspect. And yet these doctors were wrong. For the idea of contagion to

become established in the nineteenth century in a purely medical context, devoid of any

association with persecution, it was necessary for there to be no suspicion that it was the

return of prejudice in a new disguise.

This is an interesting question but has nothing to do with our present work. My only goal is to

enumerate the qualities that tend to polarize violent crowds against those who possess them.

The examples I have given unquestionably belong in this category. The fact that some of

these acts of violence might even be justifiable today is not really important to the line of

analysis I am pursuing.

I am not seeking to set exact boundaries to the field of persecution; nor am I trying to

determine precisely where injustice begins or ends. Contrary to what some think, I am not

interested in defining what is good and bad in the social and cultural order. My only concern

is to show that the pattern of collective violence crosses cultures and that its broad contours

are easily outlined. It is one thing to recognize the existence of this pattern, another to

establish its relevance. In some cases this is difficult to determine, but the proof I am looking

for is not affected by such difficulty. If a stereotype of persecution cannot be clearly

recognized in a particular detail of a specific event, the solution does not rest only with this

particular detail in an isolated context. We must determine whether or not the other

stereotypes are present along with the detail in question.

Let us look at two examples. Most historians consider that the French monarchy bears some

responsibility for the revolution in 1789. Does Marie Antoinette's execution therefore lie

outside our pattern? The queen belongs to several familiar categories of victims of

persecution; she is not only a queen but a foreigner. Her Austrian origin is mentioned

repeatedly in the popular accusations against her. The court that condemns her is heavily

influenced by the Paris mob. Our first stereotype can also be found; all the characteristics of

the great crisis that provoke collective persecution are discernible in the French Revolution.

To be sure historians are not in the habit of dealing with the details of the French Revolution

as stereotypes of the one general pattern of persecution. I do not suggest that we should

substitute this way of thinking in all our ideas about the French Revolution. Nonetheless it

sheds interesting light on an accusation which is often passed over but which

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figures explicitly in the queen's trial, that of having committed incest with her s
on. 3.

Let's look at another example of a condemned person, someone who has actually committed

the deed that brings down on him the crowd's violence: a black male who actually rapes a

white female. The collective violence is no longer arbitrary in the most obvious sense of the

term. It is actually sanctioning the deed it purports to sanction. Under such circumstances the

distortions of persecution might be supposed to play no role and the existence of the

stereotypes of persecution might no longer bear the significance I give it. Actually, these

distortions of persecution are present and are not incompatible with the literal truth of the

accusation. The persecutor's portrayal of the situation is irrational. It inverts the relationship

between the global situation and the individual transgression. If there is a causal or

motivational link between the two levels, it can only move from the collective to the

individual. The persecutor's mentality moves in the reverse direction. Instead of seeing in the

microcosm a reflection or imitation of the global level, it seeks in the individual the origin and cause of all that is harmful. The responsibility of the victims suffers the same fantastic

exaggeration whether it is real or not. As far as we are concerned there is very little difference

between Marie Antoinette's situation and that of the persecuted black male.

We have seen the close relationship that exists between the first two stereotypes. In order to

blame victims for the loss of distinctions resulting from the crisis, they are accused of crimes

that eliminate distinctions. But in actuality they are identified as victims for persecution

because they bear the signs of victims. What is the relationship of the third type to the first

two stereotypes? At first sight the signs of a victim are purely differential. But cultural signs

are equally so. There must therefore be two ways of being different, two types of differences.

No culture exists within which everyone does not feel "different" from others and does not

consider such "differences" legitimate and necessary. Far from being radical and progressive, the current glorification of difference is merely the abstract expression of an outlook common

to all cultures. There exists in every individual a tendency to think of himself not only as

different from others but as extremely different, because every culture entertains this feeling

of difference among the individuals who compose it.

The signs that indicate a victim's selection result not from the difference within the system

but from the difference outside the system, the

____________________

3. I am grateful to Jean-Claude Guillebaud for drawing my attention to this accusation of

incest.

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potential for the system to differ from its own difference, in other words not to be different at

all, to cease to exist as a system. This is easily seen in the case of physical disabilities. The

human body is a system of anatomic differences. If a disability, even as the result of an

accident, is disturbing, it is because it gives the impression of a disturbing dynamism. It

seems to threaten the very system. Efforts to limit it are unsuccessful; it disturbs the

differences that surround it. These in turn become
monstrous
, rush together, are compressed

and blended together to the point of destruction. Difference that exists outside the system is

terrifying because it reveals the truth of the system, its relativity, its fragility, and its

mortality.