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Originally Posted by Uptown Thrunk I've read some Girard, but honestly, I have a natural aversion to his work, mostly because most Girardians I have met seem to regard mimesis as a Theory of Everything.
But, I do think there may be something profound concerning the scapegoat effect. |
I get that. I would like to say that I have a tendency to do just that but I feel like I'd be giving myself too much academic credit (Girard's book The Scapegoat was so dense and his understanding of literature is so thorough I found myself consulting encyclopedias and dictionaries almost as much as the book itself).
I think one of the key things that I took away from reading the book, though, is that an aversion for the violence in the Bible is actually a positive result of the impact that the Bible has had on formation of Western culture. In Girard's view, Christ's story and the violence that was done to him has allowed the mechanism of scapegoating to be laid bare. Because of this, Western culture has been able to "demystify" the corporate violence and scapegoating. I think the aversion to violence is good, so long as we maintain the ability to understand the Bible and the context in which the violence was taking place. That violence was documented so that we might see what we have done and so that we might know that we are no longer bound to the culture of violence that condones such acts.
It's been a while since I read the book, so it's not very fresh in my mind, so if I'm confusing parts of the book with other heretical authors I have read then go ahead and correct me.