COV&R-Bulletin No. 5 (Oct. 1993)
Letter from the Editor
In this issue of the Bulletin, you will find abstracts of some of the major papers given at our annual meeting at Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina). We invite you to contact the authors for a copy of their papers or for further discussion. The executive secretary of COV&R or the editorial office of the Bulletin will provide you with addresses. Let me raise also four administrative matters:
(1) We ask you to send us your contributions to the Bulletin on a diskette or by e-mail. It greatly simplifies the publication of the Bulletin.
(2) If you would like to write a book review for the Bulletin please contact the editorial office or James G. Williams, the executive secretary. The length of a review should be between 600 and 1000 words. Longer reviews (at most 2000 words) will only be published in special circumstances.
(3) The lenght of an abstract should be between 100 and 300 words.
(4) Reminder! A letter was mailed to members and potential members last spring which included a reminder to members that many had not renewed their membership. If you have not yet responded to that letter, please do so as soon as possible.
We are always interested to improve our Bulletin. If you have any comments please tell us.
Wolfgang Palaver
A Note from the Executive Secretary
The conference of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion on "Literature and the Sacred" at the University of North Carolina was an outstanding event and gave COV&R a big boost. There were 52 registrants, our record so far, with others in attendance for some of the papers. Thanks to all who contributed, and special thanks to Judy Arias and Cesáreo Bandera. Their planning and organization were simply superb and the setting at the Carolina Inn was lovely. The profits earned from registration fees will be used to begin an academic journal (see below).
Now as we proceed into the 1993-94 academic year, here are a few matters of note:
(1) A periodical will be launched in 1994. Initially it will be an annual journal. The editor will be Judy Arias, pending official confirmation at the 1994 annual conference in Wiesbaden (see "Future Events"). The name of the journal is yet to be determined.
(2) For those of you who will attend the COV&R meeting in conjunction with AAR/SBL in Washington, D.C. (see "Future Events"), please note there will be a COV&R reception on Friday night, November 19, beginning at 8:30. The location will be a suite at the Omni Georgetown. Just call the front desk and ask for my room number. Also, if you have suggestions as to people to invite to the sessions and the reception, please let me know.
(3) Finally, congratulations to Cesáreo Bandera on the acceptance of his book for publication by the Penn State University Press. The book, The Sacred Game, is a superb clarification and application of the mimetic model. It is expected to be published in time for the COV&R conference in Wiesbaden.
James G. Williams
Bibliography of Literature on the Mimetic Theory
1) Books concerning the entire work of René Girard
Golsan, Richard J. René Girard and Myth: An Introduction. Theorists of Myth 7. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993.
2) Articles concerning the entire work of René Girard
Boissonnat, Jean. "Un Français à San Francisco." L'Expansion 259 (5-18 April 1985): 5.
Golsan, Richard J. "Combatting the Persecutional Text: René Girard's 'La route antique des hommes pervers'." Helios 15/1 (1988): 73-81.
Goodhart, Sandor. "'I am Joseph': René Girard and the Prophetic Law." In To Honor René Girard, ed. Juilland, Alphonse, 85-111. Stanford french and italian studies 34. Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri, 1986.
Jensen, Hans J.L. "René Girard and Aksel Sandemose: The Question of Salvation from Mimetic Double-Binds." Literature & Theology 7/1 (March 1993): 66-77.
Kaptein, Roel. "Stappen naar de toekomst." Vrede 23/11 (November 1986): 14-15.
Peters, Ted. "Atonement and the Final Scapegoat." Perspectives in Religious Studies 19/2 (Summer 1992): 151-181.
Rosaldo, Renato. "Anthropological Commentary." In Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, ed. R. G. Hamerton-Kelly, 239-244. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.
Viard, Bruno. "Le Carré Diélien (de la fausse motivation) et le Triangle Girardien (de la mimésis)." Revue de psychologie de la mimésis 6 (1988): 91-116.
3) Interviews with René Girard
Girard, René. "Interview with Richard J. Golsan." In R. J. Golsan, René Girard and Myth: An Introduction, 129-149. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993.
4) Reviews about single works of René Girard
Bourguignon, Erika. Review of The Scapegoat, by René Girard. Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropologyku (December 1987): 296-298.
Demaitre, A. Review of The Scapegoat, by René Girard. Southern Humanities Review 22/4 (1988): 394-395.
Gans, Eric. "Scandal to the Jews, Folly to the Pagans." Review of Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde, by René Girard. diacritics 9 (September 1979): 43-53.
Goodhart, Sandor. Review of A Theater of Envy, by René Girard. Philosophy and Literature 16/1 (1992): 174-176.
Goodhart, Sandor. Review of Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, by René Girard. Philosophy and Literature 14/1 (1990): 172-173.
Kaptein, Roel. Vertaling van fragmenten van Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde. Schrift 97 (February 1985): 10-20.
Macksey, R. Review of A Theater of Envy, by René Girard. MLN-Modern Language Notes 106/5 (1991): 1118-1121.
Mechling, Jay. Review of Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, by R.Girard. Quarterly Journal of Speech 75/3 (1989): 369-371.
Poirot-Delpech, Bertrand. "Job ou le grand remède de la haine unanime." Le Monde, 29 March 1985, 18.
Radzinowicz, Mary Ann. "How and Why the Literary Establishment Caught Up with the Bible: Instancing the Book of Job." Christianity and Literature 39/1 (Autumn 1989): 77-89.
Schneider, Matthew. Review of Job: The Victim of his People, by René Girard. Paroles Gelées 6 (1988): 51-54.
Scholnick, Sylvia H. Review of Job: The Victim of His People, by René Girard. Shofar 7/4 (Summer 1989): 64-66.
Sorman, Guy. Review of Des choses cachées depuis la création du monde, by René Girard. Le Figaro Magazine, 16 April 1988, 21-26.
Stylianou, Andrew. "History's Victims." The Times Higher Education Supplement, 12 February 1988, 23.
Swanson, R.A. Review of The Scapegoat, by René Girard. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature - Revue Canadienne de Litterature comparee 16/1-2 (1989): 366-370.
Thomas, J. Review of The Scapegoat, by René Girard. Journal of Legal Education 38/3 (1988): 437-450.
Vincent, Catherine. Review of La route antique des hommes pervers, by René Girard. Cahiers universitaires catholiques (May/June 1986): 40-42.
5) Books with references to René Girard
Candland, Christopher (compiler). The Spirit of Violence: An Interdisciplinary Bibliography of Religion and Violence. Occasional Papers of the Frank Guggenheim Foundation No. 6. New York: Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, 1992.
Cochetti, Stefano. Mythos und "Dialektik der Aufklärung". Monographien zur philosophischen Forschung 229. Königstein: Verlag Anton Hain, 1985.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Mancini, Roberto. Comunicazione come ecumene: Il significato antropologico e teologico dellética comunicativa. Giornale die teologia 202. Brescia: Queriniana, 1991.
Schwager, Raymund. Für Gerechtigkeit und Frieden: Der Glaube als Antwort auf die Anliegen der Gegenwart. Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1986.
Sedgwick, Eve. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Siebers, Tobin. Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Scepticism. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Webb, Eugene. The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1993.
6) Articles with references to René Girard
Almog, S. "Judaism as Illness, Anti-Semitic Stereotype and Self-Image." History of European Ideas 13/6 (1991): 793-804.
Ashley, L.R.N. "Recent Publications on England and Related Fields." Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 54/2 (1992): 491-539.
Baldridge, W. "Deguy, Michel and the Ethics of Figuration ('Made in USA')." Symposium 41/2 (1987): 83-99.
Bick, I.J. "Stella-Dallas: Maternal Melodrama and Feminine Sacrifice." Psychoanalytic Review 79/1 (1992): 121-145.
