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My purpose in this presentation is to introduce the work of Rene Girard
to those in this audience who may not be familiar with it. His mimetic
theory
provides new insight into the way primitive communities sought
to avoid violence and dissension by choosing a random victim as a scapegoat
and by branding that one as the Other. Girard prefers to call the scapegoating
mechanism a fact rather than a theory. James G. Williams, a leading
proponent of Girard’s work and translator of several of his books, proposes
to call it an explanatory model.
(Williams, 1991, p. 260, n. 12) In
the course of time the cycle of chaotic violence, followed by the, scapegoating
of an individual or small group and the return to relative tranquility
resulted in the establishment of the prohibitions, hierarchies, rituals
and institutions that constitute what we call culture
(Girard, 1987,
p. 93. All references are to the English versions of Girard’s works).
Modern cultures are far removed from the founding violence, and have
had other events that have mitigated the violent upheavals that wracked
primitive cultures, but we still have the heritage of that mimetic mechanism.
From time to time we see it reoccur as in, for example, East Timor,
Afghanistan, the Middle East, Rwanda, Northern Ireland. In considerably
more benign form it may be found in corporations, sporting teams, families
and organizations. A case study of in a university will provide a current
example of the working of the scapegoating mechanism. With such a heritage
we hardly need a refresher course in how to scapegoat.
I was first introduced to Girard
about six years ago when I was concerned about the violence being done
to children. A friend showed me a copy of
Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads,
by Gil Bailie (1995). He relates how reading
Girard’s
Violence and the Sacred (1977) made him feel
as Schliemann must have felt when he discovered that beneath the myth
of the Trojan War was concrete reality
(p. 3). With that, I started
reading Girard. I have will only be able in this paper to discuss a
part of his work and that of his followers (In 1990 scholars influenced
by him formed the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. They hold an
annual conference and publish the journal, Contagion, as well
as a Web site, http://theol.uibk.ac.at/cover/,
which contains a complete seventeen volume bibliography of works by
and about Girard).
Girard started on his career of discovery
nearly by accident. He had enrolled in a doctoral program in political
philosophy at Indiana University in 1948, where he was asked as a graduate
student to teach a course in French literature. Since he was new to
the field, he found himself reading the literature just ahead of the
students, and as he was not trained in literary criticism, he devised
his own approach. He was interested in the similarities among the great
novels rather than in what made each one distinctive
(Girard, 2001b).
He discovered an explanatory model that he called mimesis
from his
reading of Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Stendahl, Shakespeare, and
Proust
(Dumouchel, p. 3).
Aristotle
had taught that humans learn through imitation or mimesis. This imitation
is unconscious, prerepresentational imitation
(Williams, p. xii).
We learn consciously by imitation, of course, but we also learn unconsciously
what we are to desire. Man is the creature who does not know what to
desire, and he turns to others to make up his mind. We desire what others
desire because we imitate their desires
(Girard, 1987, p. 22).
Desire does not arise spontaneously from within. Desire is based upon instinct, but is not explained fully by it:
Even the needs that are the necessary condition of desire (hunger and thirst, sexual reproduction, survival against the elements, survival in the face of animal and human predators) are not the sufficient condition of desire; that is, it is clear that these needs must be met in some way, but how to meet them is learned through imitation of others. Desire itself becomes informed by a realm of symbols that instruct participants in a given culture how and what they are to desire(Williams, p. 7).
An instinctual need is tied directly to the object, while desire is mediated by another.
Therefore, desire is triangular,
involving the individual, the other who is being imitated, and the object
of that other’s desire. The other who is being imitated is the
mediator or model.
Mimesis takes two forms. There is acquisitive mimesis that desires to acquire the object of another’s desire. An example of mimetic acquisitiveness is the scene most of us have seen (and experienced), in which a child sits among his or her toys with little interest in any of them. Then another child draws near and reaches out to play with one toy. Suddenly, that is the only toy that the first child cares about. Desire is aroused by another’s desire (Girard, 1987, p. 5). The other becomes the model and the model’s object becomes the object of desire.
