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Sacrifice and Violence: New Perspectives in the Theory of Religion from René Girard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Charles Davis
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We live in a time in which the boundary fences between the various disciplines are being dismantled—at least as far as the social sciences and humanities are concerned. Take, for example, the work of Michel Foucault. Is it philosophy, history, sociology or political science? Again, where would one place the deconstructionism of Jacques Derrida? Under the guise of literary theory it has profoundly changed the enterprise of literary criticism, and some think it is finally bringing to an end the hegemony of historical criticism in the theory and practice of biblical interpretation. With a nod towards Thomas Kuhn we could say that across the social sciences and humanities there is a search for new paradigms.

Students of that questionable discipline, called variously science of religion, history of religions, religiology, religious studies, comparative religion, or simply religion, are well used to a cloud of uncertainty obscuring the legitimacy, function and defining method of their academic project. About the only point of agreement is that the science of religion is not theology—and even that distinction is understood in different ways. Other questions abound. Is there a single science of religion, with a defining method, distinguishing it from such related sciences as anthropology and sociology? Or, is it a collective name for a group of sciences and disciplines with no single methodology? Is there a strictly empirical science of religion or is the study of religion essentially a hermeneutic discipline, demanding a methodology appropriate to one of the Geisteswissenschaften? One could continue along these lines, multiplying questions. Enough has been said to indicate what all its practitioners know, the uncertain status of the academic study of religion. By the ‘academic study’ of religion I mean that study when disengaged from the controlling authority and presuppositions of any particular religious tradition or organization.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 70 , Issue 829 , July 1989 , pp. 311 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 René Girard was born in France in 1923. He came to the U.S.A., where he obtained a Ph.D. at Indiana University in 1930. Since then, he has held positions at Buffalo NY State and John Hopkins, and is at present at Stanford. He has published the following books:

Mensonge romantique et viriti romanesque (Paris: Grasset, 1961)Google Scholar; translated as Deceit, Desire and the Novel (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1965)Google Scholar.

La Violence et le sacri (Paris: Grasset, 1972)Google Scholar; translated as Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1977)Google Scholar. The English translation is cited as VS.

Des Choses cacheis depuis la fondation du monde. Recherches avec Jean‐Michel Oughourian et Guy Lefort (Paris: Grasset, 1978Google Scholar = Livre de poche, 1983). The Livre de poche edition is cited as DCC. English translation: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar–not available to me at time of writing.

‘To Double Business Bound’: Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1978)Google Scholar. Cited as DBB.

Le Bouc imissaire (Paris: Grasset, 1982)Google Scholar. Cited as BE. English translation: The Scapegoat (John Hopkins Press, 1986)Google Scholar–not available to me at time of writing.

La Route antique des hommes pervers: Essais sur Job (Paris: Grasset, 1985)Google Scholar. Cited as RA. English translation: Job: The Victim of His People (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar–not available to me at time of writing.

The publication of VS brought Girard some critical attention, and articles were devoted to his thought in a variety of journals. But it was with the publication of DCC that Girard and his thought became a media event in France, so that one spoke of Le phtnomene Girard. Since then articles, seminars and symposia have been devoted to his theory. There is a useful bibliography, compiled by Georges Tissot, in SR: Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 10/1 (hiver/winter 1981), 109–12. Despite the froth of publicity, Girard's writings still demand serious consideration.

2 ‘Quand ces choses commenceront…’. Entretiens avec Philippe Murray, dans Tel Quel (1978), 37.

3 Ibid, 44.

4 ‘Seminaire de recherche sur l'oeuvre de René Girard’, SR: Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 10/1 (Hiver/winter 1981), 84. Girard himself participated in the seminar, and the reference is to his own words.

5 Ibid.

6 ‘Quand ces choses commenceront…’, 38–9.

7 I have taken the English translation of the passage from Le Bouc imissaire from the Introduction by Andre J. McKenna to the special number of Semeia, devoted to Girard. Semeia 33 (1985), 10Google Scholar.

8 Paul Valadier, ‘Bouc emissaire et Revelation chretienne selon René Girard’, Etudes, AoQt‐septembre 1982 (357e2–3), 258.

9 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Theodramatik, Band 3: Die Handlung (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1980), p. 287Google Scholar.

10 ‘Quand ces choses commenceront…’, 36.

11 ‘Quand ces choses commenceront…’, 46–8.

12 Semeia 33 (1985), 135–65Google Scholar.

13 Op. cit., 155.

14 Said, Edward W., ‘Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community’ in Foster, Hal, ed., Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1985), p. 143Google Scholar.