Authors: RENÉ GIRARD
. . . in order to prevent the sack of the city, to help his home, to rescue his children,
sacrificing one to save the others, I could then have pardoned him. But for the sake of
brazen Helen! . . .
Without ever expressly excluding the subject of human sacrifice from their research --
and indeed, on what grounds could they do so? -modern scholars, notably Hubert and
Mauss, mention it but rarely in their theoretical discussions. On the other hand, the
scholars who do concern themselves with human sacrifice tend to concentrate on it to
the exclusion of everything else, dwelling at length on the "sadistic" or "barbarous"
aspects of the custom. Here, again, one particular form of sacrifice is isolated from the
subject as a whole.
This dividing of sacrifice into two categories, human and animal, has itself a sacrificial
character, in a strictly ritualistic sense. The division is based in effect on a value
judgment, on the preconception that one category of victim -- the human being -- is
quite unsuitable for sacrificial purposes, while another category -- the animal -- is
eminently sacrificeable. We encounter here a survival of the sacrificial mode of thinking
that perpetuates a misunderstanding about the institution as a whole.
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It is not a question of rejecting the value judgment on which this misunderstanding is
based, but of putting it, so to speak, in a parentheses, of recognizing that as far as the
institution is concerned, such judgments are purely arbitrary. All reduction into
categories, whether implicit or explicit, must be avoided; all victims, animal or human,
must be treated in the same fashion if we wish to apprehend the criteria by which
victims are selected (if indeed such criteria exist) and discover (if such a thing is
possible) a universal principle for their selection.
We have remarked that all victims, even the animal ones, bear a certain
resemblance
to
the object they replace; otherwise the violent impulse would remain unsatisfied. But this
resemblance must not be carried to the extreme of complete assimilation, or it would
lead to disastrous confusion. In the case of animal victims the difference is always clear,
and no such confusion is possible. Although they do their best to empathize with their
cattle, the Nuer never quite manage to mistake a man for a cow -- the proof being that
they always sacrifice the latter, never the former. I am not lapsing into the trap of Lévy
Bruhl's "primitive mentality." I am not saying that primitive man is less capable of
making distinctions than we moderns.
In order for a species or category of living creature, human or animal, to appear suitable
for sacrifice, it must bear a sharp resemblance to the
human
categories excluded from
the ranks of the "sacrificeable," while still maintaining a degree of difference that
forbids all possible confusion. As I have said, no mistake is possible in the case of
animal sacrifice. But it is quite another case with human victims. If we look at the
extremely wide spectrum of human victims sacrificed by various societies, the list seems
heterogeneous, to say the least. It includes prisoners of war, slaves, small children,
unmarried adolescents, and the handicapped; it ranges from the very dregs of society,
such as the Greek
pharmakos
, to the king himself.
Is it possible to detect a unifying factor in this disparate group? We notice at first glance
beings who are either outside or on the fringes of society: prisoners of war, slaves,
pharmakos
. In many primitive societies children who have not yet undergone the rites of
initiation have no proper place in the community; their rights and duties are almost
nonexistent. What we are dealing with, therefore, are exterior or marginal individuals,
incapable of establishing or sharing the social bonds that link the rest of the inhabitants.
Their status as foreigners or enemies, their servile condition, or simply their age
prevents these future victims from fully integrating themselves into the community.
But what about the king? Is he not at the very heart of the community? Undoubtedly --
but it is precisely his position at the center that serves to isolate him from his fellow
men, to render him casteless. He escapes from society, so to speak, via the roof, just as
the
pharmakos
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escapes through the cellar. The king has a sort of foil, however, in the person of his fool.
The fool shares his master's status as an outsider -an isolation whose literal truth is often
of greater significance than the easily reversible symbolic values often attributed to it.
From every point of view the fool is eminently "sacrificeable," and the king can use him
to vent his own anger. But it sometimes happens that the king himself is sacrificed, and
that (among certain African societies) in a thoroughly regulated and highly ritualistic
manner
. 8.
It is clearly legitimate to define the difference between sacrificeable and
nonsacrificeable individuals in terms of their degree of integration, but such a definition
is not yet sufficient. In many cultures women are not considered full-fledged members
of their society; yet women are never, or rarely, selected as sacrificial victims. There
may be a simple explanation for this fact. The married woman retains her ties with her
parents' clan even after she has become in some respects the property of her husband
and his family. To kill her would be to run the risk of one of the two groups' interpreting
her sacrifice as an act of murder, committing it to a reciprocal act of revenge. The notion
of vengeance casts a new light on the matter. All our sacrificial victims, whether chosen
from one of the human categories enumerated above or,
a fortiori
, from the animal
realm, are invariably distinguishable from the nonsacrificeable beings by one essential characteristic: between these victims and the community a crucial social link is missing,
so they can be exposed to violence without fear of reprisal. Their death does not
automatically entail an act of vengeance.
The considerable importance this freedom from reprisal has for the sacrificial process
makes us understand that sacrifice is primarily an act of violence without risk of
vengeance. We also understand the paradox -- not without is comic aspects on occasion
-- of the frequent references to vengeance in the course of sacrificial rites, the veritable
obsession with vengeance when no chance of vengeance exists:
For the act they were about to commit elaborate excuses were offered; they shuddered at
the prospect of the sheep's death, they wept over it as though they were its parents.
