René Girard - The Crimes of Gods

8/21/2019 René Girard - The Crimes of Gods

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C H A P T E S E V E N

The Crimes of the Gods

r EEVOLTION OF mythoogy is governed by the determination to elim-

v,

inate any repres entation of vioence. To gain a cearer unders tanding we

must follow the proces s beyond the stage, jus t dened, in which ony col-

lective vioence is at work. Each time it dis appears it is repaed by

individual violence. There may be a s econd stage, especialy in Greek and Rman mythoogy, in which even individual violence

is s uppres s ed,

s o that a forms of violence in mythoogy become unacceptabe. Thos e

who go beyond this s tage, whether they know it or notand it woud

s eem that us uay they do notare a purs uing the same goa: the eimi

nation of the very ast traces of collective murdr, the imination of

traces of traces , s o to s peak. Plato's attitude provides a s ignicant xam-

pe of this new s tage. His intention to remove any trace of mythoogica

vioence is quite expicit in the Republic. This is es pecialy noticeable in

the character of Kronos in a tt that is particuary relevant to my

anaysis:and t hen t here is t he tale of Kronos's doing s and of hi

s sons t reat ment of him.

Even if such t ales wee t rue, I should not hav e supposed t he y should be lig ht ly

told to thoug ht less young people. If they cannot be altog ether suppressed, t he y

should onl y be evealed in a m y st ey , t o which access should be as r as possible

estrict ed by q uing t he sacice, not of a pig , but of some vict im such as v er y

f ew could aod. It is t ue: t hose st oies ar e o bject iona ble 1

Cearly it is not coective murder that shocks Plat since it has disappeared, but the individual vioence that has taken its place.

1 Plato Rublc rans Franis MacDonald Cornfod ew York: Oxfod UnvesiPs) 8 a-b.

H E C R I M E S O F H E G O D S 77

The determination to eliminate a vioence, by its very explicitness,bec

omes a form of c nsorship,_!"�i1utiation of the myho-

ocal text. It no longer has the force of structura reorganization andthe extraordinary coherence it possessed in the preceding stage, andtherefore does not succeed in modifying the mythological text. Platoforesaw that faiure and proposed a kind of compromise mxed with themost interesting reigious precautions. The recommendation that the

sacricia victim shoud be of signi�cance and value is not merey motivated by the desire to reduce to the minimum the number of witnessesto the misdeeds of Kronos and Zeus. This recommendation is to be ex-pected, within the context of a reigion in which sacrice stil existed,from a sincerely reigious person confronted with a vioence that he feesmay be contaminating. A similar but legitimate and sacred form of vio-ence is needed as a counterbalance, and is found in the sacrice of asimportant a victim as possible. Thus in Plato's text the circle of vioenceand the sacred is almost expicity closed before our very eyes

The censorship that Pato demanded was never imposed in the way

he imagined; but it was imposed and still is imposed today in a dierentand more eective form, incorporated in the discipine of ethnoogy.The Patonic stage, as opposed to the preceding one, does not culminatein an actua recreation of the myth, though it is just as fundamenta.Another cuture is founded, no longer truly mythoogica but "rationa Iand "philosophical' forming the very text of phiosophy. Mythology iscondemned by many ancient writers, generay in the trite forms takenfrom Plato which iustte wel the true nature of the scandal. Varro, forexample, talks of a "theology of the poets which he found particularlyannoying because it asks the faithfu to admire "thieving and adulterousgods, gods who are saves of a man; in other words a man's pitls are

attributed to the gods, even the most despicabe!'2According to Varro what Pato calls the theology of the poets is that

very primitive dual quality of the sacred which unites bessed withcursed. All the passages from Homer criticized by Pato show the evilaspects of divinity as well as the good Plato's wish for dierentiatio ndoes not permit moral ambiguity in the divine. Exacty the same can bes een today in viStuss and in structuraism, except that Patosora grandeur has disappeared and been repaced by a certain inguist i

