VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: [1], 2 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 12:15:03 03/02/08 Sun
Author: Cara
Subject: Re: A Question About The Ritual Victim
In reply to: Janelle 's message, "A Question About The Ritual Victim" on 05:13:54 03/02/08 Sun

One passage that helped me understand this concept is on pp. 260-61 in Violence and the Sacred. Here Girard discusses the semi-sacred metalworkers, who are revered for their craft, but also tend to attract blame for anything that goes wrong in their community. He says:
"As long as some profit can be derived from them, the metalworkers, or magicians, are left in peace. But as soon as the community becomes aware of some backlash of violence it will shift the responsibility to those who led the community into temptation, the manipulators of sacred violence. They will be accused of having betrayed a community to which they only half belong."

A few lines later, he also says:
"As soon as the sacred -- that is, violence -- has found its way into the interior of the community, the motif of the surrogate victim will start to emerge."

I think the term "marginal", as applied to sacrificial victims, is especially apt, because it evokes an image of something that is part of the community, but still somewhat outside of it. Girard says somewhere else -- and I apologize for omitting a direct quotation -- that the original victim must be some type of a foreigner, something somehow "other", by an arbitrary standard of course. Later, though, when the ritual victim becomes a surrogate victim, the group of surrogate victims tends to be both incorporated into the community, and also maintained in a state of "foreignness". For this reason, I think Girard's language of half-belonging on p. 261 is really helpful.

I hope this answers the question.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Post a message:
This forum requires an account to post.
[ Create Account ]
[ Login ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.