Before the blow was struck, they implored the beast's forgiveness. They then addressed
themselves to the species to which the beast belonged, as if addressing a large family
clan, beseeching it not to seek vengeance for the act that was about to be inflicted on one
of its members. In the same vein the actual murderer was punished in some manner,
either beaten or sent into exile
. 9.
____________________
8. The sacrifice of the monarch is treated in chapter 4, 104-10 of
Violence and the
Sacred.
Ed.
9. Hubert and Mauss,
Sacrifice
, 33.
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It is the entire species
considered as a large family clan
that the sacrificers beseech not
to seek vengeance. By incorporating the element of reprisal into the ceremony, the
participants are hinting broadly at the true function of the rite, the kind of action it was
designed to circumvent, and the criteria that determined the choice of victim. The desire
to commit an act of violence on those near us cannot be suppressed without a conflict;
we must divert that impulse, therefore, toward the sacrificial victim, the creature we can
strike down without fear of reprisal, since he lacks a champion.
Like everything that touches on the essential nature of the sacrificial act, the true
distinction between the sacrificeable and the nonsacrificeable is never clearly
articulated. Oddities and inexplicable anomalies confuse the picture. For instance, some
animal species will be formally excluded from sacrifice, but the exclusion of members
of the community is never mentioned. In constantly drawing attention to the truly
maniacal aspects of sacrifice, modern theorists only serve to perpetuate an old
misunderstanding in new terms. Men can dispose of their violence more efficiently if
they regard the process not as something emanating from within themselves, but as a
necessity imposed from without, a divine decree whose least infraction calls down
terrible punishment. When they banish sacrificial practices from the "real," everyday
world, modern theorists continue to misrepresent the violence of sacrifice.
The function of sacrifice is to quell violence within the community and to prevent
conflicts from erupting. Yet societies like our own, which do not, strictly speaking,
practice sacrificial rites, seem to get along without them. Violence undoubtedly exists
within our society, but not to such an extent that the society itself is threatened with extinction. The simple fact that sacrificial practices, and other rites as well, can
disappear without catastrophic results should in part explain the failure of ethnology and
theology to come to grips with these cultural phenomena, and explain as well our
modern reluctance to attribute a real function to them. After all, it is hard to maintain
that institutions for which, as it seems, we have no need are actually indispensable.
It may be that a basic difference exists between a society like ours and societies imbued
with religion -- a difference that is partially hidden from us by rites, particularly by rites
of sacrifice, that play a compensatory role. This difference would help explain why the
actual function of sacrifice still eludes us.
When internal strife, previously sublimated by means of sacrificial practices, rises to the
surface, it manifests itself in interfamily vendettas or blood feuds. This kind of violence
is virtually nonexistent in our own culture. And perhaps it is here that we should look
for the fundamental difference between primitive societies and our own; we should
exam-
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ine the specific ailments to which we are immune and which sacrifice manages to
control, if not to eliminate.
Why does the spirit of revenge, wherever it breaks out, constitute such an intolerable
menace? Perhaps because the only satisfactory revenge for spilt blood is spilling the
blood of the killer; and in the blood feud there is no clear distinction between the act for
which the killer is being punished and the punishment itself. Vengeance professes to be
an act of reprisal, and every reprisal calls for another reprisal. The crime to which the act
of vengeance addresses itself is almost never an unprecedented offense; in almost every
case it has been committed in revenge for some prior crime.
Vengeance, then, is an interminable, infinitely repetitive process. Every time it turns up
in some part of the community, it threatens to involve the whole social body. There is
the risk that the act of vengeance will initiate a chain reaction whose consequences will
quickly prove fatal to any society of modest size. The multiplication of reprisals
instantaneously puts the very existence of a society in jeopardy, and that is why it is
universally proscribed.
Curiously enough, it is in the very communities where the proscription is most strictly
enforced that vengeance seems to hold sway. Even when it remains in the background,
its role in the community unacknowledged, the specter of vengeance plays an important
role in shaping the relationships among individuals. That is not to say that the
prohibition against acts of vengeance is taken lightly. Precisely because murder inspires
horror and because men must be forcibly restrained from murder, vengeance is inflicted
on all those who commit it. The obligation never to shed blood cannot be distinguished
from the obligation to exact vengeance on those who shed it. If men wish to prevent an
interminable outbreak of vengeance (just as today we wish to prevent nuclear war), it is
not enough to convince their fellows that violence is detestable -for it is precisely
because they detest violence that men make a duty of vengeance.
In a world still haunted by the specter of vengeance it is difficult to theorize about
vengeance without resorting to equivocations or paradoxes. In Greek tragedy, for
instance, there is not -- and cannot be -any consistent stand on the subject. To attempt to
extract a coherent theory of vengeance from the drama is to miss the essence of tragedy.
For in tragedy each character passionately embraces or rejects vengeance depending on
the position he occupies at any given moment in the scheme of the drama.
Vengeance is a vicious circle whose effect on primitive societies can only be surmised.
For us the circle has been broken. We owe our good fortune to one of our social
institutions above all: our judicial system, which serves to deflect the menace of
vengeance. The system does
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not suppress vengeance; rather, it effectively limits it to a single act of reprisal, enacted