The Girard Reader (7 page)

stretch the concept of divinity to include each and everybody's idea of the divine, the so-

called science of religion can neither do without this approach nor provide a convincing

defense of it.

There is no true science of religion, any more that there is a science of culture. Scholars

are still disputing about which cult Greek tragedy should be ascribed to. Were the

ancients correct in assigning tragedy to Dionysus, or does it rightfully belong to another

god? Undoubtedly this is a genuine problem; but it is also, I think, a secondary one. Far

more important, but far less discussed, is the relationship between tragedy and the

divine, between the theater in general and religion.

Whether my theory proves to be true or false, it can, I believe, lay claim to being

"scientific," if only because it allows for a rigorous definition of such terms as

"divinity," "ritual," "rite," and "religion." Any phenomenon associated with the acts of remembering, commemorat-

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ing, and perpetuating a unanimity that springs from the murder of a surrogate victim can

be termed "religious."

The surrogate victim theory avoids at once the impressionism of the positivist approach

and the arbitrary and "reductivist" schemata of psychoanalysis. Although this theory

brings together many crucial aspects of man's experience, it offers no simple substitute

for the "wondrous profusion" of the world's religious systems. Indeed, one ought

perhaps to ask whether this "profusion" is really as wondrous as all that; in any case, the

mechanism proposed here carries us beyond the mere cataloging of characteristics. The

endless diversity of myths and rituals derives from the fact that they all seek to recollect

and reproduce something they never succeed in comprehending. There is only one

generative event, only one way to grasp its truth: by means of my hypothesis. On the

other hand, there are innumerable ways of missing it; hence the multiplicity of religious

systems. My thesis results from an eminently positive line of inquiry. I have a certain

confidence in language -contrary to some modern thinkers who, at the very moment

when truth becomes accessible in language, declare that language is incapable of

expressing truth. This absolute distrust of language, in a period of mythic dilapidation

like our own, may well serve the same purpose as the excessive confidence that

prevailed before the dilapidation, when no decisive truth was in sight.

Our theory should be approached, then, as one approaches any scientific hypothesis. The

reader must ask himself whether it actually takes into account all the items it claims to

cover; whether it enables him to assign to primitive institutions an origin, function, and

structure that cohere to one another as well as to their overall context; whether it allows

him to organize and assess the vast accumulation of ethnological data, and to do so in a

truly economical manner, without recourse to "exceptions" and "aberrations." Above all, he must ask himself whether this theory applies not in single, isolated instances but in

every conceivable situation. Can he see the surrogate victim as that stone initially

rejected by the builders, only to become the cornerstone of a whole mythic and

ritualistic edifice? Or as the key that opens any religious text, revealing its innermost

workings and rendering it forever accessible to the human intellect?

That incoherence traditionally attributed to religious ideas seems to be particularly

associated with the theme of the scapegoat. Frazer treats this subject at length; his

writing is remarkable for its abundance of description and paucity of explanation. Frazer

refuses to concern himself with the formidable forces at work behind religious

significations, and

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his openly professed contempt for religious themes protects him from all unwelcome

discoveries:

The notion that we can transfer our guilt and sufferings to some other being who will

bear them for us is familiar to the savage mind. It arises from a very obvious confusion

between the physical and the mental, between the material and the immaterial. Because

it is possible to shift a load of wood, stones, or what not, from our own back to the back

of another, the savage fancies that it is equally possible to shift the burden of his pains

and sorrows to another, who will suffer them in his stead. Upon this idea he acts, and the

result is an endless number of very unamiable devices for palming off upon someone

else the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself. In short, the principle of

vicarious suffering is commonly understood and practiced by races who stand on a low

level of social and intellectual cultur
e. 5.

However, the disrepute in which he is held today is far from justifiable, for few scholars

have labored so diligently in the field or set forth their findings with such admirable

clarity. And many later writers have in effect done little more than repeat in somewhat

different form Frazer's own profession of ignorance.

Anyone who tries to subvert the sacrificial principle by turning it to derision invariably becomes its unwitting accomplice. Frazer is no exception. His work contributes to the

concealment of the violent impulse that lurks within the rite of sacrifice. Such phrases as

"physical loads" and "bodily and mental ailments" recall nothing so much as the

platitudes of second-rate theologians; and Frazer treats the act of sacrificial substitution

as if it were pure fantasy, a nonphenomenon. Yet authors closer to our time have done

the same and with considerably less excuse, for the Freudian notion of transference,

inadequate as it is in some respects, should at least have alerted us that something vital

is missing from the picture.

The modern mind still cannot bring itself to acknowledge the basic principle behind that

mechanism which, in a single decisive movement, curtails reciprocal violence and

imposes structure on the community. Because of this willful blindness, modern thinkers

continue to see religion as an isolated, wholly fictitious phenomenon cherished only by a

few backward peoples or milieus. And these same thinkers can now project upon

religion alone the responsibility for a violent projection of violence that truly pertains to

all societies including our own. This attitude is seen at its most flagrant in the writing of

that gentleman-ethnologist Sir James

____________________

5. J. G. Frazer,
The Golden Bough
, 1 vol., abridged ( New York: Macmillan, 1963), 624.

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Frazer. Frazer, along with his rationalist colleagues and disciples, was perpetually

engaged in a ritualistic expulsion and consummation of religion itself, which he used as

a sort of scapegoat for all human thought. Frazer, like many another modern thinker,

washed his hands of all the sordid acts perpetrated by religion and pronounced himself

free of all taint of superstition. He was evidently unaware that this act of handwashing

has long been recognized as a purely intellectual, nonpolluting equivalent of some of the

most ancient customs of mankind. His writing amounts to a fanatical and superstitious

dismissal of all the fanaticism and superstition he had spent the better part of a lifetime

studying.