Our desires copy or mimic the desires of others Desire is triangular because the object of our desire—knowledge, mate, position—is made desirable by the desires of others which also converge toward it. Desire is not a straight line. It is a triangle. Its vertices are occupied respectively by the other, the object, the ego. That is what the later Dostoevsky has discovered. He has learnt also that the dissonance which results from the collision of this fact with our cherished illusion of an autonomous desire breeds conflict and mystification.(Dumouchel, p. 3)
So long as the mediator is clearly differentiated from the individual, mimetic desire can be controlled. If there is sufficient distance between them, then the mediator is said to be an external mediator. The distance may be due to position in a hierarchy as between king and commoner, or due to age difference as in parent and small child, or due to a legendary ideal as in the case of Don Quixote and Amadis (Girard, 1976, p.1). The practice of inspiring children through a role model is an example of external mediation.
The relationship between the individual
and the mediator in the triangle is important. If there is little distance
between the individual and the
model or mediator then the individual
believes that the desire arises spontaneously from within. This is called
internal mediation. In this condition, she or he believes that there
is no model, only the object, and what had been the
model becomes an
obstacle. Then the model becomes aware of the desire of the other. When
there is no differentiation between the subject and the model, as in
a mob or horde, then acquisitiveness can escalate to violence. The image
produced by Stanley Kubrick at the beginning of the movie, 2001:
a Space Odyssey, where the two humanoid bands set upon each other
with incredible ferocity, can give us a sense of the level of violence
that can occur. Girard claims that it is not necessary to postulate
a specifically human aggressive instinct to account for the murderous
intensity of conflicts among human beings.
Because we have a bigger
brain and are the most mimetic of animals we also have the fiercest
mimetic rivalries (1987, p. 9).
The rivals for the desired object
intensify their conflict. At some point the two are now engaged in what
Girard calls, conflictual mimesis.
As they do so, the object of desire
is left behind in the basic struggle. This results in the two parties
becoming identical or doubles.
Doubles result when there is cultural undifferentiation.
Acquisitive mimesis gives way to the
other form of mimesis, metaphysical mimesis.
Animal mimesis is closely
tied to the object and does not develop the metaphysical dimension of
a struggle for prestige that human mimesis does
(Hamerton-Kelly, p.
136). It is this which gives rise to fierce rivalries
(Girard, 1997,
p. 49). For example, we find it hard to sort out Hutus and Tutsis in
Rwanda and Burundi, or Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
The parties in the conflict come to resemble each other. They engage
in the same kinds of acts as the conflict escalates into reciprocal
violence. Their struggle becomes one that takes on a metaphysical
dimension: they become intent on not acquiring the object, but on acquiring
one another’s being:
First comes mimetic desire, which is divisive and conflictual. Next comes the mimetic rivalry. As it intensifies, it focuses less and less on the disputed object and more and more on the rivals themselves, who become obsessed with one another(Girard, 1987, p. 126).
Oughourlian, a psychoanalyst who collaborated with Girard in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, says that this metaphysical mimesis is much the same as Freud’s concept of identification (Oughourlian, p. 10f.).
When a community comes under threat, more and more members are drawn into the conflict, fearful chaos ensues, and there follows the condition of reciprocal violence, the battle of everyone against everyone. At some point a scapegoat, usually chosen at random, is identified. The combatants note that all of the trouble has coincided with the entry of the identified victim on the scene. In ancient Thebes, an outsider with a crippled foot (Oedipus), arrived in the community, performed heroic acts and married the widow of the former king. Later, when there was a plague and crops failed, the anxious and threatened populace connected the beginning of troubles with the arrival of Oedipus in the land. In another example Girard presents, in The Scapegoat, a graphic description of fourteenth century France by the poet, Guillame De Machaut. He chronicled the deaths of many people, terrors of lightning, and other calamities. The trouble was alleged to be due to the wickedness of Jews who were accused of poisoning the rivers. It was only after the populace massacred all of the Jews that the community believed that peace and prosperity had been restored (Girard, 1986, p. 1).
The explanatory model proposes this generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism (Hamerton-Kelly, p. 129ff.). It describes the role of desire in social and cultural formation and bases all human culture on the founding violence. The scapegoating mechanism is the means by which social stability is maintained.