Binder, G. "Representing Nazism: Advocacy and Identity at the Trial of Barbie, Klaus." Yale Law Journal 98/7 (1989): 1321-1383.
Burrell, David B. Review of Must There Be Scapegoats: Violence and Redemption in the Bible, by Raymund Schwager. Cross Currents 38 (Winter 1988/1989): 443-447.
Callens, J. "Of Novices and Scapegoats, Richardson, Jack In the Final Year of Grace." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 34/1 (1992): 41-86.
Carpenter, W. "The Scene of Representation in Alex Laguma's Later Novels." English in Africa 18/2 (1991): 1-18.
Chambers, E. "Thalia Revenge: Ehtnography and Theory of Comedy." American Anthropologist 91/3 (1989): 589-598.
Cohn, R.G. "Desire, Direct and Imitative." Philosophy Today 33/4 (1989): 318-329.
Colpe, Carsten. "Das Heilige." In Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe III: Gesetz - Kultur, ed. Cancik, H., Gladigow, B., and Kohl, K.-H., 80-99. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993.
Dillon, S.C. "Canonical and Sensational, Hallam, Arthur and Tennyson 1830 Poems." Victorian Poetry 30/2 (1992): 95-108.
Dufourgompers, R.Y. "Watching the Violence of Warfare in the Theater of Operations." International Social Science Journal 44/2 (1992): 247-265.
Edwards, P. "Shakespearean Triangles." Hebrew Univerity Studies in Literature and the Arts. 19 (1991): 7-22.
Eilbergschwartz, H. "People of the Body: The Problem of the Body for the People of the Book." Journal of the History of Sexuality 2/1 (1991): 1-24.
Falk, P. "Homo-Culinarius: Towards an Historical Anthropology of Taste." Social Science Information 30/4 (1991): 757-790.
Fineman, J. "Shakespeare Will: The Temporality of Rape." Representations No.20 (1987): 25-76.
Goldberg, D. "Sacrifice in Marlowe the Jew of Malta." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 32/2 (1992): 233-245.
Harl, K.W. "Sacrifice and Pagan Belief in 5th-Century and 6th-Century Byzantium." Past & Present No.128 (1990): 7-27.
Heinsohn, G. "The Rise of Blood Sacrifice and Priest-Kingship in Mesopotamia: A Comic Decree." Religion 22/2 (1992): 109-134.
Hersh, A. "How Sweet The Kill: Orgiastic Female Violence in Contemporary Revisions of Euripides the Bacchae." Modern Drama 35/3 (1992): 409-423.
Hoskins, J. "Violence, Sacrifice, and Divination: Giving and Taking Life in Eastern Indonesia." American Ethnologist 20/1 (1993): 159-178.
Imbert, P. "The Evolution of Canonical Circuits." Poetics Today 12/4 (1991): 697-712.
Jacobus, Mary. "Is There a Woman in This Text?" In: New Literary History 14 (1982/83): 117-141.
Jehenson, M.Y. "The Dorotea-Fernando/Luscinda-Cardenio Episode in Don Quijote: A Postmodernist Play." MLN-Modern Language Notes 107/2 (1992): 205-219.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. "The Logic of Religious Violence: The Case of the Punjab." Contributions to Indian Sociology 22/1 (1988): 65-88.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. "The Logic of Religious Violence." Journal of Strategic Studies 10/4 (1987): 172-193.
Kaplan, L.V. "Unhappy Pierre: Foucault, Parricide and Human Responsibility." Northwestern University Law Review 83/1-2 (1989): 321-359.
Kinder, M. "The Spanish Oedipal Narrative from Raza to Bilbao: Spain Film History." Quarterly Review of Film and Video 13/4 (1991): 67-94.
Klindienst Joplin, Patricia. "The Voice of the Shuttle Is Ours." In: Rape and Representation, ed. L. A. Higgins and B. R. Silvar, 35-64. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Klindienst Joplin, Patricia. "Ritual Work on Human Flesh: Livy's Lucretia and the Rape of the Body Politic." In: Helios 17/1 (1990) 51-70.
Lasine, S. "The Trials of Job and Kafka Josef-K. (Relationship Between Prozess and the Book of the Bible)." German Quarterly 63/2 (1990): 187-198.
Leventhal, R.S. "The Rhetoric of Anarcho-Nihilistic Murder, Bernhard, Thomas Das Kalkwerk." Modern Austrian Literature 21/3-4 (1988): 19-38.
Lewissmith, P. Review of Deceit Plus Desire Equals Violence: A Girardian Study of the Spanish Comedia, by D.D. Andrist. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 69/2 (1992): 196-197.
Livingston, Paisley. "Introduction." In Disorder and Order: Proceedings of the Stanford International Symposium (Sept. 14-16, 1981), ed. P. Livingston, 3-33. Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1984.
Lyons, J.D. "Unseen Space and Theatrical Narrative: The Recit-de-Cinna (17th-Century French Theater)." Yale French Studies No.80 (1991): 70-90.
Mandell, L. "Bawds and Merchants, Engendering Capitalist Desires." Elh - English Literary History 59/1 (1992): 107-123.
Mandrell, J. "Language and Seducation in El Burlador de Sevilla (Tirsodemolina)." Bulletin of the Comediantes 40/2 (1988): 165-180.
Marquard, Odo. "Exkulpationsarrangements: Bemerkungen im Anschluß an René Girards soziologische Theologie des Sündenbocks." In Worüber man nicht schweigen kann: Neue Diskussionen zur Theodizeefrage, ed. W. Oelmüller, 15-53. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1992.
Milbank, John. "An Essay Against Secular Order." Journal of Religious Ethics 15/2 (1987): 199-224.
Moglen, H. "Theorizing Fiction, Fictionalizing Theory: The Case of Dombey and Son (Gender and Family in Dickens)." Victorian Studies 35/2 (1992): 159-184.
Mudimbe, V.Y. "Where Is the Real Thing: Psychoanalysis and African Mythical Narrative." Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 27/3-4 (1987): 311-327.
Nelson, J.A. "A Machine Out of Order: Analysis of the Play - Mamet, David the Disappearance of the Jews." Journal of American Studies 25/3 (1991): 461-467.
Newman, R.D. "Narrative Transgression and Restoration, Hermetic Messengers in Ulysses." James Joyce Quarterly 29/2 (1992): 315-337.
Nicholson, M. "God, Noah, Byron and Findley, Timothy." Ariel 23/2 (1992): 87-107.
Nordhofen, Eckhard von. "Vor der Bundeslade des Bösen." Die Zeit, 9 April 1993, 61f.
O'Toole, Kathleen. "Nature of Violence Probed in Symposium on Origin of Culture." Campus Report, 23 September 1987, 7-8.
Olsen, R. "The Semantic Complexity of Novelistic Fiction, the Expansion and Collapsing of Proust Fictional Universe." Style 25/2 (1991): 177-195.
Orourke, J. "Rule-in-Unity and Otherwise: Love and Sex in Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare Critique of Dominant Forms of Sexuality in Western Culture)." Shakespeare Quarterly 43/2 (1992): 140-158.
Pan, David. "Enemies, Scapegoats and Sacrifice: A Note on Palaver and Ulmen." Telos No.93 (Fall 1992): 81-88.
Pestieau, J. "Violence, Powerlessness and Individualism." International Social Science Journal 44/2 (1992): 193-207.
Pettigrew, J. "Songs of the Sikh Resistance Movement (Texts of 6 Songs)." Asian Music 23/1 (1991): 85-118.
Phillips, David Scott. "Having Recently Gone Under: Homosexuality, Subjectification, and the Dialectic of Englightenment." Dissertation Abstracts International 51/8 (1991): 2736A.
