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The Scapegoat (Paperback)
Rene Girard; Translated by Yvonne Freccero
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R901
Discovery Miles 9 010
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Widely regarded as one of the most profound critics of our time,
Rene Girard has pursued a powerful line of inquiry across the
fields of the humanities and the social sciences. His theories,
which the French press has termed "l'hypothese girardienne," have
sparked interdisciplinary, even international, controversy. In The
Scapegoat, Girard applies his approach to "texts of persecution,"
documents that recount phenomena of collective violence from the
standpoint of the persecutor-documents such as the medieval poet
Guillaume de Machaut's Judgement of the King of Navarre, which
blames the Jews for the Black Death and describes their mass
murder. Girard compares persecution texts with myths, most notably
with the myth of Oedipus, and finds strikingly similar themes and
structures. Could myths regularly conceal texts of persecution?
Girard's answers lies in a study of the Christian Passion, which
represents the same central event, the same collective violence,
found in all mythology, but which is read from the point of view of
the innocent victim. The Passion text provides the model
interpretation that has enabled Western culture to demystify its
own violence-a demystification Girard now extends to mythology.
Underlying Girard's daring textual hypothesis is a powerful theory
of history and culture. Christ's rejection of all guilt breaks the
mythic cycle of violence and the sacred. The scapegoat becomes the
Lamb of God; "the foolish genesis of blood-stained idols and the
false gods of superstition, politics, and ideologies" are revealed.
What do we know about the Book of Job? Not very much. The hero
complains endlessly. He has just lost his children all his
livestock. He scratches his ulcers. The misfortunes of which he
complains are all duly enumerated in the prologue. They are
misfortunes brought on him by Satan with God's permission. We think
we know, but are we sure? Not once in the Dialogues does Job
mention either Satan or anything about his misdeeds. Could it be
that they are too much on his mind for him to mention them?
Possibly, yet Job mentions everything else, and does much more than
mention. He dwells heavily on the cause of his misfortune, which is
none of those mentioned in the prologue. The cause is not divine,
satanic nor physical, but merely human.
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