Re: Is Peter really innocent? -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 06:59:38 02/27/08 Wed
Author: Kiernan
Subject: Re: Is Peter really innocent?
In reply to: Betsy Peters 's message, "Is Peter really innocent?" on 05:39:10 02/19/08 Tue

Betsy, you bring up a really fascinating point to me. It seems that the innocence of the scapegoat provides the basic tenet of Girard's thought. It forms the basis of his reading of all Scripture, especially the crucifixion. To Girard, these victims are innocent because sin, as such, is merely a communal problem, not a faultiness in the human heart: "Taken individually, human beings are not necessarily given over to mimetic rivalries, but by virtue of the great number of individuals they contain, human comunities cannot escape them" (I see Satan fall, 18). This provides my main difference with Girard's thought. It seems to me that the problem is not that the victims are innocent; it is rather the entire community is all equally guilty and thus equally worthy of the death which the victim dies. Rather than seeing the fault of mythology in placing guilt on the victim, we should see it as them putting innocence on themselves. It seems to me, after completing all the reading from Girard up to this point, that this different perspective still works on all of the texts which he has read. In fact, it would seem to fit them better, because it emphasizes more uniformly the universal guilt which he hints at at times. It would also provide a stronger connection between the interdividual and communal levels. It seems to me that, in seeing the victims primarily as innocent, Girard is himself buying into the mythology of our culture, in which all victims are seen as innocent and new scapegoats are made out of old persecutors.

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