Plasse, M.A. "The Human-Body as Performance Medium in Shakespeare: Theoretical Suggestions from a Midsummer Nights Dream." College Literature 19/1 (1992): 28-47.
Poster, M. "What Does Wotan Want: Ambivalent Feminism in Wagner Ring." New German Critique No. 53 (1991): 131-148.
Ramazani, J. "Freud and Tragic Affect: The Pleasures of Dramatic Pain." Psychoanalytic Review 78/1 (1991): 77-101.
Ramsay, R.L. "The Sado-Masochism of Representation in French Texts of Modernity: The Power of the Erotic and the Eroticization of Power in the Work of Duras, Marguerite and Robbegrillet, Alain." Literature and Psychology 37/3 (1991): 18-28.
Reckley, A.R. "Irony and License in New Memories of the Conquest: Gonzalo Guerrero." Symposium 46/2 (1992): 133-146.
Reed, W.L. "Dimensions of Dialog in the Book of Job, a Topology According to Bakhtin." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 34/2 (1992): 177-196.
Robert, Jean Dominique. "Louis Emmanuel: Lecture de l'inconscient des syndicats. Etude des rapports conscient et inconscient entre l'individuel et le collectif." Revue Philosophique de Louvain 84 (1986): 134-135.
Saint-Amand, Pierre. "Adorning Marie-Antoinette." Eighteenth-Century Life 15/3 (1991): 19-34.
Sanders, K. "Nemesis of Mimesis: The Problem of Representation on Andersen, H.C. Psychen." Scandinavian Studies 64/1 (1992): 1-25.
Sandler, Willibald. "Das Opfer Christi und unsere Opfer. Unterscheidungen und Zusammenhänge." Entschluss 48/1 (1993): 8-13.
Schnepel, B. "Continuity Despite and Through Death: Regicide and Royal Shrines Among the Shilluk of Southern Sudan." Africa 61/1 (1991): 40-70.
Schwager, Raymund. "Christ's Death and the Prophetic Critique of Sacrifice." Semeia 33 (1985): 109-123.
Schwager, Raymund. Review of Erlösung vom Stiergott: Gotteserfahrung im Dialog mit Mythen und Religionen, von Georg Baudler. Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie 112/2 (1990): 197-199.
Sedycias, Joao A. "Crane, Azevedo, and Gamboa: A Contemporative Study." Dissertation Abstracts International 46/10 (1986): 3026A.
Sherwin, R.K. "Law, Violence, and Illiberal Belief." Georgetown Law Journal 78/6 (1990): 1785-1835.
Silver, B.R. "Woman as Agent, the Case of Le Carre's Little Drummer Girl." Contemporary Literature 28/1 (1987): 14-40.
Solway, D. "The Anecdotal Function: A Reconsideration of Education Lost." Interchange 22/4 (1991): 77-87.
Stern, J. "Scapegoat Narratives in Herodotus." Hermes-Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie 119/3 (1991): 304-311.
Strauß, Botho. "Anschwellender Bocksgesang." Der Spiegel, February 8, 1993, 202-207.
Telotte, J.P. "The Doubles of Fantasy and the Space of Desire (Film)." Film Criticism 11/1-2 (1987): 43-55.
Toews, J.E. Review of Freud: A Life for Our Time, by P. Gay." Journal of Modern History 63/3 (1991): 504-545.
Ulmen, G. L. "Anthroplogical Theology/Theological Anthropology: Reply to Palaver." Telos No. 93 (Fall 1992): 69-80.
Walker, J. "Voiceless Bodies and Bodiless Voices: The Drama of Human Perception in Coriolanus (Shakespeare Tragedy Obsessed with the Conflict Between Body and Speech)." Shakespeare Quarterly 43/2 (1992): 170-185.
Wedgwood, R. "The Revolutionary Martyrdom of Robbins, Jonatan." Yale Law Journal 100/2 (1990): 229-368.
Williams, James G. "Between Reader and Text: a General Response." Semeia 46 (1989): 169-179.
Williams, T. "Gender Stereotypes in Madame Bovary." Forum for Modern Language Studies 28/2 (1992): 130-139.
Williams, T.J. "Violence and Sacrifice in Mauriac Therese-Desqueyroux." Midwest Quarterly 33/2 (1992): 168-180.
Woolfolk, A. "The 2 Switchmen of Nihilism, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche." Mosaic 22/1 (1989): 71-86.
7) Books applying the mimetic theory
Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. Introduction aux sciences sociales: Logique des phénomènes collectifs. Avec une contribution de Lucien Scubla. Paris: Ellipses, 1992.
Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. Le sacrifice et l'envie: Le libéralisme aux prises avec le justice sociale. Paris: Calman-Lévy, 1992.
Kattenburg Schuler, Nancy. Mimesis und Gewalt: Aspekte der deutschen Literatur im Lichte von René Girards Theorie. Universität Utrecht: unveröffentlichte wissenschaftliche Abschlußarbeit, 1992.
Kufulu Mandunu, Joseph. Das "Kindoki" im Licht der Sündenbocktheologie: Versuch einer christlichen Bewältigung des Hexenglaubens in Schwarz-Afrika. Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums 85. Frankfurt a.M. u.a.: Peter Lang, 1992.
Schwager, Raymund. Dem Netz des Jägers entronnen: Das Jesusdrama nacherzählt von Raymund Schwager. München: Kösel, 1991.
8) Articles applying the mimetic theory
Arias, Judith H. "Don Juan, Cupid, the Devil." Hispania 75/5 (December 1992): 1108-1115.
Arias, Judith H. "Tenorio's Illusory Game." Postscript 9 (1992): 1-7.
Arias, Judith H. "The Devil at Heaven's Door: Metaphysical Desire in Don Juan Tenorio." Hispanic Review 61/1 (Winter 1993): 15-34.
Arias, Judith H. "The Don Juan Myth: A Girardian Perspective. In Modern Myth, ed. D. Bevan, 23-59. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 1993.
Boyd, Richard. "Imitate Me; Don't Imitate Me: Mimeticism in David Bartholomae's Inventing the University." Journal of Advanced Composition 11/2 (Fall 1991): 335-345.
Culbertson, Diana. "Sacred Victims: Catharsis in the Modern Theatre." Cross Currents: Religion and Intellectual Life 41 (Summer 1991): 179-194.
Dumouchel, Paul. "L'impossible republique chretienne: Hobbes lecteur de la Bible." In Structures et temporalites figures dur desir, de la dette et du sacrifice (Cahiers du CREA 12). Paris: Centre de recherche en epistémologie appliquée, 1988, 309-355.
Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. "Tangled Hierarchies: Self-reference in Philosophy, Anthropology, and Critical Theory." Comparative Criticism 12 (1990): 105-123.
Girard, René. "Collective Violence and Sacrifice in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar." Salmagundi No. 88-89 (1991): 399-419.
Girard, René. "Do You Love Him Because I Do: Mimetic Interaction in Shakespeare's Comedies." Helios 17/1 (1990): 89-107.
Girard, René. "Es saugt das große Rom sich zur Belebung sein Blut aus dir." Der gründende Mord in Julius Caesar. In Julius Caesar (Programmheft der Salzburger Festspiele 1992). Salzburg 1992, 95-107.
Girard, René. "Innere Wut und wilder Bürgerzwist." Gewalttätige Polarisierung in Julius Caesar. In Julius Caesar (Programmheft der Salzburger Festspiele 1992). Salzburg 1992, 85-95.
Girard, René. "Love Delights in Praises: A Reading of The Two Gentlemen of Verona." Philosophy and Literature 13/2 (1989): 231-247.
Girard, René. "A Venda Myth Analyzed." In R. J. Golsan, René Girard and Myth: An Introduction. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993, 151-179.
Hardin, Michael. "Mimesis and Domination: The Dynamics of Violence and the Imitation of Christ in Maximus Confessor." ST Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 36/4 (1992): 373-385.