The
sacrificial
character of this misunderstanding should remind us that today, more

than ever before, we will encounter resistance when we try to rid ourselves of ignorance

-- even though the time has come for this ignorance to yield to knowledge. This

resistance is similar to what Freud calls resistance, but is far more formidable. We are

not dealing with the sort of repressed desires that everyone is really eager to put on

public display, but with the most tenacious myths of modernism; with everything, in

short, that claims to be free of all mythical influence.

What I have said of Freud holds true for all modes of modern thought; most particularly

for ethnology, to which Freud was irresistibly drawn. That ethnology is alive today,

when the traditional modes of interpretation are sick unto death, is evidence of a new

sacrificial crisis. This crisis is similar but not identical to previous ones. We have

managed to extricate ourselves from the sacred somewhat more successfully than other

societies have done, to the point of losing all memory of the generative violence; but we

are now about to rediscover it. The essential violence returns to us in a spectacular

manner -- not only in the form of a violent history but also in the form of subversive

knowledge. This crisis invites us, for the very first time, to violate the taboo that neither

Heraclitus nor Euripides could ever quite manage to violate, and to expose to the light of

reason the role played by violence in human society.

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"Mimesis" or "mimetic desire" is the single most important concept for understanding Girard's thought. His main reason for using the Greek word rather than "imitation" is that it

"makes the conflictual aspect of mimesis conceivable," something not possible with the

drained and feeble imitation ( Girard,
Things Hidden
, 18). "Triangular Desire" is an excerpt taken from the first chapter of Girard first book,
Deceit, Desire, and the Novel
(1-17). It

includes the triangular structure of desire: self, other as mediator* (later he would switch to

"model"*), and the object that the self or subject desires because he or she knows, imagines, or suspects the mediator desires it. Internal* and external* mediation (see under

Model/Mediator),* rivalry, resentment, envy, and vanity are discussed in the course of

Girard's argument that the romantic concept of a spontaneous desire is illusory. The only

essential aspect of mimesis that Girard did not emphasize in this early analysis is the reality

of mimesis as a capacity and force which operates prior to cognition and representation,

although of course it becomes intertwined with representation in all the forms of human

culture.* For further reading on mimesis as precognitive and prerepresentational, see
Things

Hidden
, 1-23, and "To Double Business Bound,"200-203, as well as the interview that

constitutes the epilogue to the Reader.

"I want you to know, Sancho, that the famous Amadis of Gaul was one of the most perfect

knight errants. But what am I saying, one of the most perfect? I should say the only, the first,

the unique, the master and lord of all those who existed in the world. . . . I think . . . that,

when a painter wants to become famous for his art he tries to imitate the originals of the best masters he knows; the same rule applies to most important jobs or exercises which

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contribute to the embellishment of republics; thus the man who wishes to be known as careful

and patient should and does imitate Ulysses, in whose person and works Homer paints for us

a vivid portrait of carefulness and patience, just as Virgil shows us in the person of Aeneas

the valor of a pious son and the wisdom of a valiant captain; and it is understood that they

depict them not as they are but as they should be, to provide an example of virtue for

centuries to come. In the same way Amadis was the post, the star, the sun for brave and

amorous knights, and we others who fight under the banner of love and chivalry should

imitate him. Thus, my friend Sancho, I reckon that whoever imitates him best will come

closest to perfect chivalry."

Don Quixote has surrendered to Amadis the individual's fundamental prerogative: he no

longer chooses the objects of his own desire -Amadis must choose for him. The disciple

pursues objects which are determined for him, or at least seem to be determined for him, by

the model of all chivalry. We shall call this model the
mediator
of desire. Chivalric existence is the
imitation
of Amadis in the same sense that the Christian's existence is the imitation of Christ.

In most works of fiction, the characters have desires which are simpler than Don Quixote's.

There is no mediator; there is only the subject and the object. When the "nature" of the object inspiring the passion is not sufficient to account for the desire, one must turn to the

impassioned subject. Either his "psychology" is examined or his "liberty" invoked. But desire is always spontaneous. It can always be portrayed by a simple straight line which joins

subject and object.

The straight line is present in the desire of Don Quixote, but it is not essential. The mediator

is there, above that line, radiating toward both the subject and the object. The spatial

metaphor which expresses this triple relationship is obviously the triangle. The object

changes with each adventure but the triangle remains. The barber's basin or Master Peter's

puppets replace the windmills; but Amadis is always present.

The triangle is no
Gestalt
. The real structures are intersubjective. They cannot be localized

anywhere; the triangle has no reality whatever; it is a systematic metaphor, systematically

pursued. Because changes in size and shape do not destroy the identity of this figure, as we

will see later, the diversity as well as the unity of the works can be simultaneously illustrated.