Authors: RENÉ GIRARD
The various kinds of victims seem predisposed to crimes that eliminate differences.
Religious, ethnic, or national minorities are never actually reproached for their difference, but
for not being as different as expected, and in the end for not differing at all. Foreigners are
incapable of respecting "real" differences; they are lacking in culture or in taste, as the case may be. They have difficulty in perceiving exactly what is different. The
barbaros
is not the
person who speaks a different language but the person who mixes the only truly significant
distinctions, those of the Greek language. In all the vocabulary of tribal or national prejudices
hatred is expressed, not for difference, but for its absence. It is not the other
nomos
that is seen in the other, but anomaly, nor is it another norm but abnormality; the disabled becomes
deformed; the foreigner becomes the
apatride
. It is not good to be a cosmopolitan in Russia.
Aliens imitate all the differences because they have none. The mechanisms of our ancestors
are reproduced unconsciously, from generation to generation, and, it is important to
recognize, often at a less lethal level than in the past. For instance today anti-Americanism pretends to "differ" from previous prejudices because it espouses all differences and rejects the uniquely American virus of uniformity.
We hear everywhere that "difference" is persecuted. This is the favorite statement of
contemporary pluralism, and it can be somewhat misleading in the present context.
Even in the most closed cultures men believe they are free and open to the universal; their
differential character makes the narrowest cultural fields seem inexhaustible from within.
Anything that compromises this illusion terrifies us and stirs up the immemorial tendency to
persecution. This tendency always takes the same direction; it is embodied by the same
stereotypes and always responds to the same threat. Despite what is said around us
persecutors are never obsessed by difference but rather by its unutterable contrary, the lack of
difference.
Stereotypes of persecution cannot be dissociated, and remarkably most languages do not
dissociate them. This is true of Latin and Greek, for example, and thus of French or English,
which forces us constantly
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in our study of stereotypes to turn to words that are related: "crisis," "crime," "criteria,"
"critique," all share a common root in the Greek verb
krino
, which means not only to judge, distinguish, differentiate, but also to accuse and condemn a victim. Too much reliance should
not be placed on etymology, nor do I reason from that basis. But the phenomenon is so
constant it deserves to be mentioned. It implies an as yet concealed relationship between
collective persecutions and the culture as a whole. If such a relationship exists, it has never
been explained by any linguist, philosopher, or politician.
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Chapter 9 Python and His Two Wives: An Exemplary
Scapegoat Myth
The myth of Python and his wives, which belongs to the Venda, a people of South Africa, is a
typical instance of a witchcraft persecution text. In this analysis of a Venda myth, which was
first published as an appendix to Richard J. Golsan ,
René Girard and Myth: An Introduction
( New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993), 151-79, Girard offers a more
extended version of the methodology presented in
The Scapegoat
. He holds that Python and
his wives may eventually be understood as an important piece of evidence for determining
the primary generative features of the original myths of the Psyche type, prior to their Greek
and German versions.
According to the mimetic theory, myths reflect a contagious process of disorder that
culminates with the death or expulsion of a victim.
The escalations of mimetic rivalry to which archaic societies are prone stir up all kinds of
disorders until their very intensity produces a unanimous polarization against a more or less
random victim. Mimetically carried away, the entire community joins in, and as a result, mutual suspicions are extinguished; peace returns.
The scapegoaters do not understand their own scapegoat mechanism and they project upon
their victim both their dissensions and their reconciliation. This is the double transference of
the sacred which appears as both a source of disorder and a source of order. Its mythical
embodiments are both malefactors and benefactors.
It follows from this that mythical heroes can never appear
as scapegoats
in their own myths.
Those who try to turn this absence of a
scapegoat theme
into an instant refutation of the
mimetic theory simply do not understand the
genetic
role of scapegoating in these texts.
I use the word "scapegoat" in the modern sense, of course, necessarily different from the
Leviticus ritual which it implicitly demystifies. No one
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tries to indict scapegoaters on the basis of what they say about their own scapegoats. They
cannot be expected to beat their breasts and proclaim loudly: "Our victim is only a
scapegoat." When we suspect scapegoating we cannot verify our suspicion directly; we must
rely on indirect clues.Students of myth too must rely on indirect clues. In the myths easiest to
analyze, the ones upon which I have focused most attention, and will once again in this essay,
they are as follows:
1. A theme of disorder or undifferentiation, which does not always come first since it is
seen as a consequence of the scapegoat's misdeed, rather than as a cause. The
expressions of this theme may range from original chaos, or a catastrophe of cosmic
proportions, to almost any kind of disaster. It may be a plague epidemic, a fire, a flood, a
drought, a quarrel between relatives, preferably twin brothers. It may be any disturbance
or state of incompletion from which the community suffers. It may be other things as
well. They all express some mimetic disturbances in the community that generate the
myth. They may be symbolic, real, or simultaneously symbolic and real.
2. One particular individual stands convicted of some fault. It may be a heinous crime and
it may be a mere misdemeanor, even an accidental faux-pas. Regardless of how trivial or
dreadful the incriminating action is, its consequences are catastrophic: they are none
other than the state of chaos, crisis, or incompletion from which the community suffers.
The hero or heroine is really seen as the cause of the crisis. This is scapegoat projection.