Hunter, D. "Doubling, Mythic Difference, and the Scapegoating of Female Power in Macbeth." Psychoanalytic Review 75/1 (1988): 129-152.
Kitzmüller, Erich. "Magische Geldwirtschaft: Die ruinöse Jagd nach Sicherheit." Kurswechsel No.4 (1992): 28-42.
Lascaris, André. "An Antidote to Violence?" New Blackfriars 74 (1993): 345-355.
Mandrell, J. "Don Juan Tenario as Befundicion, the Question of Repetition and Doubling (Zorrilla)." Hispania 70/1 (1987): 22-30.
McKenna, Andrew J. "Flaubert's Freudian Thing: Violence and Representation in Salammbô." Stanford French Review 12/2-3 (1988): 305-325.
Mitchell, R.N. "Miasma, Mimesis, and Scapegoating in Euripides Hippolytus." Classical Antiquity 10/1 (1991): 97-122.
Orléan, André. "Mimetic Contagion and Speculative Bubbles." Theory and Decision 27/1-2 (1989): 63-92.
Palaver, Wolfgang. "A Girardian Reading of Schmitt's Political Theology." Telos No. 93 (Fall 1992): 43-68.
Schwager, Raymund. "Lieblos und unversehrt: Will Gott Opfer?" Entschluss 48/1 (1993): 4-7.
Strauss, Walter A. "Dostoevsky: The 'Double' Precursor." Helios 17/1 (1990): 121-128.
Williams, James G. "Paraenesis, Excess, and Ethics: Matthew's Rhetoric in the Sermon on the Mount." Semeia No.50 (1990): 163-187.
Williams, James G. "On Job and Writing: Derrida, Girard, and the Remedy-Poison." Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 7:1 (1993): 32-50.
Abstracts of the COV&R-Conference in Chapel Hill April 22-24, 1993
Besides those major papers which are summarized in an abstract the following papers were presented at the COV&R-Conference:
Jørgen Jørgensen (Hjørring Seminarium, Denmark), Sun, Mind, and Weather
William Mishler (University of Minnesota), Sacred Murder in Ibsen's Pretenders
Judith H. Arias (East Carolina University), The Complicity of Literary Studies with Religion
Richard J. Prystowsky (Irvine Valley College), Projection, Subjection, and Christian Antisemitism in "The Prioress's Tale"
Cesáreo Bandera (University of North Carolina), Seperating the Human from the Divine
Charles D. Orzech (University of North Carolina), The Mechanisms of Violence in Chinese Hell Narratives
Daniel A. Ponech (York University, Ontario), Narratives of Passage: Sepukku in Japanese Literature
Richard Golsan (Texas A & M University), Drieu, Celiné, Montherlant: French Fascism, Scapegoating, and the Price of Revelation
Christopher G. Flood (University of Surrey, England), Collective Violence, Sacrifice, and Conflict Resolution in the Work of Paul Claudel
Dino Cervigni (University of North Carolina), Dante's Body and Soul: And the Word as the Mediator
Diana Culbertson (Kent State University), "Ain't Nobody Clean": The Liturgy of Violence in Glory
Jacque-Jude Lepine (Haverford College), From the Literal to the Metaphorical and Back: The Many Labyrinths in Racine's Phèdre
Susan Nowak (Syracuse University), The Girardian Theory and Feminism: Critique and Appropriation
Gerard Bucher (State University of New York), A Poetics of the Death of God
Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (Stanford University), The Conference in Retrospect
James G. Williams (Syracuse University), Kingship and the Beginning of Historical Literature
How is writing as the establishment of difference related to kingship? I take it that kingship is one of the primary manifestations of the sacred and is, furthermore, the difference that leads to history writing and literature as we know it in the Western tradition.
It is in ancient Israel that we find the decisive beginning of the process of turning the role of the sacral ruler into a protest against kingship and a tendency towards desacralization. The primary express of this desacralization we now know as "Scripture."
The argument has three parts. (1) Positivist historiography (e.g., Van Seters) does not move far toward identifying the generative center of historiography. Van Seters notes the relation of the genres of the king list, the royal inscription, and chronicles to history writing. But it is only in recognizing the centrality of the king as personification or representative of the sacred, which means above all the sacred social order, that we can begin to trace how historiography emerged. The king plays the advanced role that begins with the differentiation, the reference, the signification which emerges with the victim. The king is a sacred victim who must be executed--unless his power as a sacred persona has grown to the point that he is able to refer his victim status to others.
(2) In the second and longest part of the paper I try to show two things about the story of Saul. a) Even if the text is divided as in traditional source criticism, there are similar and complementary elements in the two main perspectives. In both perspectives the selection of Saul has structure of a sacral process rooted in falling upon a victim (prophetic rapture and being captured by lot). In both there is an unveiling of mimetic desire and rivalry. In both there is an exposure of the monarch as subject to forces beyond his control. b) The source or perspective usually construed as later does not contradict but certainly supplements the other, for it moves from implicit critique to outright condemnation of Saul and the very idea of monarchy. It is a text in contradiction:while it condemns sacrifice it is simultaneously sacrificial and retributive in perspective. In this narrative understanding the God of Israel rejects the first king as a sort of pars pro toto. That is, it is the people who must be punished for demanding a king, but this punishment is achieved through the process of casting lots and selection of one person, the person--the king, King Saul.
(3) In conclusion, the generative level of biblical historiography is a protest against the sacral office of kingship. It would not exist without kingship, but it seeks to overcome it for the sake of writing--thus also for the sake of reading. History writing is a substitute, a religious and cultural differentiation that is put in the place of kingship.
Sandor Goodhart (Cornell University), Reading the Ram: Abraham, Isaac, and the Text of Sacrifice
The predominant understanding of Gen. 22 is that it is a story about blind obedience to divine authority, an understanding upon which both the Christian rejection of the passage and the Jewish acceptance of it is based. The Christian reading considers the story emblematic of the demands of a God of wrath and violence whom it rejects in favor of a God of love. And the Jewish reading finds in it a lesson in the nature of the law of anti-idolatry, an extreme example of the how much is demanded of us.
Both views, however, presuppose that commandment is imperative, that when God says "Take your son, your only son, whom you love, even Isaac, and offer him as an offering ..." Abraham is enjoined to do so, to act first and ask questions later. My own suggestion is that commandment in Torah is always prophetic, a recognition of the path we are always already travelling and a naming in advance of the end of that path, and that our obligation in the face of it is to recognize that reading and act accordingly, which is to say, in this case, to make provision for the future, to refuse the sacrificial violence to which such a course would lead us.
Thus, we argue, that to the extent that Abraham would initially raise the knife to slaughter Isaac he fails the test. If he succeeds, finally, he does so because he recognizes such a course to be an abomination--even if God Himself directs him to it--and performs the sacrifice he should have performed all along. Obedience to the demands of human relations in Judaism are never in conflict with obligation to commandment or God but its expression. And this lesson, we suggest, is reflected in Abraham's naming of the place where his encounter occurred Adonaijireh, which recalls his calming response to his son on the way to Moriyah, rather than Moriyah which is where the slaughter would have taken place. It is also reflected in the Rabbinic commentary on this passage which asserts that God never said to "slaughter Isaac" and that "offer him as an offering (or sacrifice)" should be translated "prepare him as a sacrifice," a reading which thus enacts such a prophetic understanding in the very act of rendering it.
Wesley A. Kort (Duke University), Response to James Williams and Sandor Goodhart
The two papers differ sharply from one another. Williams is interested in origins to which narrative owes its birth; Goodhart opposes an interest in what transcends narrative, seeing such an interest as potentially destructive both to texts and to human relations.