Quoed Geog Dumz, L Relgn mane acha"u (Pas Payo 1966)p 108

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84 T H E S C A P E G O A T

Two of the stereotypes of persecution are very much in evidence:

the crisis and the guil of the god who precipitates he crisis. Divine

responsibiiy is boh increased and diminished by the bee sing. Instead

of colecive vioence directy reversing evi ino good, this is is riual

equivaent. The magic action nevertheless signies that violence; it

always tries to reproduce the origina eec of the scapegoat, and it is

aways colective in naure. Al the other gods are afraid and inervene

against Telipinu to put an end to his desructive actions But the vio-

ence of this intervention is hidden; he gods are no more enemies of

Teipinu than Telipinu is realy he enemy of the people There is dis-

order in the communiy and he cause ofit is divine, bu there is no truly

bad intenion on the par of anyone, neiher in Telipinu's relaionship

with he peope nor in he other gods' reationship with Telipinu.

We should include among he variations on the theme of the

minimized faut he actions of the Norh American rickster and al he

"deceiving gods found everywhere These gods are as much scapegoasas the ohers. Al their good deeds stem from a socia pact formed at the

expense of the victim They are always preceded by actions cearly per

ceived as wrong and jusy punished Again, this is the paradox of heI! ; god who is helpfu because he is harmful, a force of order because he

" I creates dis order. As long as he mythoogica represenaion ofpersecu-tion remains intact here are bound to be ques tions about he inentions

of the gods Why should a god put those he wants o hep and protect

ino such diculties; moreover, why does he put himself in hat posi-

tion? Apart fromthe gods who do evil unwitingly and he gods who are

forced irresisibly o do evi, there is inevitaby a hird s oluion, he god

who enjoys doing evil and is amused by it. Athough he always helps in

the end, he is delighted when things go bady and continues to enjoy it.

He is known for his games. He pushes his paylness so far tha he losescontro of he consequences. He is the sorcerer's apprenice who ses re

to he word by ighting a very small fame and who drowns the earh

with his urine. Thus he jusies every efort to correct and, by virtue of

these eorts, he is ransformed ino a benefacor.

The trickster is someimes seen as wicked, but sometimes he is so

supid and clumsy in carrying out his mission ha accidents happen,

wheher he wans them to or not. These boh compromise he desired

resul and yet ensure is outcome by creaing the unanimous opposition

to he bunerer necess ary for he good of he communiy.

We mus recognize in he rickster one of the two grea theoogies o

T H E C R I M E S O F T H E G O D S 85

evove as a resut of the sacralization of he scapegoa he theology of

divine price The oher heology is divine anger, which provides stilanother solution to the probem tha faces religious belief when the vic-

tim whom it hinks is truy guity becomes he means of reconciliation.If those who beneted from the mechanism were abe o challenge the

scapegoat's responsibiliy, here would be no reconciiation and no

divinity

In this perspective the god is fundamenay good but is temporariytransformed into a wicked god. He crushes the faithfu in order to bring

them back to the straight pah; he correcs their weaknesses which pre-

ven him from immediately showing his benecence. He who loves

greatly punishes greaty. This soution, hough ess happy than the

preceding one, is more profound in tha i inroduces he rare ideaamong men tha their scapegoat is no he only incarnation of violence.

The community shares the responsibility for evil with he god; it begins

o be guiy of its own disorders. The theology of anger comes very cose

o the truh, but it is stil closely ied o the representation of persecu-

tion. The soution ies in an analysis of the scapegoa mechanism which

wil untie the knot that keeps he mythological representation closedwihin iself.

To conclude this discussion of the guil of the god and to show thatwe need no divide the soluions ino rigid categories, I woud like to dis

cuss a myh ha is found in very dierent pars of the word and that

ingeniously manages o combine al the advantages from which theabove solutions had to choose.

