René Girard: Gone the Way of All Flesh

René Girard
Commonweal

René Girard died recently, and is remembered by John Ranieri in an article for Commonweal titled "Contagious Desire: Remembering René Girard." Back in my religious studies days, I grew interested in Girard's mimetic theory, which - in a nutshell - is as follows:

At the heart of his thought are three interconnected insights. The first (and perhaps the most fundamental) is the claim that human desire is mimetic, or imitative. His second is the understanding that conflicts generated by mimetic desire are resolved by means of scapegoating either single victims or vulnerable groups. The third (and most controversial) affirms the role of the Bible in exposing scapegoating and revealing a God who takes the side of victims.

Girard was the rare literary theorist who really knew what he was talking about when he stepped outside his field and talked about something theoretical, for instance, cultural anthropology, which he not only understood, he contributed something of substance - the little bit that you just read.

Robert Bellah: Brief Remark on Girard's Scapegoat Theory

The Scapegoat
William Holman Hunt
Wikipedia

I've previously expressed interest in René Girard's scapegoat theory, though I know it mostly secondhand. From the little I've read, Girard argues that people mimic the desires of others, and this applies to groups, including competing ethnic groups, and that religion based on the sacrifice of a scapegoat -- not necessarily a goat -- was constructed to check the violence endemic to rival groups, thereby making possible the evolution of religion. The first culturally organized killing was thus of a 'scapegoat' (often human). My old doctoral advisor Robert Bellah disagrees:

I have referred to the despotic founders of early states, who came to power through blood and terror as they almost always did, as upstarts of the kind that tribal society usually managed to repress. As opposed to Girard's theory, it would seem that the first killing among culturally organized humans was not the killing of a scapegoat, but the killing of an upstart who genuinely threatened to revive the despotism of the old primate alpha male. (Robert Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, page 260)

I put this forward as a query for any Girardians who might be reading my blog, for there has been a Girardian or two who left comments here previously. Bellah doesn't offer much of a critique of Girard here in this one passage, but he has previously presented his detailed views on archaic violence. Anyone interested can read Bellah's' book for more of those details.

But if Girard should happen to be wrong about the initial culturally organized violence, would this prove fatal to Girard's interpretation of the scapegoat's archaic role in checking the violence of rival groups?

Back to René Girard: Two Types of Sacrifice

Touchstone Magazine Header

(Image from Touchstone Magazine)

Still surfing the internet waves for information on René Girard, I managed to find an interview, "Violence & the Lamb Slain," by Brian McDonald for FSJ's Touchstone Magazine that explicates Girard's view of Christianity as a 'sacrificial' religion, a topic that I was wondering about a couple of blog entries ago.

As a preface to the interview, McDonald provides an illuminating illustration summarizing Girard's theory of the scapegoat:

Picture two young children playing happily on their porch, a pile of toys beside them. The older child pulls a G.I. Joe from the pile and immediately, his younger brother cries out, "No, my toy!", pushes him out of the way, and grabs it. The older child, who was not very interested in the toy when he picked it up, now conceives a passionate need for it and attempts to wrest it back. Soon a full fight ensues, with the toy forgotten and the two boys busy pummeling each other.

As the fight intensifies, the overweight child next door wanders into their yard and comes up to them, looking for someone to play with. At that point, one of the two rivals looks up and says, "Oh, there's old fat butt!" "Yeah," says his brother. "Big fat butt!" The two, having forgotten the toy, now forget their fight and run the child back home. Harmony has been restored between the two brothers, though the neighbor is now indoors crying.

It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that Girard builds his whole theory of human nature and human culture through a close analysis of the dynamics operating in this story. Most human desires are not "original" or spontaneous, he argues, but are created by imitating another whom he calls the "model." When the model claims an object, that tells another that it is desirable -- and that he must have it instead of him. Girard calls this "mimetic" (or imitative) desire. In the subsequent rivalry, the two parties will come to forget the object and will come to desire the conflict for itself. Harmony will only be restored if the conflicting parties can vent their anger on a common enemy or "scapegoat."

This is precisely the sort of illustrative story that good teachers use to explain some thinker's system, and it pulls together and tightens a lot of loose ends in my understanding of Girard's views.

As for Christianity and sacrifice, which is one of the things that I went internet-surfing for, McDonald had a question similar to my own:

McDonald: You have advocated what is seen as a "non-sacrificial" reading of the death of Christ that is significantly at odds with the usual understanding of that death as a "hilasterion" [i.e., "propitiation"] that satisfies the wrath and justice of God. Could you describe that view and how your study of the formation and maintenance of human cultures has led you to it?