Williams posits a unity that is broken when an institution is constructed and potentials for its deconstruction are released. Monarchy in Israel and historical narratives that threaten its continuity arise together and form contraries. While I agree that the languages of construction and deconstruction interact in biblical texts, I do not believe that they arise from an original unity. Nor do I agree with Williams that narratives play the deconstructive while lyrics play the constructive roles. A genre distinction cannot be constructed on this division of labor; narratives can confirm institutions, and lyrics can call them into question.
Goodhart opposes origins and all transcendence as starting points. When a reader moves from them to the text, violence is done of the sort that Abraham almost commits on his son. The reader should begin with relations and not with something that transcends or precedes them. Goodhart uses Emmanuel Levinas to point out how the conflict between transcendent imperatives and human relations can and should be avoided. As the Decalogue should be read backwards, from the tenth commandment to the first, scripture should be read not by beginning with God and the transcendent but beginning with human relations, beginning where we find ourselves.
However, Goodhart should notice that while Abraham fails to situate himself in his relation to his son, he does resist the lure of transcendence in his relation to place, also a significant matter in the narrative. He does not demand to know the exact location for the sacrifice before starting out, and he recognizes the place when he arrives. Abraham's orientation to place is a model for the relation to others that Goodhart advocates. I agree: The sacrifice that needs to be made is not of other people nor of places but of our desire for transcendence, our need for origins and certainty that justify violence to other people and our environment.
James G. Williams (Syracuse University), Response to Wesley A. Kort
Professor Kort had a copy of my paper prior to the meeting at Chapel Hill, so he has only to consult it to see that I do not say one of the things he attributes to me. He states, "Nor do I agree with Williams that narratives play the deconstructive while lyrics play the constructive roles. A genre distinction cannot be constructed on this division of labor; narratives can con-firm institutions, and lyrics can call them into question." First of all, I say nothing in the paper about lyrics, nor would I ascribe an exclusively constructive role to "lyrics." Secondly, I was not talking about narrative in general but the beginning of that kind of narrative we call "historical." When I emphasized that "'historical' biblical narrative, which is the first form of historiography in human history, arises out of protest against the institution of kingship," I was clearly focusing on the kind of historical narrative we find in 1 Samuel. I am well aware that narratives, ranging from myth and legend to modern history writing may have a founding, constituting, or constructing function. However, I was commenting on the critical protest function of certain biblical texts and how they related to kingship.
René Girard (Stanford University), Is There Antisemitism in the Gospels?
A certain number of passages in the synoptic Gospels and John are often accused nowadays of being anti- Jewish or even "antisemitic." These passages are really wider in scope than traditional exegesis believes. They claim that the victimage or scapegoat mechanism which is present in the crucifixion was also present in a long series of collective murders that began with "the foundation of the world."
These texts reveal the scapegoat mechanism as the foundational principle of human culture. As long as Christians do not acknowledge the true significance of these passages, they will remain unable to counter the charge of an antijewishness that belongs to the Gospels themselves. Their own interpretation effectively limits the significance of these texts to a gratuitous attack against the Jews.
Raymund Schwager (Universität Innsbruck), Suffering, Victims and Poetic Inspiration
The influence of the Gods on the lives of human beings is taken for granted in the Greek tragedies. Yet in these same tragedies, especially those of Euripides, the gods are sharply criticized because of their vindictiveness. The poetic inspiration of the tragedians lives from this ambiguity. In a similar manner, Job accuses God of persecuting him and yet, at the same time, Job takes refuge with God. The poetry of the dialogues in the Book of Job lives as well then from this ambiguity. Girard's interpretation of Job and of New Testament attempts, however, to resolve the ambiguity of this image of God. Thus one may ask: Does Girard's interpretation eliminate poetic inspiration in the process of eliminating the ambiguity? - Kierkegaard and Dostoevski are examples of how an unambiguous image of God in Girard's interpretation can still be compatible with genuine poetic inspiration. The ambiguity of the world is preserved and leads to the creation of complex figures with complex rolls. The roll of the one who suffers is here of special significance. While God is for the one who suffers no longer a God of violence, God is nevertheless mysterious and incomprehensible (just as God was for Jesus, abandoned on the cross). Influenced by the Christian tradition, modern poetry is no longer able to evoke images of heroes who either hope for God's violent intervention or glorify their own acts of violence. Yet modern poetry does quite often evoke images of those who suffer persecution and cannot comprehend why they have to suffer.
Reviews
Georg Baudler: God and Violence: The Christian Experience of God in Dialogue with Myths and Other Religions. Springfield, Illinois: Templegate Publishers, 1992. Pb. (366 pp.) $19,95.
The book's aim is to initiate an "orienting dialogue between the Christian experience of God and the experiences of the divine that are expressed in myth, fairy tales and religions", and in continuance of this, "to acquire through the Christian interpretation of religions and cultural history, and within a religious dialogue, a new Christian understanding of man and his situation" (p. 18). So, an attempt at a Christian cultural anthropology, in the final analysis an attempt at re-symbolizing the Trinity (p. 115).
GV falls into three parts. In the first part "Introduction", we are supplied with a few epistemological main elements, consecutively elaborated throughout the book, towards what might be called an empirical dialogue. The attention is directed at the main symbols of the religions in Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism. In continuance of this, Part Two, "Exposition", now turns to dissimilarities, similarities and contrasts among the hierophanies of the various religions, - in GV the concern is in particular the contrast between Judeo-Christianity and archaic religion, especially from the Near East with occasional views of South America and Asia.
In the material dealt with, certain basic experiences seem so recurrent that they actually make up a pattern through history and culture. To such experiential constants belongs the experience of evil, but according to Baudler also a primary experience of peace and harmony. The main symbols of the hierophany of peace and harmony is fertility- and love-godheads like the Ugaritic Baal and Anat, the Sumerian-Babylonian Tammuz and the Egyptian Osiris. The oldest known spheres of experience turn out to be dominated, however, by experiences of destruction, annihilation and anger, the god of the wilderness whose main symbol is the bull, and man's interpretative association to them.
If we stick to the narratives peculiar to the mythical texts, it will appear that no society can survive in its entirety without yielding to the discretion of such a god of the wilderness, as chaos will be the dominant order in that case. For the same reason a community will attempt by all means to protect itself against this destructive bull-god by a subjecting establishment of contact and communication with this deity, a causal and covenanted relation. The evil circulation of chaos must be discriminated, broken up and fixed. If this discriminating contact through which the god of the wilderness is transfixed into a more stable symbolical formula, is successful, then possibilities are opening up to the establishment of symbols and forms of communications, order and culture with their incidental stable differences. The sacred is such a primary cultural and breathing space, where distinctions can be made between heaven and earth, good and evil, at home and abroad, friend and enemy. The main symbol of this cultural founder, the contactual stand-in, is the bird, often in the shape of a bird of prey, the eagle which flies between divine heaven and man's world on its wings. But the establishment of order remains in the image of violence. Within religious myths we witness the symbolizing of this gradual establishment of differences and culture from opaque turbulence to the fixed dualism of order into a violent separation of the bull-god into an evil part and a good part, such as the struggle between the evil bull in the shape of the serpent-dragon, the Ugaritic Jamm and Mot, and the good bull represented by bird or bull, resulting in the order of fertility. Thus Yahweh the El-god curses the serpent in the Garden of Eden. "Baal, the god of fertility, is often represented in his ichnography as standing on a bull. But this does not mean, as has often been contended, that the bull is the symbol of Baal, a sign of his power and fertility. Rather, this representation shows how Baal, a new version of the old Athtar, has overcome the 'bull-El', and put his foot on the head of the defeated enemy" (p. 52). So far the formal differences of the symbols; what about their contents, the condensation point of the very experiences, the trans- empirical hyphen?