Cadmus, the ancesor of al Theban mythoogy, aer kiling he

dragon, sows the dragon's eeth in he earth, from which armed warriors

immediaely spring up. This new menace, born of the previous one,

ceary illusrates the relationship between the crisis of persecuionwihin human communities on the one hand, and al the dgons and

fabled beasts on the oher. Cadmus resorts o a very simple ruse to rid

himself of the warriors. Surrepiiousy he picks up a pebble and throwsit ino the midde of the troop. It his none of he warriors, bu the noiseof he fall makes each one think the other has povoked him; in amomen hey are a each other's throas and kill each oher to he asman. Cadmus is seen here as a kind of trickster. In one sense he causesthe social crisis, he grea disorder ha ravages a group of men to thepoint of compete desrucion. In isef his action is no ourageous, the

pebble did no hurt anyone; he trick ony becomes truly wicked


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88 T E S E O T

signicance, and that they have absotey nothing to do with hmanvioence

OLLETIVE URDER has not been eliminated from a the texts ofancient mythology There are important exceptions among religioscommentators, great writers (especialy those who wrote tgedies), andhistorians as well In reading the commentary we mst remember my

anaysis above It wold seem to me to shed new light both on thermors abot omls and all simiar rmors concerning certainfonders of cities and reigions Fred is the only major modern athorwho took these rumors seriosy In his Moses and Monotheism he ses,nfortnately too polemicaly, the "rmors fond on the periphery ofJewish tradition, according to which Moses may have aso been thevictim of collective mrder Bt he fais to draw the obvios concsionfrom the remarkable similarity of the rmors abot Moses and thoseabot so many other reigios awgivers and fonders (an nsalomission for the athor of Totem and Taboo, one that may be expainedby his overly partial critiqe of the Jewish reigion) According to certainsorces Zarathstra was mrdered by members, disgised as woves, ofone of these rita associations whose sacricia violence he opposed, avioence that had always had the colective and nanimos character ofthe original mrder which it reenacted In the margins of ocia biographies there often lingers a more or ess "esoteric tradition of colectivemrder

Modern historians do not take these stories seriosy They canhardly be criticized, not having the means to incorporate them into theiranalyses They choose to interpret them either within the fmework ofa single athor, in which case they mst agree with what their sorces

ironicay or catiosly ca nidentiabe gossip and "od wives' tales'or else within the framework of mythoogy or niversa history In thiscase they are obliged to recognize that the theme, althogh far frombeing niversa, recrs too freqently to be ignored Nor can colectiveviolence be called mythoogical since it categoricaly contradicts themyths Does this mean that or critics are forced naly to face the prob-em and acknowledge its existence? Not at all (there are endess ways toavoid the truth) n their denia of the true meaning they resort to theirtimate weapon, their deathbow the distrbing theme is treated simpy as rhetoric Any insistence on the absence of colective violence or

contining concern is prely decorative We are nave if we aow or

E R M E S O F T E O D S 89

selves to be convinced None of the lifeboats is so nsinkabe Aer along disappearance the theme has resrfaced in or day, and the stormsof or apocaypse wash over it in vain Even thogh it carries more passengers than the raft of the Medusa it wil not sink; how can it be snk?

No one in fact attaches any importance to coective mrder t sretrn to Livy, who is of more interest than the niversity that made himhostage This historian tes s how, in a great storm, Romls "was

enveloped in sch a thick cod that he disappeared from the gaze of theassembly Since that time he has never again appeared on earth' Aftera moment of dmb dejection "the yong Rmans acclaim mls asa new god Bt "I believe there were, from that time, skeptics whomaintained qiety that the king had been torn to pieces by the Fatherswith their bare hands: in fact, this is also said, in the great mystery; theother version became poplar becase of the hero's prestige and dangersof the time'4

Pltarch otes many versions of mlss death, three of themforms ofcollective mrder According to one, Roms was socated inhis bed by his enemies; according to another he was torn to pieces by thesenators in the Temple of Vcan n still another version the mrdertook place in the Goat Marsh, dring a great storm mentioned by Livy,a storm that drove the crowds of people away whie the senators clostheir ranks. As in Livy's version it is the senators, that is the mrderers,who establish the clt of the new god beuse th closed their ranksaainst him:

Most of te populace accepted tis stoy and wee appy to ea te news

adoing omulus in tei eats in good fait as tey went aout tei usi-

ness; ut tee wee some wo set aout asly and ittely to nd out te

tut and tey distued te paticians geatly letting it e known tat tey

wee ausing te simple people wit tei empty and foolis aguments a ndtat it ad een tey wo ad kiled te king wit tei own ands. 5

The legend, as sch, is an antiegend It is the reslt of an expliciteort to demystify, reminiscent of Fred The ocial version had tobecome legend in order to consoidate the athority of the rlers mss death resembes that of Penthes in the Bacchae: "And yet somethoght that the senators had a rshed on him and that aer tearing

4. Livy, The Hsto ofRome(Cambrige, Mass : Harvard niversity Press, 935), I: 6

5. Pluarch, "Life oRomulus, Parch' Lives, rans John Dryden, rev Arhur Hugh

lough (New York: odern Library, 864), p. 44.