There are four stereotypes that identify the scapegoating mechanism.
is only effective when human relationships have broken down(Girard, 1986, p.32).
Freud surveyed a great many data of primitive religion, and tremendous observer that he was, he detected a single common denominator to all of it: some form of collective murder(Girard, 1987, p. 121). ). It should be noted that not all of the four stereotypes are needed in order for the generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism to come into play.
With the death of the scapegoat a
calm descends upon the community. Thus the intraspecific fighting among
human beings is held in check by the 'scapegoat' murder.
The scapegoat
victim has the same role as that of the weaker animal in the dominance
pattern they exhibit. (Girard, 1987, p. 121). So peace is restored,
if only for a season. However, the fascination of seeing the dead and
bloody victim inspires awe and terror that must be forgotten. Over time,
however, discord is bound to reappear, so it becomes necessary to recapture
the sense of peace.
The victim must be the first object of non-instinctual attention, and he or she provides a good starting point for the creation of sign systems because the ritual imperative consists in a demand for substitute victims, thus introducing the practice of substitution that is the basis of all symbolization(Girard, 1987, p. 129).
The ritual of sacrifice is one practice
of substitution. It is a reenactment of the original murder with an
innocent victim as a substitute sacrifice. This enables the society
to revive the peaceful result of the original unanimous violence. In
the course of time the mimetic process resulted in the establishment
of the prohibitions, hierarchies, rituals and institutions that constitute
cultures. I regard unanimous victimage as a self-regulatory device
that can stabilize human communities because it provides a model for
the whole elaboration of human culture, beginning with ritual and sacrifice
(Girard, 1987, p. 121).
The result of this mechanism is the
loss of memory of the original act. Even though the perpetrators of
the violence insisted that the victim was guilty and deserved to die
(and in some cases the community requires that the victim engage in
a criminal act in order to justify the sacrifice), there remains the
guilt and shame of the murder. The ritual, as well as the myths and
the religion that was propounded to explain
the ritual, serve to perpetuate
the cycle of sacrifice and scapegoating.
The sacrifice comes first, and then comes the religion and myths. Myths develop as a result of the strange experience that just as the scapegoated victim was able to bring disorder and chaos by entering the community, then as miraculously when the victim is either banished or killed, peace descends and he or she is seen to bring order. The source of disorder is also the source of order. Only a god is capable of that (Girard, 1977, p. 119ff.). The myth is a recasting of the narrative of the original event that also serves to help the perpetrators lose their memory of the original violence, often by asserting that the victim chose to die in a heroic act of salvation. Thus, a victim who originally was seen as culpable and deserving of death is seen as a god who chooses to act on behalf of the society. The perpetrators are off the hook as they conduct a sacrifice that the god commands and as they tell a story that describes how the god created the social order. The community, which demanded the death of one for the benefit of the many, ascribes the command of death to a god.
I have outlined only that part of Girard’s explanatory model that I believe is basic to an understanding of the phenomenon we refer to as scapegoating in organizations and societies today. A case study of an educational institution will illustrate how scapegoating occurs in the present time. The case involves a recently formed division of business studies in a state supported college. The division was composed of three departments, and attached to the division was an institute that provided education and training programs for nearby businesses. The dean chosen to head the division was the first incumbent from outside the college. He was a racial minority from a third world country who had been educated and worked in the United States.
He was expected to lead the program in its efforts to gain professional accreditation and to develop closer ties with the business community. Many faculty members were anxious to gain accreditation, partly because it would bring prestige to the program and partly because it was believed by some that accreditation would require that the college increase the salaries of faculty to make them competitive with other schools. The educational institute had been an important part of the business program from its founding, and it was seen as a way to gain public support for the program.
The program had been shaken two years prior to the dean’s appointment when a college-wide strategic plan had proposed that one department, which it considered to be the weakest of the three, be abolished. The division pulled together to support the department, but there was understandable distress among the faculty. Although the number of students in the program was increasing, a periodic budget stringency of the type publicly supported institutions endure resulted in interdepartmental competition to gain faculty lines. The dean was expected to advocate for these positions with the administration, a difficult task in lean times.