The joint borderline for order and the power of violence, and thus the sphere of the bird, is to be found in the connection between the sacred and the victim, whose stabilizing efficiency is known all over the world. Within the logic of victimization we find a decisive exception from the apparent rule of the divine "outside" the world, - the exception that confirms the rule? Here, so to say, there are two-way directions, outside as well as inside. We are confronted with an inversion of the perspective and move from atmospheric heaven to the world of man - and back again. The atmospheric god-bull appears to originate in the world of man. Thus it must be essential to establish further the origin of the eagle, that is, the truth of the logic of victimization. It is obvious that the sphere of the eagle has a certain human trait, and not only that, various religions characterize it as the spirit of longing and desire, pneuma and ruah, screams, cries, voices, ambivalence, pulsation and lunacy. In continuation of the works of Girard, Baudler localizes this logic in the scapegoat mechanism, everybody's conspiracy against one who is thrown out and killed as a scapegoat, and that through this horror of witnessing violence and death the others unite and stabilize their community upon the victim's grave. In the myths we find birds of prey, which chase away any threat of a symbolical identity, they even tear the gods to pieces. Thus culture is based on a founding murder.
What does this structural necessity of the scapegoat mechanism then consist of? GV does not give such a more profound interpretation of the experiences made in connection with the process of scapegoating, but it moves within a symbolically immanent interpretation, where order and (the culture of) violence are given a priori. Only the fact that violence dominates culture, the sacrificial murder, not so much how order itself arises, the possibility of experienced harmony, - the sacred violence of order. Violence and the mechanism of scapegoating are explained in the transcendental -philosophical way as something acquired and intended, something more or less transparent, derived/produced! Man "has to learn to kill as a 'cultural' act. ... Killing is the characteristic of the strong man" (p. 81).
In GV the mutual relationship between origin and culture is perceived in the form of a positional "double- being". Origin and culture are understood as two separate units of being, divided by a natural gap. "Thus, the 'founding murder' was not the origin of religion. Rather, it was the expression of religion ... . Man was surely human before he began to indulge in this usurping behaviour" (p. 86); "Language existed before the Fall" (p. 217); the point is "the primary fascination of life and harmony ... before any perversion" (p. 91) and "ontological" sacrificial types, crops sacrifice versus the sacrifice of animals (p. 93), etc. Thus we get not one, but in principle two beginnings: the order of Paradise and the cultural space of violence, natural order and the social history of violence. Baudler's explanation sticks to mere description without any actual explanation except that natural guidance towards this must take place within the fascination of the killing power, whose instructional a priori is hunting (p. 80ff). The fall of man is acquired/intended. Why? Baudler's only reply is something like "Man sins when he chooses not to be human" (p. 64). So the "fall of man" is made teachable!
A project like this one easily ends up in a conflict with the mimetic theory as stated by Girard. The mimetic theory is generative and concerns an absence of differences out of which the differences are generated. This explanation does not require two original external instances of derivation for its power, on the contrary it points out that violence and experienced order are both the obverse and the reverse of the same coin. In his two- phase model, Baudler reads the mimetic theory thematically - the mechanism of scapegoating is amputated into one theme among others, and he thus cleaves the medial unity of the mimetic theory into two parts; he tends only to reflect on the effects of the scapegoat, the symbolical parallel race, not the interdividual power of mimetic desire. In GV analyses of mimetic desire, the taboo, and the function of ritual, are absent.
In continuance of the above, the third part, "Development", concerns an anthropology of the Trinity where the trans-empirical "space" of experiences is interpreted in the light of the Christian truth of the Trinitarian God. In consonance with R. Girard, Baudler finds in the Judeo-Christian religion the weightiest exception from those symbolically immanent interpretations of the world characterized by violence. "Mythical language and the symbolism of the Trinity have a common logical structure, a common 'grammar'... . On the other hand, a common grammar does not imply similar content" (p. 115). Common to the revelations of non- Scripture is that it does show that the sacred and the sacrificial phenomenon are intimately connected with violence, but it does not offer an interpretation of its possible anthropological origin. By way of a contrast, this dimension is given utterance in the Judeo-Christian religion, mainly in the New Testament, through which the anthropological equivalents of the atmospherical experiences begin to appear on the stage. The Jewish hierophany is not of an atmospherical nature, but is based on an irreversible event, mainly connected with the Exodus from Egypt, revealing the God as "I-am-here", Yahweh. God is seen here as primarily maternally protective. The eagle has been replaced by the dove as an indication of life. "I-am-here" sounds like a caring answer with a human face, paternal and maternal, to human cry of despair in a world of danger and violence. Within the Jewish interpretation, this conception of God is in constant conflict with the bull-aspect of Yahveh. Yahweh is still characterized by a certain atmospherical bull-abstraction in relation to the invocator, the concrete reality of the victim. We here remember Abraham's test of faith, Jacob's nocturnal strife, or Job's protests.
In Christianity, the perspective of the victim is the central one. Thus the serious concern is a revealing distancing from the sacral violence and all its ways - the question of sin. The Christian revelation forces the world to "see" the scapegoat as it occupies the position of the victim. The primary sacrifice turns out to be a human being, and the situation of the human sacrifice is comparable to that of the child. It is helpless, totally in the hands of the powers that be. The Gospels "are narrative recollections of the events which disclosed God as Abba. 'The Son' is that event. It happened once ... . Thus Jesus the Crucified is none other than the image of a child in a world that is shaped by cycles of violence. In Him, man can contemplate a dynamic process which, to the Christian, encompasses and contains innumerable possible hierophanies: the helpless being, the one who is handed over, who cries for his mother, for his father. And the father, aroused by the breath of life expressed in the cry, moves to save the child. In this sense, Jesus is the symbol of God for the Christian" (pp. 118, 43). The God of Incarnation thus allows Himself to be characterized by means of the symbolism in the words "child" (son/daughter), "wind and breath" (pneuma, ruah) and "Abba" ("mother").
In the light of the patience, meekness, love, confidence, of agape, the very introduction of the interdividual and conflictual mimeticism would profile a Christian cultural anthropology! "If we want our religious and cultural dialogue to remain on the level of experience, we have to move within a symbolic discourse" (p. 20), as it says in GV, and thus the body of experience is quickly evaded.
Jørgen Jørgensen
Richard J. Golsan, René Girard and Myth: An Introduction. New York & London: Garland, 1993. Hdb. pp vii + 237.
Richard Golsan's René Girard and Myth: An Introduction is the seventh, most recent, volume of Garland's Theorists of Myth series and, notably, the first in the series which concerns a truly interdisciplinary approach to the study of myth. How to present such a complex theory to students of myth presumably unacquainted with Girard's work is Golsan's challenge. His response is commendabble: he oresents a very readable introduction which includes features of interest to the specialized scholar as well.
The introductory material in chapters one through five comprises an overwiew of Girard theory which follows the chronological development of Girard's thinking about the mimetic model and, by extension, examines the role of myth within that theory (chap. 3). Golsan illustrates the points under discussion with excerpts from Girard's works, which he supplements with commentary on Louis- Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night (51- 55). He concludes the overview with a thoughtful and informative account of the criticism that Girard's work has elicited to date (107-28). Hayden White's misinterpretation of Girard as an "apologist of reaction," Sarah Kofman's attack against Girard's criticism of Freudian narcissism, and Toril Moi's contention that Girard's devaluation of the mother informs his rejection of the Oedipal complex are among the examples reviewed. Golsan considers criticism of a less spectacular nature as well: Robert Greed Cohn's charge of the unidimensionality of Girard's concept of desire, Françoise Meltzer's argument against the scapegoat theory's "reduction" of literary texts, Elizabeth Traube's similar charge with regard to Girard's anthropology; and Richard Kearney's critique of Girard's definition of myth and mythical thinking as persecutory. The discussion of Girard's critics concludes with comments on Burton Mack and Lucien Scubla's dissenting views on Girard's interpretation of Christ and the Passion, and Jean-Marie Domenach's charge that Girardian anthropology borders on sacrilege. It is followed by abbreviated comments about the interdisciplinary work that has been undertaken to date in the application and development of the Girardian model (124-28). COV&R members will find the remaining three sections of Golsan's book to be of special interest: the interview with Girard (129-49), Girard's analysis of a Venda myth (151-79), and the most extensive bibliography of studies by and about Girard that has been published to date (181-237).