90 H C A P G O A 91


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90 H C A P G O A

him to pieces, each had carried away a piece in the folds of his robeThis ending recalls the Dionysiac diasparamos in which the victim istorn to death by the mob. There are therefore nestionably mythological and religios echoes, bt the diasparamos happens spontaneoslyamong crowds gripped with a mrderos frenzy The accont of thegreat riots among the French people dring the wars of religion teemwith examples similar to Pltarchs text. The rioters even ght over thelast remains of their victim, which they consider precios relics andwhich cold later be sold for the most exorbitant prices. There are endless examples which sggest a close relationship between collective violence and a process in which a victim becomes sacred withotnecessarily already being powerfl and renowned. The metamorphosisof remains into relics has also been docmented in the case of raciallynchings in modern times.

The point of the "rmors abot Romls is that the mrderersthemselves transform their victim into a sacred object The accont hasa particlarly modern ring to it, for they see in this aair a kind of politi-cal plot, a story pt together from many elements by people who never

lost their heads and knew exactly what they were doing The text reectsthe perspective of the poplace n their strggle against the aristocracy,the people redce Romlss becoming a god to a kind of plot againstthe people, an instrment of propaganda for the senators The idea that,by making someone a god, the sordid reality of an event can be transgred is very important Nevertheless, no matter how sedctive the argment of a deliberate coverp may be to the modern mind, whosetendencies it foreshadows, it cannot totally satisfy observers who areaware of the essential role the phenomenon of mobs and their extreme

/ . collective mimesis does play in the genesis of the sacred. By making the

/ mythological process a conscios fabrication at every stage, the rumorsmentioned by Livy and Pltarch will, if taken literally, lead s to makethe same mistakes as modern rationalists did abot religion. Their terelevance lies in the implied relationship between the bith of myth andthe nleashed mob. No nineteenthcenty scholar ever went that far;he wold only retain what was ntre in the rmors: religion wasredced to a plot of the powerfl against the weak.

Every trace ofcollective violence mst be examined, compared, andcriticized. n or analysis of the rumors we have revealed a dimensionthat goes beyond the rogh alternatives of traditional positivism, "tre

H C R M O F H G O D 91

and "false historical and mythological The rumors cannot t theframework of these alternatives, so no one is capable of interpretingthem For historians, they are even more sspect than all their ownacconts of the origins of Rome. Livy himself is aware of this Nor canthe mythologists be interested in something that is presented as anti-mythological rather than mythological Rmors fall between the cracksof organized knowledge, as always happens to the traces of collectiveviolence. As cltre evolves, these traces are always expelled and elimi-nated. Philology and modern criticism ths nish the work of the latermythologies. Sch is the process of socalled knowledge.

Collective violence contines to be concealed among s today bythe same insidios and irresistible pocess as in the past. For proof ofthis we shold trn once more to the body of myths concerning mls and Rems t will reveal that the process is in ll operation amongs today and will help s nderstand that we orselves are nconsciosintermediaries in concealing the traces as we interpret Livys text.

Most of my readers are convinced, sppose, that the heretical ver-sions of the death of Romls are the only representation of collective

mrder in the whole of his myth. Everyone knows that there is an-other violent death in the myth, which is always presented as amrder bt as an individual mrder, namely, the death of Remsmls alone is the mrderer. Ask any of yor cltred friends andthey will all tell yo that this is so. mls kills his brother in amoment of anger becase that brother mockingly leaped over the sym-bolic bondaries of the city of me which omls had jst nishedtacing.