This is more or less what I was wondering about in my piecemeal readings of Girard, and his answer involves a distinction between two concepts of sacrifice:

Girard: Oh, this is a question that will require a long answer! It is not quite true that I take what you have called a "non-sacrificial reading of the death of Christ." We must establish first of all that there are two kinds of sacrifice.

Both forms are shown together (and I am not sure anywhere else) in the story of Solomon's judgment in the third chapter of 1 Kings. Two prostitutes bring a baby. They are doubles engaging in a rivalry over what is apparently a surviving child. When Solomon offers to split the child, the one woman says "yes," because she wishes to triumph over her rival. The other woman then says, "No, she may have the child," because she seeks only its life. On the basis of this love, the king declares that "she is the mother."

Note that it does not matter who is the biological mother. The one who was willing to sacrifice herself for the child's life is in fact the mother. The first woman is willing to sacrifice a child to the needs of rivalry. Sacrifice is the solution to mimetic rivalry and the foundation of it. The second woman is willing to sacrifice everything she wants for the sake of the child's life. This is sacrifice in the sense of the gospel. It is in this sense that Christ is a sacrifice since he gave himself "for the life of the world."

What I have called "bad sacrifice" is the kind of sacrificial religion that prevailed before Christ. It originates because mimetic rivalry threatens the very survival of a community. But through a spontaneous process that also involves mimesis, the community unites against a victim in an act of spontaneous killing. This act unites rivals and restores peace and leaves a powerful impression that results in the establishment of sacrificial religion.

But in this kind of religion, the community is regarded as innocent and the victim is guilty. Even after the victim has been "deified," he is still a criminal in the eyes of the community (note the criminal nature of the gods in pagan mythology).

But something happens that begins in the Old Testament. There are many stories that reverse this scapegoat process. In the story of Cain and Abel, the story of Joseph, the book of Job, and many of the psalms, the persecuting community is pictured as guilty and the victim is innocent. But Christ, the son of God, is the ultimate "scapegoat" -- precisely because he is the son of God, and since he is innocent, he exposes all the myths of scapegoating and shows that the victims were innocent and the communities guilty.

In his prefactory remarks to this interview, McDonald makes an astute observation:

Girard's belief about the death of Christ may be no less controversial among Christians than his allegiance to Christ is scandalous to the secular world. Against the view of Christ's death that would see him as a propitiatory sacrifice offered to the Father, Girard would argue that Christ's death was intended to overthrow in its entirety the religion of propitiatory sacrifice, since he sees that religion as of the very essence of fallen man.

Girard's view is thus rather problematic for orthodox Christianity, for his reading of the crucifixion would turn the orthodox interpretation on its head, transforming Christianity from the religion of sacrificial atonement par excellence into the religion of anti-sacrificial atonement par excellence. The sense in which Christianity remains sacrificial seems to reside solely in the gesture whereby Jesus relinquishes vengeance against his tormentors through his willingness to sacrifice even that very understandable desire for the sake of their lives, a synecdochal image of Christ giving himself for the life of the world, in Girard's understanding anyway.

Christ's death is therefore not the actual sacrifice but, rather, Jesus's renunciation of revenge, the death itself thus being at most a sort of noble death, similar to the death of Socrates at this hands of his enemies but taking things one step further by the explicit forgiveness of the enemies.

Interesting views, but probably unacceptable for most Christians.

Further on René Girard and Violent Sacrifice in Islam

René Girard Speaks Out

(Image © 1999 Dietmar Regensburger/Innsruck)

My pursuit of René Girard's views on Islam and violent sacrifice have led me to the website for the Italian paper Chiesa, which offers an article first posted on June 23, 2003: "The Innocent Victim Has a Defender. And He Is in Jerusalem."

This Chiesa post provides an English translation of the original article, "Il Dio dell'apocalisse" ("The God of the Apocalypse"), an interview with Girard conducted by Attilio Scarpellini for L'Espresso (No. 25, June 12, 2003) in which Scarpellini raises the issue of Islam and violence:

Scarpellini: And Islam?

Girard: "Islam has problems with violence. But we must avoid confusion. Islam cannot be classified as a primitive religion: it is a monotheistic religion that belongs to the religious family of Abraham, and it has been profoundly influenced by both Judaism and Christianity. Islam, too, contains the seed of a critical stance toward violence. Human sacrifice is not part of the Muslim tradition, and no orthodox or authoritative religious current of Islam justifies it. Islam is not sacrificial."

Scarpellini: But there are the suicide bombers.