At the same time he had difficulty in gaining rapport with the business community. It did not help that he was a racial minority and that he spoke with a foreign accent. He had been on the job for only about two years and was already perceived by a number of the faculty as incompetent. He had appointed the wife of one faculty member to an adjunct teaching position, and arranged for her schedule to be designed so that she could gain credit and pay for two sections of a course while meeting the students for only one course. The course was undersubscribed, so that she was being paid for two sections and only had about eight or ten students in class. After a damaging student evaluation the department chairperson informed the dean that since her teaching skills were very weak, she should not be hired for the following semester. The most senior member of the department then began to send email messages to the president of the institution with copies to all faculty members complaining about the dean’s actions. An email exchange ensued in which they called one another’s truthfulness into question. The director of the institute became more vocal about his unhappiness with the dean. Other faculty members joined in with their complaints.
These resulted in members of the senior faculty meeting to draw up a list of grievances. At first they intended to send these grievances to the administration, but one of them insisted that they confront the dean first. A meeting with him led to presumed agreement. However, after the meeting he chose to appoint the weak adjunct faculty member again. After that, the faculty did send the list of grievances to the provost. Several weeks later, a rancorous meeting, presided over by the provost, was held. The dean went down the list of grievances and attempted to refute every one. The faculty did not accept his explanations, and the meeting ended with no agreement and much hard feeling.
Two weeks later the dean was arrested for shoplifting, and the administration dismissed him from his position.
The four stereotypes of the explanatory model of mimetic theory are apparent in this case. First, there is the collapse of order and differentiation. Rivalry among departments and among individual faculty members intensified. Each department was vying with the others for the same resources. Faculty members were contacting the administration directly to let them know that faculty were more capable of understanding the issues than was the dean. The hierarchy was breaking down.
The second stereotype, the search
for someone who could be seen as responsible, was also present. The
victim is a person who comes from elsewhere. He has done something he
should not have done; his behavior is perceived as fatal; one of his
gestures was misinterpreted
(Girard, 1986, p. 32). The dean had neither
made good contacts with the business community nor had he acceded to
the judgement of the department chair that the offending adjunct faculty
member not be reappointed.
The third stereotype, that the offender was an Other, an outsider, is quite obvious. The dean is from the Caribbean, speaks with a foreign accent, is a racial minority. As dean, he was considered to be a marginal insider, a member of the administration. The eternal struggle between faculty and administration, at least in the United States, is well known. It can almost be said that all deans, provosts and presidents are, by virtue of their positions, already guilty.
With regard to some of the sources of dissension it appears that the faculty projected their own denied impulses onto the leader. It is their work that would make the difference whether the program gained accreditation, and the relationship between the program and the surrounding business community depends to a large extent on their perceived ability to teach and consult with that community. Yet they held the dean responsible for these failures.
It is characteristic of scapegoating that the community often elaborates on the crimes attributed to the victim. Often, the victim is entirely blameless, as were the Jews in fourteenth century France. Sometimes, the victim has done something wrong, but as the community concentrates on the victim, they attribute nearly every failure or crime him or her. An example is Oedipus, who was first accused of causing the plague in Thebes. Once he was singled out, they accused him of killing his father (even though Sophocles suggested through the peasant who witnessed the killing that it was a group of robbers who did it) and committing incest, an attack on the foundation of society.
The faculty began with the dean’s failure in the reappointment process and management of the business relationship, but developed a list of at least a dozen specific grievances. He was accused of incompetence, a global accusation that is impossible to refute, and is a description often used in organizations to identify someone as Other. It is the harshest judgment a group of intellectuals can make.
This identified him as a scapegoat worthy of punishment, and he identified with these projections by committing the misdemeanor that justified his removal. Girard points out that the scapegoat often thinks he is guilty:
Oedipus is a successful scapegoat because he concurs in the judgement on himself. This is what the social order seeks to inculcate, for the unanimity of the generative mechanism will ideally include even the victim’s own complicity in the judgement made(Williams, p. 165).