This version ofthe mrder is fond in Livy, bt it is neither the rstnor the only version The rst version contains collective mrder. Com

pared with the second, it is a classic ample of a myth that has not yeteliminated the representation of collective mrder. The rst version isbased on a arrel over agries The ight of birds does not scceed indeciding between Romls and Rems, the enemy twins This story iswell known; it has not been concealed, becase it ts so easily with thesecond version of the myth which always provides the ending. Unaware,we all choose it euse it is the version that eliminates colective murder.After describing how the two brothers conceive of the idea of bildinga new city on the vey spot where "they were abandoned and rearedLivy adds


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between Euripides and Racine, we acknowledge evidence of centuries-long "censorship This is to be admired and imitated in Livy, and evenmore so n the fact that he represented both the colective and the indi-vidual version of Remuss murder in the proper order of their diachronicevolution In contrast to contemporary schoos of criticism, which stiadhere to a single synchronic order, the Roman historian perceives theexistence of a time of eaboration which always moves in the same direc-tion, with the same objective, the eimination of colective murder The

version without collective murder must be considered posterior to theversion in which it stil appears, as I have tried to show in the myths ofBaldr and the Curetes Mythologica transformation moves in only onedirection, toward the�inatio of Y tra of violenc

It is worth noting that a truy apocalyptic tradition has alwaysexisted in Rome The vioent destruction of the city was prophesiedfrom the time of its violent origin. In his History of Religious IsMircea Eiade speaks of the repercussions of the myth of Romulus andRemus in the Roman conscience

The peple will keep frever the terrifying ery f that rst bldy sacrice

ered t the divinity f Re. Mre than seven hndred years aer the fnd

ing f Re Hrace writes f it in ters f an riginal sin which st inevitably

bring abt the lss f the cit¥ by driving its sns t kill each ther. At every

critical ent in its histry, Re agnizes ver the weight f the crse it

bears . It was neither at peace with en at i ts birth, nr with the gds. his reli

gis wrry will weigh heavily n its destiny.7

This tradition is interesting because it makes the peope as a wholeresponsible for the original murder It is rooted rmly in a collective ver-sion of the murder and, even though there is a touch of magic in the con-cept of Rome as the ony city under this type of curse, nevertheess it ex-

presses in its own way a truth independent of its style of expression Thefoundation and structure of every community is based on violence thatis and shoud have remained destructive at its very essence, but by somemirace the community has been abe to wr othis violence which, forthe time being, has become constructive and has achieved a means ofreconciliation through some diviney bestowed reprieve

7. lia His f Reigius Ids 2109.

C H A P T E R E I G H T

The Science of Myths

WEKNOWNOW to recognize in religious forms, ideas, and ins titutions in general the warped reection of vioent events that have been exception-aly "s uccess ful in their colective repercus sions . We can identify the commemoration in mythoogy ofthese same violent acts that are so s uc-cessful that they force their perpetrators to reenact them. This memory

inevitably deveops as it is transmitted from generation to generation,but instead of rediscovering the secret of its original dis tortion it losesit over and over again, each time burying ita ittle deeper As religion

�

and cultures are formed and perpetuated, the violence is hidden The ! v vdiscovery of their secret would provide what must be caled a scientc ,solution to man's greatest enigma, the nature and origins of reigion. _

It is important not to confuse the reciprocal and rituaized extermi-nation of "methodologies with the totality of actual intelligence This drama is no more distracting than s torms at s ea; they rol over the s ur-ce but eave the depths untouched The more we become disturbed,

he more rea our agitation appears while the invisible escapes us Theseudodemys tiers can destroy each other without realy weakeninghe critical principe which is the source for them al but which becomesess accurate. Recent doctrines have a evolved from one s ingle processfdecoding, the oldest to be invented in the Western word and the only ry las ting proces s. Precisely because it is uncontes ted, it goes unno-iced, ike God himsef. It has such a hod over us that it is confused ith immediate perception. If attention was drawn to the process inction the observers woud be astonished

The reader has aready recognized our od friend, the decoding of

epres entations ofpersecution It seems bana in the contt of our his

René Girard - The Crimes of Gods

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