A striking point of Golsan's interview with Girard which is certain to attract attention is Girard's response, after more than ten years of silence, to the charges of male chauvinism and sexual repression leveled against him ("The Narcissistic Woman: Freud and Girard," Diacritics, 1980: 36-45) by Sarah Kofman. Girard's rebuttal to Kofman's charges, vigorous and controversial as ever, betrays the somewhat frustrating mental acrobatics of the male critic whose work is rebuked by the forceful voice of a female counterpart. The gender-oriented ritual is, notably, shot through with tones of compromise: throughout the interview Girard alludes to the potential of the mimetic model for feminist criticism, to the tendency in Shakespeare to make the woman's voice the voice of truth, and to his own belated discovery of Virginia Woolf's The Waves: a "unique masterpiece," as Girard describes it, "in which imitation expresses itself in the most simple, direct, obvious and beautiful fashion imaginable; ... the ultimate and supreme novel ... that puts an end to the genre of the novel" (133-34).
The interview also highlights questions about the interdisciplinary possibilities that the mimetic theory opens with biology (human sexuality) and the potential for a systematic analysis of the evolution of external and internal modes of mediated desire. And it offers less elaborated, but nonetheless provocative, glimpses of Girard's thinking on "the monogamous relationship as the greatest achievement of human culture" (146), on his own conversion from agnosticism to Christianity and the relation between his beliefs and his work (129-30), and on his double-barrelled opinion of the American university system (147-49).
In commenting on the literature of the post-modern age, Girard notes that "the time for description [of the mimetic mechanism] is over and the time for systematization has arrived" (133). His essay "A Venda Myth Analyzed" develops along these lines, beginning with the definition of the five basic themes common to foundational myths: the crisis of disorder or undifferentiation; projection of guilt onto the scapegoat, who often bears preferential signs of victimage; punishment by death or expulsion of the victim; and the return to order and subsequent sacralization of the victim.
Girard stresses two points throughout the remainder of the essay. He argues against the excessive interpretive prudence exacted by the "law of contamination by the unbelievable," explaining that, in the case of etiological myths, the reverse of that law--or contamination by the believable--should in fact set the interpretive standard. He further encourages students of myth to "entertain the possibility that an accusation and scapegoat mechanism might be involved in the genesis of thematically and structurally similar texts" (163), just as medieval historians have done. In this way "the demythification of myth will become as easy and banal," Girard contends, "as the demystification of a witchcraft trial record has been for centuries" (173).
The concluding bibliography is organized chronologically and divided into sections on Girard's works (books and their translations, articles, contributions to collected works, and interviews), and sections on publications about Girard (including books, collective works, debates, and reviews). This elaborate resource is, however, somewhat user-unfriendly, since it forgoes the conventional alphabetical listing by authors' names.
Golsan's book, in sum, is worthy of attention. It appears at a time when Girard's work is attracting widespread interest, as evidenced by the remarkable surge of publications on Girardian theory that have gone to press since 1991. And René Girard and Myth is, notably, the first introductory text on Girardian theory to appear. For the student of myth the book marks a promising prospect for the future direction of myth studies; for the Girardian, it signals the move from marginal to mainstream of a theory that not only rocks the closed hierarchy of academic disciplines but may open the way to an eventual, even wider, interinstitutional dialogue.
Judith H. Arias
Mark Juergensmeyer, ed., Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World. London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd, 1992. 155 pp. Hdb. $29.50.
The rise of religious violence and fundamentalism marks our age. Many books and articles have been published on this matter in recent years. But most of this literature has dealt quite superficially with these problems: Religious violence and fundamentalism are morally condemned, a convincing explanation, however, is very often lacking. This book is different. It is the result of a dialogue of social scientists and scholars of comparative religion who have studied incidents of religious violence with René Girard, who has developed a theory that helps do understand the relationship between religion and violence. The book avoids the usually superficial and hypocritical attitude and tries to understand the deeper causes of religious violence. A conference--convened by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation in 1989--started this dialogue. Essays--written after the conference--and Girard's written response are presented in this volume, which was first published as a special issue of The Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence in 1990 (Vol. 3, No. 3). The book is introduced by the editor Mark Juergensmeyer ("Editor's Introduction: Is Symbolic Violence Related to Real Violence?"), who gives a short overview of Girardian themes and summarizes the other essays.
Mark R. Anspach ("Violence Against Violence: Islam in Comparative Context"), a Girardian himself, deals with the paradox of many religious institutions that control violence through violence. He refers to vendettas, leadership battles, and the punishment of transgressors in pre-state societies, interprets these institutions from a Girardian perspective as extensions of sacrificial ritual and shows that many aspects of Islam are quite similar to these characteristics of tribal religions. Anspach's successful attempt to reconcile Raymond Verdier's insights into ritualized vengeance and Girardian theory is especially interesting.
Martin Kramer ("Sacrifice and Fratricide in Shiite Lebanon") focuses on acts of self-sacrifice by members of the Hizbollah and Amal terrorist groups in Lebanon. Young people sacrificed their lives in attacks against American and Israeli military. Kramer shows convincingly that there exists mimetic rivalry between Hizbollah and Amal and that those acts of self-sacrifice can be interpreted as sacrificial acts -- in the Girardian sense -- containing this internal fratricidal violence.
Ehud Sprinzak ("Violence and Catastrophe in the Theology of Rabbi Meir Kahane: The Ideologization of Mimetic Desire") uses Girardian theory to interpret Meir Kahane's theology of violence and revenge. According to Sprinzak, Kahane "is the epitome of the mimetic desire" (67). He wants "to out-violate the violators of the Jews". In his mimetic struggle Kahane goes beyond all traditional forms of religion that tried to control violence and produces violence on a massive scale. According to Sprinzak this is ultimately the result of an ideologization of mimetic desire.
Emmanuel Sivan ("The Mythologies of Religious Radicalism: Judaism and Islam") emphasizes cases of convergence between fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Jews. Although they are archenemies they show some sympathy towards their respective positions. Both, for instance, agree on the condemnation of Salman Rushdie. Sivan's explanation for this strange sympathy refers to the fact that in both cases the internal enemies play a much more important role than the Muslim-Jewish conflict.
Bruce B. Lawrence ("The Islamic Idiom of Violence: A View from Indonesia"), who deals especially with the case of Indonesia, claims that what might appear to be religious violence is in fact political violence. Using insights from the sociologist Anthony Giddens, Lawrence stresses the close connection between violence and the modern nation-state. Due to the modern nation-state with its implicit violence "truly Islamic violence has been rendered mute" (98).
Mark Juergensmeyer ("Sacrifice and Cosmic War") analyzes the rhetoric of religious activists in Israel, Iran, India, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka etc. and gives a somewhat different explanation of religious violence than René Girard. Although Juergensmeyer agrees in many aspects with Girard he questions both the conception of mimetic desire and the notion of sacrifice as the fundamental religious image. According to Juergensmeyer "images of religious warfare are prior to both sacrifice and martyrdom in the mechanism of symbolically displacing violence, and ... the motivation behind the creation of these images of spiritual war is a basic longing for order" (106). This review doesn't give enough place to discuss the differences between Juergensmeyer and Girard more deeply. What a theologian misses, however, in Juergensmeyer's article is a clearer distinction between religion in general and religion based on the non-sacrificial texts in the Judeo-Christian Bible. The latter is a very different kind of religion that focuses ultimately on non- violence.