3. The identification of the scapegoat is often facilitated by what I call preferential signs of
victimage. They are the very diverse characteristics or attributes that tend to arouse the
hostility of a crowd against their possessors. They testify to the objective arbitrariness of
the victim's selection. Mythical scapegoats are often physically, morally, or socially
impaired; they may be strangers, cripples, outcasts, persons of very low or very high
standing, etc. These signs do not constitute a separate theme and they may be completely
absent.
4. The "culprit" is killed, expelled, or otherwise eliminated, either by the whole community acting like one man or by a single individual, one of the brothers, for instance, if brothers
are involved. This is scapegoating
stricto sensu
, the violent deed, the fruit of the mimetic
polarization triggered by the mimetic crisis.
5. As soon as the violence against the victim is consummated, peace returns; order is
(re)generated. This, too, is projected onto the scapegoat who is revealed as a founding
ancestor or a divinity. This is the second transference of the sacred.
For an illustration of such a myth and its mimetic analysis, I will now go to a very transparent example that belongs to the Venda, a people of South Africa. For the purpose of this
presentation I have amalgamated
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and slightly condensed the two versions reproduced by Luc de Heusch in his
Le Roi ivre ou
l'origine de l'état
(Gallimard, 1972, 61-62):
Python, the water snake, had two wives. The first knew who he was but the second wife did
not know and she was not supposed to know. In the middle of the night, she would wake up
drenched. The first wife tried to protect her husband's secret but her rival was curious and,
after a good deal of spying on him she discovered the truth. Then, all the rivers dried up. The
only water left was in the lake at the bottom of which Python had taken refuge.
When they learned from the first wife the reason for Python's disappearance, the old men
decided that a beer offering should be prepared. Divination revealed that Python desired the
company of his second wife. While the men were playing the flute, the young woman entered
the water, carrying the beer offering in a basket. As the music grew louder, she disappeared,
and the rain began to fall; the rivers filled up and all the people rejoiced.
The woman designated as the
second wife
is indicted for scaring away a divine snake and
thus causing a drought. The drought is the real and/or symbolic crisis and the fault that
supposedly causes it is the scapegoat accusation. The victim dies by drowning in front of the
assembled community, a typical scapegoat death.
This death is presented as a
beer offering
, a sacrificial rite that should fully appease the
offended god since it simultaneously punishes the offender and returns his favorite wife to a
loving husband. Since the drought ends as a result of her death, the victim partakes of the
sacred. The insignificant troublemaker of the beginning has become the savior of the
community, together with her beloved husband, Python, the water god. The double
transference of the sacred is not defined explicitly but its presence is unmistakable.
The victim is a woman and also a second wife, hierarchically inferior to the first. These
determinations can be regarded as preferential signs of victimage, not particularly
spectacular, to be sure, but we do not really need them. The identification of the scapegoat
relies primarily on the idea that the drought is caused by the fantastic misconduct of the
second wife with her fantastic husband, and on the fact that the drought is ended by her death.
My analysis will soon make it evident that these themes and their arrangement
demand
a real
victim.
Insofar as it pertains to the internal peace of a community, unanimous scapegoating is self-
fulfilling; it really concludes the crisis. The same cannot be true in regard to a drought. Do I
assume that the death of a young woman can favorably influence a drought? Certainly not.
All we have to believe is that the victim died just before the natural end of the drought,
assuming, once again, that the drought was a real one.
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We may suppose that the "beer offering" recorded in our myth was not the only one during the whole mimetic crisis in which this myth is rooted. If this mimetic crisis was not a purely
internal phenomenon, if it was caused by a real drought, we can also suppose that the
particular "beer offering" portrayed in it happened to coincide with the natural end of the
drought. What generated the myth was the conjunction of the mimetic reconciliation against
the scapegoat, plus the natural end of the drought. This chance timing made this particular
episode of scapegoating a long-range success, memorable enough to generate a myth.
Most students of myth will reject out of hand the interpretation I have just outlined. Knowing
that I regard the myth as the trace of an extratextual drama, a real scapegoat phenomenon,
they will quit listening. The assertion that the victim must be real seems irresponsible. They
see a theoretical impossibility to which I must be blind.
These critics dismiss my work a priori, without examining my demonstration. They are
absolutely certain that I cannot be right. The failure of my interpretation is too obvious, they
feel, to require a complete refutation.
This conviction relies essentially on the fantastic aspect of myth, which is seen as an
insurmountable obstacle to the realism, or referentiality, of my interpretation. In the present
example, for instance, we have a divine snake, a water god that causes a drought because the
excessive curiosity of his wife drives him into hiding. Even interpreters free from the
currently fashionable anti-referential bias will find it incredible that a text with such a
nonsensical theme in it could ever become a source of extratextual information.
Two themes in our myth, the drought and the death by drowning, could
possibly
yield
extratextual information but only in a nonfantastic context. Their potential in that respect
seems nullified by the story of the divine snake which is inextricably entangled with the rest
of the myth. "Tell me what company you keep and I will tell you who you are."
When I say that there must be a real victim behind our Venda myth, and other similar myths,
I blatantly disregard, it seems, what everybody agrees must be the most basic principle of
critical prudence. No text can be more reliable than the least reliable of its components. Let
us call it the
law of contamination by the unbelievable
. Even interpreters unaffected by the