Girard: "That's true. Fundamentalist terrorism is sacrificial. But it is a contradiction that plays upon the ambiguity of our relationship with religion and the sacred."

Scarpellini: The philosopher Jean Baudrillard says that the behavior of the suicide bombers is an assertion of moral superiority, in that they are capable of sacrificing themselves and others, a symbolic challenge that westerners are no longer able to accept.

Girard: "I haven't read much by Baudrillard lately. But in this case I would be tempted to agree with him. We are not capable of accepting the terrorist's challenge to sacrifice because the logic of suicide-homicide is unacceptable in a moral context permeated by Christianity; because we do not believe that the mechanism of the sacrificial victim has any value. The act of the suicide bomber who immolates himself and his enemy on the same altar may draw our attention -- as does in fact happen -- but it doesn't convince us. But to think that the refusal of this sacrifice weakens the West is merely a way of reviving Nietzsche's criticisms of Christianity."

I wonder who the "we" is in Girard's words that "we do not believe that the mechanism of the sacrificial victim has any value." Many Westerners still speak unselfconsciously -- though in a thoroughly secular sense -- of soldiers who die in battle as "sacrificing" themselves for their country. Or do only American Westerners think this way? Now, if Girard means specifically the suicide-homicide sort of 'sacrifice', then I'd agree that Westerners today generally reject any sacrificial understanding of a terrorist's mass homicide, even if the terrorist 'sacrifices' himself -- though I suspect that some Americans in WWII may have employed a secularized use of the term 'sacrifice' to describe the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (but I'm just guessing).

More to the point, I cannot quite see how in a "moral context permeated by Christianity ... we do not believe that the mechanism of the sacrificial victim has any value." Is this a general principle that also applies to religious concepts of forgiveness? Do Girard's words imply that sacrifice is an ineffective mechanism for the forgiveness of sins in Christian soteriology? I don't quite understand this. Perhaps "Islam is not sacrificial," but Christianity certainly is. Christian soteriology puts the self-sacrifice of Christ at its center and claims that the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament points toward this self-sacrifice. Moreover, it understands Christ's self-sacrifice not only as effective in enabling the forgiveness of sins but even as necessary and sufficient for the final purification from all sins. Perhaps this is Girard's point, that Christ's sacrifice makes any further sacrifices otiose?

Be that as it may, Girard's main point about Islam is that "Human sacrifice is not part of the Muslim tradition, and no orthodox or authoritative religious current of Islam justifies it." In short, "Islam is not sacrificial." If Girard is correct, then the Islamist exaltation of the suicide bomber is an Islamic heresy. Some Muslim scholars have, in fact, argued this, but a lot of others have defended the human sacrifice that they call "martyrdom operations."

Concerning this issue of human sacrifice in Islam, one might wish to read a couple of my earlier posts on the shahid as Islamic redeemer.

Girard on Islam and Mimetic Desire

Cain killing Abel

Ghent Altarpiece (1432), Saint Bavo Cathedral

(Image from Wikipedia)

In yesterday's entry, I noted a question posed to René Girard by Nathan Gardels of New Perspectives Quarterly:

NPQ: Is Christianity superior to other religions?

Girard replied "Yes," prompting Jessica, one of my long-term readers, to pose a query:

How, then, is Christianity superior to Islam, might he argue?

I replied:

Not having read much of Girard, I don't know, but I'm guessing that he would argue that Islam lacks the necessary sacrifice of the willing, innocent victim who forgives those sacrificing him, a renunciation of vengeance that breaks the cycle of sacred violence.

In other words, because Christianity is Christianity, but Islam isn't.

That's my guess.

My guess was a bit off, it seems. In an interview by Henri Tincq, for Le Monde, November 6, 2001 (translated by Jim Williams, former Executive Secretary of COV&R), Girard responds to a question about Islam and violence:

Henri Tincq: What do you think of the fascination for sacrifice of the kamikazes of Islam? If Christianity is the sacrifice of the innocent victim, would you go as far to say that Islam is the permission to offer sacrifice and Islam is a sacrificial religion, in which one finds also that notion of "model" which is at the heart of your mimetic theory?

René Girard: Islam maintains a relation to death that convinces me that this religion has nothing to do with archaic myths .... The mystical relation of Islam with death makes it even more mysterious to us. At first, Americans took these Muslim kamikazes [of 9/11] for "cowards," but, very quickly, they began to see them differently. The mystery of their suicide thickens the mystery of their terrorist act.

Yes, Islam is a religion of sacrifice in which we find also the theory of mimetic rivalry and the model. The candidates for the act of suicide are not lacking when terrorism seems to fail. Imagine, then, what is happening now when -- if I dare say -- it has succeeded. It is evident that in the Muslim world, the kamikaze terrorists embody models of saintliness.