By dealing especially with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam David C. Rapoport ("Some General Observations on Religion and Violence") gives some reasons why religious revivals are nearly always associated with violence. Leaning on Girard, he mentions the violent origin of religions as one of those reasons. He also shows that the return to Christian roots normally produces pacifist movements. At the same time, however, he does not forget that certain passages in the Gospels can easily be misinterpreted and helped to legitimize violence by Christians.
The book concludes with a response of René Girard and Mark R. Anspach ("A Response: Reflections form the Perspective of Mimetic Theory") to these different essays. Girard and Anspach stress again the value of mimetic theory as it helps to understand fundamentalist movements and the outbreak of religious violence. They see a deepening mimetic-sacrificial crisis in our culture as the real cause behind these phenomena. Their general position on fundamentalism seems to be right. They reject positions that regard fundamentalism as some kind of pathology and have a subtly differentiated view of our modern world. Without sharing a modernist belief in progress they don't hesitate to stress that "there are also immensely positive aspects" to our modern age.
The dialogue that is presented in this book is an important interdisciplinary contribution to understand current outbreaks of religious violence and the rise of fundamentalist movements. It is an interesting book that will be helpful for social science scholars, religious studies scholars, and Girardians who are interested in the dialogue with these academic fields.
Wolfgang Palaver
Booknote
André Lascaris, Het Soevereine Slachtoffer: Een theologisch essay over geweld en onderdrukking. [The Sovereign Victim: A Theological essay on Violence and Oppression] Ten Have/The Netherlands: Baarn, 1993. 280 pp.
In this book I try to discuss violence and oppression from a theological point of view and to answer the question how we can be set free from violence. René Girard's theory is the anthropological starting point, but the book goes beyond Girard's thesis by introducing the concepts of justice and forgiveness.
The first chapter upholds the thesis that human beings cannot live without some relationship to religion albeit a secularized religion. However, many people leave the traditional Churches because they see them as instruments of oppression. Traumatic experiences such as incest become even more difficult to deal with when the perpetrators were able to justify their deeds by appealing to Our Father in heaven. Violence thus is a theological theme that is of great importance in today's world. The second chapter underlines the omnipresence of violence, examines the origin of violence, the differences of the role of violence in a democratic society compared with a hierarchical one (with special reference to the position of women), and its fundamental meaning for individuals and society, and finally provides the reader with a brief history of the reflection on violence and peace. The third chapter deals with violence in the Old Testament. It covers more ground than J. G. Williams' The Bible, Violence and the Sacred, and deals with the relationship between justice and violence, recommendations of the use of violence, the biblical interpretation of its origin, violence in Israel's story of liberation, and violence in Israel's social utopias. The fourth chapter is on violence in the New Testament; justice and unconditional forgiveness, social and religious scapegoating, non-violence, the community of imitation of Christ, the rejection of law and sacrifice, the relationship in the early Church between men and women, masters and slaves, subjects and rulers. At the end of this chapter the New Testament is confronted with E. Levinas' criticism of it. The fourth chapter deals with three traditionally oppressive theologies: Jesus as sacrifice, the uniqueness of Christ and the hierarchical image of God. The theology of the sacrificial interpretation of Christianity was not developed in the Middle Ages as Girard suggests but in the time of the Reformation when medieval society collapsed. Girard's theory intensifies the discussion around the uniqueness and divinity of Christ. If an ontological hierarchy is always violent, we have to search for new images of God. In the concluding chapter violence is discussed in relationship to justice and unconditional forgiveness. From a theological point of view the latter is seen as the antidote to violence. This has consequences for individuals, the Churches and society.
In spite of the difficult theme, the book is written in such a clear and transparent way that it can be read by both theologians and non-theologians. The author and editor welcome offers to get the text translated into English, French, German and Spanish.
André Lascaris, To Do the Unexpected: Reading Scripture in Northern Ireland. Coleraine, 1993, 80 pp (forthcoming).
This booklet is a fruit of nineteen years of peace work in Northern Ireland. It aims at bible groups in Northern Ireland and the Republic. It deals with questions such as how to read a biblical text and how to read such a text in a group. It opens up a discussion on twelve biblical texts which play a role in the situation of violence in Northern Irleand. It comments on these texts, deals with the question of violence in Scripture and briefly explains Girard's mimetic theory.
New Books
Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. Introduction aux sciences sociales: Logique des phénomènes collectifs. Avec une contribution de Lucien Scubla. Paris: Ellipses, 1992.
Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. Le sacrifice et l'envie: Le libéralisme aux prises avec le justice sociale. Paris: Calman-Lévy, 1992.
Golsan, Richard J. René Girard and Myth: An Introduction. Theorists of Myth 7. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993.
Kufulu Mandunu, Joseph. Das "Kindoki" im Licht der Sündenbocktheologie: Versuch einer christlichen Bewältigung des Hexenglaubens in Schwarz-Afrika. Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums 85. Frankfurt a.M. u.a.: Peter Lang, 1992.
André Lascaris, Het Soevereine Slachtoffer: Een theologisch essay over geweld en onderdrukking. Ten Have/The Netherlands: Baarn, 1993.
Siebers, Tobin. Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Scepticism. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Webb, Eugene. The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1993.
Future Events
1. November 19-20,1993, COV&R meeting in conjunction with AAR/SBL in Washington, D.C.. There will be three sessions, all held at the Omni Shoreham-Directors.
(a) Nov. 19, 9:30 a.m.-12 noon: Apocalypse and technological society. Paper by Darrell Fasching, author of The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Ted Peters, author of God--the World's Future, will respond to Fasching's paper. (b) Nov. 19, 2-4:30 p.m.: Panel discussion of Curing Violence, eds. Thee Smith and Mark Wallace
(c) November 20, 9-12 a.m.: The mimetic theory and the Second Isaiah. This discussion, to be led by Hans Jensen, will revolve around short papers written for the occasion. Papers should be sent to James Williams for distribution no later than Oct. 15. Contact Williams if you plan to write a paper or to attend the session.
There will be a COV&R reception in the COV&R suite at the Omni Georgetown Hotel, Friday, Nov. 19, beginning at 8:30 p.m. Ask at the front desk for the room of James Williams.
2. June 8-11, 1994, annual conference of COV&R in Wiesbaden, Germany. The topic will be "Theology and/or Secular Thinking: Political Philosophy, Economy, and Sociology." This conference will primarely focus on the work of Jean-Pierre Dupuy (Paris: CREA-École Polytechnique and Stanford; see his book Sacrifice et envie: Le libéralisme aux prises avec la justice sociale. Paris: Calman-Lévy, 1992) and the work of John Milbank (Cambridge, England; see his book Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990). Representatives of the theology of liberation and other scholars in the fields of theology and social theory will discuss the main theses presented by Dupuy and Milbank. During one afternoon of this conference three parallel meetings will take place to focus on questions not directly linked to the main topic. Judith H. Arias will organize a meeting on "Mimetic theory, Literature and Feminism", Roel Kaptein on "The Mimetic Model in Pschology and Psychotherapy" and Jim Williams on "Mimetic Theory and Biblical Literature". For further information contact Raymund Schwager or Wolfgang Palaver.
3. Late May or early June, 1995: annual conference of COV&R at Loyola University of Chicago. Organizer Andrew McKenna. The topic is yet to be specified beyond an emphasis on interdividual psychology.
AAR/SBL will meet Nov. 19-22, 1994 in Chicago and Nov. 18-21, 1995 in Philadelphia. We will presumably continue our practice of holding COV&R meetings at these conventions.