"Come, let us go down and baffle their language" -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 09:49:21 04/14/08 Mon
Author: Kiernan
Subject: "Come, let us go down and baffle their language"

Genesis 11 seems to begin at the end of a sacrificial crisis, once peace has been restored: "And all the earth was one language, one set of words." Violence has united the community and brought it peace; the distinctions which enable language have been clarified. Violence makes possible a city, and therefore these people build one. They believe that, if they do so, they can prevent another mimetic crisis: "lest we be scattered over all the earth." God, however, sees these people settling into a life of myth and ritual. He recognizes that, if they persist in establishing a ritual to disguise violence, they will blind themselves to the truth: "As one people with one language for all, if this is what they have begun to do, nothing they plot will elude them." So God incites a mimetic crisis: "Come, let us go down and baffle their language." This could be read in two ways. On the one hand, this could seem to be a Biblical writer seeing God as violent. It seems to me, however, that this action could be similar to Christ's, especially where he says that he came not to bring peace, but the sword. God incites the mimetic crisis only so that our violence cannot be disguised under myth and ritual; he reveals the forces underlying the pretensions of human culture. While this may lead, eventually, to the destruction of mankind, it can also be seen as the greatest kindness: to allow us to see - and own - our own violence.

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