Girard seems to be arguing that Islam takes the archaic myth and reworks it in a way differently than Christianity did, for he continues:

[I]n Christianity the martyr does not die in order to be copied. The Christian can be moved to pity over him, but he does not desire to die like him. He is suspicious of it, even. The martyr is for Christians a model to accompany them but not a model for throwing oneself into the fire with him. In Islam it's different. You die as a martyr in order to be copied and thus manifest a project of transforming the world politically.

Yet, he also sees some parallels to the Christian concept of sacrifice in Muslim tradition:

[Christian passion] narratives announce the cross, the death of the innocent victim, the victory over all the sacrificial myths of antiquity.

Is it so different in Islam? Islam has also formidable prophetic insights about the relation between the crowd, the myths, victims, and sacrifice. In the Muslim tradition, the ram Abel sacrificed is the same as the one God sent to Abraham so that he could spare his son. Because Abel sacrificed rams, he did not kill his brother. Because Cain did not sacrifice animals, he killed his brother. In other words, the sacrificial animal avoids the murder of the brother and the son. That is, it furnishes an outlet for violence. Thus Mohammed had insights which are on the plane of certain great Jewish prophets, but at the same time we find a concern for antagonism and separation from Judaism and Christianity that may negate our interpretation.

Girard thus sees some elements in Islam that would allow for a sublimation of the archaic violence reproduced by mimetic desire, that pattern of rivalry founded in envy and jealousy that must be sublimated if society is to overcome violence. Yet ... Girard has some doubts, and perhaps sees Islam, in its "antagonism and separation from Judaism and Christianity," as a religion of mimetic desire writ large. Very large.

For the record, I located an online paper by Madaleine Sorkin -- a Colorado College student who participated in the 2004 Senior Seminar held by the Department of Religion -- that applies the Girardean theory of mimetic desire to 9/11: "Al-Qaeda’s Defining Moment: The Prominence of the Scapegoat Strategy."

Girardean things hidden since the foundation of the world...

René Girard

That obscure object of mimetic desire?

(Image from Stanford University)

...or at least since yesterday for me, when I first puzzled over Roger Scruton's summary of a point developed by René Girard in Le Bouc émissaire (The Scapegoat).

The point developed by Girard, as I have since come to understand, concerns archaic religion's emphasis upon the killing of a sacrificial victim, who serves as the ritualized object of sacral hatred expressed through a sacrificial act carried out by a community to purify itself of its envy and jealousy by concentrating all of its impurity upon one individual whose death effects the destruction of that impurity and thereby restores communal peace. Temporarily.

Now, let's turn to Scruton's puzzling summary, in "The sacred and the human" (Prospect Magazine, Issue 137, August 2007), of Girard's point:

Only those ignorant of the source of their hatred can be healed by its expression, for only they can proceed with a clear conscience towards the tragic climax.

Scruton's summary here refers to non-Christian sacrifice, which works effectively only so long as the community members remain unaware that they are motivated by their own flawed nature, their own envy and jealousy, for only if they believe that they have killed the truly guilty one can they feel justified in their regained innocence.

Or so I gather is what Girard more or less means in the system that lies behind Scruton's summary. Doubtless, I've gotten some of it wrong, but be patient with me, for I'm working in relative ignorance of Girard own writings.

Anyway, I think that I now understand Scruton's larger summary as well, for in the Christian enactment of the archaic sacrifice, the victim himself forgives those who sacrifice him:

The climax, however, is not the death of the scapegoat but the experience of sacred awe, as the victim, at the moment of death, forgives his tormentors. This is the moment of transcendence, in which even the cruellest of persecutors can learn to humble himself and to renounce his vengeful passion.

This forgiveness works to effect something even larger, as Scruton explains, again summarizing Girard:

Christ's submission purified society and religion of the need for sacrificial murder.

It could only do so, of course, because in Christianity's high Christology, the crucified Christ is himself divine. Absent that detail, the death of Jesus is merely a sad, if noble, tale.

In poking about on the internet, I came upon an interview with Girard by Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, which published the interview in its Summer 2005 issue under the title "Ratzinger Is Right." In this interview, Gardels poses a startling question:

NPQ: Is Christianity superior to other religions?

Girard affirms this without hesitation, then procedes to lay out his own summary of his theory, which helps clarify Scruton's obscure remarks:

Girard: Yes. All of my work has been an effort to show that Christianity is superior and not just another mythology. In mythology, a furious mob mobilizes against scapegoats held responsible for some huge crisis. The sacrifice of the guilty victim through collective violence ends the crisis and founds a new order ordained by the divine. Violence and scapegoating are always present in the mythological definition of the divine itself.

