Violence and the Sacred

"This is a book by a French professor of literature, which I came to many years ago when I was trying to understand the violence that we were experiencing in Northern Ireland. Girard had been analysing the novel – that was his particular literary discipline and background. What he discovered was very interesting. In the novels he analysed, people who appear to want to have someone or something did not do so because of something in the person or thing they desired but rather they were imitating someone else’s desire – the person who already had the desired object or person. When my little boy was playing with Lego and his brother saw him playing with Lego, although he was never interested in the Lego before, now he wants it because his brother has it and then of course they get into a tussle because they both want it. Girard pointed out that this triangular relationship of desire as he called it was a very powerful thing because we are such imitative creatures. So, he said, if you don’t have any boundaries set down you will get violence, people will fight over these things because they imitate each other, including each other’s desires.. That led him to write this book and its central theme is that, because we are imitative beings, there will be violence and destruction unless we find ways of setting down boundaries such as law and culture and religion. That is why the book is called Violence and the Sacred. The boundaries that we put down are in some ways arbitrary. In addition they often create a situation where our group identifies one person who is then set outside the group and made a scapegoat. Everybody can happily turn their aggression against that person instead of against each other and, because that relieves the society of its internal violence, the scapegoated person becomes both a criminal and at the same time a saviour because they bring peace to that society. In the Christian faith Christ is so bad that he has to be crucified but by being crucified he brings salvation. Well, you see, that is exactly where he differs. What he is saying is that it’s not religion that causes the violence; it is when the religion no longer fulfils its function that violence occurs. It’s a little bit like football which many see as the way in which our society avoids having gang or even national warfare. The aggression of young men is put into the symbolic violence of a football match. People complain of violence at football matches but it is not the football that causes the aggression; rather the violence occurs when football’s symbolic function begins to break down. I think this is true more widely. When such things no longer fulfil their function then you have the violence, not fundamentally because they cause violence; after all, one can point to so many situations where religions works for the good of the community. The important question is why does religion have the opposite effect at different times and places? I found his explanations interesting and stimulating and they were extremely helpful to me in Northern Ireland, trying to find a way forward. Some people from a liberal, tolerant background like mine said: ‘The only way to stop the problems in Northern Ireland is to get rid of all the churches and faiths.’ Well you can’t do that and, in any case, I discovered that the solution arose when people who did have religious faith and commitment were prepared to come together across the divisions and work with each other to bring peace, rather than when you try to put these important aspects of the human condition to the side. Girard’s work was quite influential on me in seeing that this was the wise way to work."