In the primitive world, scapegoats
were either banished or killed, and then they were viewed as a god who
is capable of bringing both disorder and then order. The dean was removed
from his position, but since he had a tenured position as a professor,
he was allowed to remain as a faculty member. It goes without saying
that the other faculty members did not regard him as a god. Medieval
and modern persecutors do not worship their victims. They only hate
them
(Girard, 1982, p. 38).
I had noted earlier that other events
have mitigated the violence found in primitive cultures. Girard asserts
that this mitigation is found in the one exception to the scapegoat
mechanism, and that was in the Judeo-Christian tradition of the suffering
servant.
It was the prophets of Israel who took exception to the rituals
of the community, and specifically in Isaiah 53:5-6 they identified a
victim who was not guilty: He was wounded for our transgressions, he
was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made
us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have
gone astray.
Then nearly 800 years later the followers of Jesus related
this text to their own experience.
The perpetrators of that sacrificial scapegoating changed the meaning of the death. They held two things strongly: first, that he was a man no different than we, and second, that he did not deserve to die. He was an intended scapegoat, but the mechanism was thwarted.
Girard holds that this has made an objective difference in history, and as part of his proof he points out that we in the West do not engage in ritual sacrifice nor do we believe in the classical myths.
The Judeo-Christian scriptures should be regarded as the first complete revelation of the structuring power of victimage in pagan religions, and thus the question of their anthropological value can and should be examined as a purely scientific question…I conclude that the force of demythification in our world comes from the Bible(Girard, 1987, p. 117).
But while it made a difference in
history, Girard acknowledges that the scapegoat mechanism, as a thing
hidden since the foundation of the world,
still exerts a powerful force
in human culture and history.
Thus, there are still
sectors of modern life where feverish competition and the pangs of promotion flourish within a context of relative leisure, which favours reciprocal observation: business circles, obviously, and especially intellectual circles, where the talk is always of others, by people who pay scant attention to themselves(Girard, 1987, p. 306).
While violence in primitive societies is contained by the Sacred, the normal state of affairs in our organizational lives is one marked by the unnamed and nameless fear. I believe that unconscious fear is that when times get chaotic there will be a scapegoat. We do not need a refresher course, because the foundation of our culture and of all our representations is this mechanism.
Inside organizations it may take
the form of managerial schizophrenia
(Grote & McGreeney, p. 46.).
In order to succeed the employee is enjoined to be like the boss. The
employee desires the object of the boss’s desire. Yet if the employee
becomes too much like the boss, he or she will become a rival of the
boss, and disorder is a likely outcome, as it was in the case study
in this paper. As the rivalry becomes more intense, acts of violence
such as gossip, sabotage and decisions, which by their very nature are
incipient acts of violence (decide
comes from the Greek for cut apart
)
proliferate. Acquisitive violence becomes
conflictual violence, the
adversaries begin to imitate one another and all genuine differences
of hierarchy and differential skill and knowledge are lost. The violence
feeds upon itself: It is contagious…once it has erupted, it has a
strange ability to spread
(Dumouchel, p. 12).
A scapegoat must be found
in order for the organization to restore calm, if only for a time. All
of these things happened in the case study.
This can result in a new understanding of the nature of authority relationships.
The authority figure is a marginal
insider who is always in danger of being scapegoated by the mob whenever
there is unrest. Both the authority and subordinates are fearful of
chaos, so everyone demands rules, procedures, hierarchies and prohibitions
to maintain order. Any member of the group who becomes too much like
the leader may be accused of causing trouble. Any member who deviates
too much from the norm may be singled out for scapegoating. When there
is a lack of differentiation, the tendency is to search for one who
is different. If the disorder becomes too widespread, so that nobody
within the ranks can be singled out, then the result will be the scapegoating
of the leader. It is not just because he or she is in a position of
authority, but because by being in that position, the leader is Other.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
(Shakespeare, Henry IV, part II)
Introduction,Violence and Truth: on the Work of Rene Girard, edited by Paul Dumouchel, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, pp. 1-21.
To Double Business Bound: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
Generative Scapegoating,Violent Origins: Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987.