It is true that the structure of the Gospels is similar to that of mythology in which a crisis is resolved through a single victim who unites everybody against him, thus reconciling the community. As the Greeks thought, the shock of death of the victim brings about a catharsis that reconciles. It extinguishes the appetite for violence. For the Greeks, the tragic death of the hero enabled ordinary people to go back to their peaceful lives.

However, in this case, the victim is innocent and the victimizers are guilty. Collective violence against the scapegoat as a sacred, founding act is revealed as a lie. Christ redeems the victimizers through enduring his suffering, imploring God to "forgive them for they know not what they do." He refuses to plead to God to avenge his victimhood with reciprocal violence. Rather, he turns the other cheek.

The victory of the Cross is a victory of love against the scapegoating cycle of violence. It punctures the idea that hatred is a sacred duty.

The Gospels do everything that the (Old Testament) Bible had done before, rehabilitating a victimized prophet, a wrongly accused victim. But they also universalize this rehabilitation. They show that, since the foundation of the world, the victims of all Passion-like murders have been victims of the same mob contagion as Jesus. The Gospels make this revelation complete because they give to the biblical denunciation of idolatry a concrete demonstration of how false gods and their violent cultural systems are generated.

This is the truth missing from mythology, the truth that subverts the violent system of this world. This revelation of collective violence as a lie is the earmark of Christianity. This is what is unique about Christianity. And this uniqueness is true.

I'm curious what Girard means by "true" in this last remark. Does he mean that the Christian story of Christ's sacrifice is true in its historical and theological details, or does he mean that it's true in the sense that it expresses most succinctly the psychological truth that lies behind the scapegoating myth, namely, the guilt that each individual bears for the envy and jealousy felt toward other individuals, hatreds that can only be overcome through forgiveness?

I guess that finding the answer to this will require some future reading on my part in Girard's oeuvre...

Speaking of secrets...

René Girard

A view askew?

(Image from COV&R)

...here's how Christianity works.

According to René Girard, anyway ... well, actually, according to Roger Scruton's reading of Girard in "The sacred and the human" (Prospect Magazine, Issue 137, August 2007):

In his study of the scapegoat, Le Bouc émissaire (1982), Girard identifies Christ as a new kind of victim -- one who offers himself for sacrifice, and who, in doing so, shows that he understands what is going on. The words "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" are pivotal for Girard. They involve a recognition of the need for sacrifice, if the guilt and resentment of the community is to be appeased and transcended, and the added recognition that this function must be concealed. Only those ignorant of the source of their hatred can be healed by its expression, for only they can proceed with a clear conscience towards the tragic climax. The climax, however, is not the death of the scapegoat but the experience of sacred awe, as the victim, at the moment of death, forgives his tormentors. This is the moment of transcendence, in which even the cruellest of persecutors can learn to humble himself and to renounce his vengeful passion. Through his acceptance of his sacrifical role, Christ made the "love of neighbour" -- which had featured in the oldest books of the Hebrew Bible as the standard to which humanity should aspire -- into a reality in the hearts of those who meditate upon his gesture. Christ's submission purified society and religion of the need for sacrificial murder: his conscious self-sacrifice is therefore, Girard suggests, rightly thought of as a redemption, and we should not be surprised if, when we turn away from our Christian legacy, as Nazis and communists did, the hecatombs of victims reappear.

This is complex, fascinating, controversial stuff, and it reminds me that for some time, I've been wanting to get into the works of Girard. He's been recommended to me for years now, beginning around 1981 or so, when he first began teaching at Stanford, where one of my friends, Denise Albanese, was then working towards her doctorate in English literature and mentioned Girard and his theory of "mimetic desire" -- which I won't pretend to understand but which I suspect would be congenial with some of my own interests in literary theory and religious studies.

Since I'm short for time this morning, I'll not comment on the passage above, which I'm posting more as a note to myself to read Girard than as any sort of musings about what Girard means. I don't yet know what Girard means, and I am quite puzzled by one of Scruton's remarks:

Only those ignorant of the source of their hatred can be healed by its expression, for only they can proceed with a clear conscience towards the tragic climax.

If this correctly presents one of Girard's points, then what can it mean? I suppose that I need to read Le Bouc émissaire, which has been translated as The Scapegoat (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Reading Girard's own words would enable me to 'scrutinize' this more closely myself.

But for now, I leave us with this puzzlement of mine.