The Efficacy of the 'Scapegoat Mechanism'

By Sean Froyd

Sacrifice has been called the pinnacle of the ritual act, completely giving something over to the god or gods that are served by the culture. The cultures that practice the sacrificial act all have different reasons for it, varying greatly in regards to their worldviews. There has been a search since the study of myth and ritual began to be able to come up with the ‘skeleton key’ that explains the why of the sacrifice. Rene Girard is a recent theorist attempting to explain sacrifice.

Girard claims that sacrifice is inherent due to a culture’s need to expiate the violence within itself, and to stop the cycle of revenge. It argues that the judiciary takes place of sacrifice because it fulfills the necessity of stopping the cycle of violence within the civilization. Sacrifice also involves the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ that allows for a culture to put onto a victim all of its feelings of violence which are then relieved in the sacrifice.

Girard’s theory, which is attractive to some, has its critics. The arguments against it, according to The Encyclopedia of Religion involve saying that Girard’s concept of sacrifice is too narrow, it does not touch on the sacred at all, nor does it allow for rituals such as firstling sacrifices. These are important criticisms, but they stop short of testing the theory. In order to truly test the theory, it needs concrete examples of sacrifice for application.

There are three cultures to which the theory can be applied: the Greek, the Mexica, and the Jewish. There are arguments that these are not representative enough of the world’s cultures, as they are all from relatively high advanced cultures. That may be, but for our purposes these three will be enough.

The Scapegoat Mechanism

A further explanation of Girard’s ideas is needed. The Encyclopedia of Religion sums up Girard’s theory of sacrifice as a means to control violence. As it says “this tendency[towards violence] can be neutralized, however, if the reciprocal aggressions are focused on a marginal object, the scapegoat” (553).

Girard’s theory depends on the concept that civilization, and man in general, is inherently violent. The only way to live in this society, according to Girard, is to find a way to channel these impulses of violence towards a mutually agreed upon victim, satiating the violent urges for a time.

Girard says in his book, Job A Victim of His people, that “the process of choosing a surrogate victim eliminates everyone’s antagonism in one move by focusing on a common adversary, and then eliminating the victim” (69). Girard says that the scapegoat in ancient societies allows for civilization to expiate the violence within.

The scapegoat, Girard explains in Violence and the Sacred: Sacrifice, “must bear a strong resemblance to the human categories excluded from the ranks of the “sacrificeable,” while still maintaining a degree of difference that forbids all possible confusion” (245). The animal scapegoat must be allowable within the community, but must be similar enough to the object that it is replacing to satisfy the need for violence. Girard states “all victims, even the animal ones, bear a certain resemblance to the object they replace; otherwise the violent impulse would remain unsatisfied” (245).

The scapegoat, thus, must be similar to the victims of the violence. Another aspect required of the scapegoat is the incapability of the victim to be strike back, according to Girard it must be “incapable of propagating further vengeance” (247). Girard makes the point that if the victim has friends or relatives that can take revenge for the death, it is a useless scapegoat because the violent cycle within the culture continues. The sacrifice would be useless if the cycle continued. As Girard says “The sacrificial process prevents the spread of violence by keeping vengeance in check” (247).

Girard points to the judicial system as a marker for the difference between primitive and advanced cultures. “We can indeed consider the absence or presence of these institutions as a basis for distinguishing primitive societies from “civilized” ones” (248). Girard says that the judiciary fulfills the same function as sacrifice, because it controls the need for violent revenge. As he says “the judicial system and the institution of sacrifice share the same function,” (250) because the judiciary “generally succeeds in stifling the impulse to vengeance” (250). The judicial system takes the personal desire for revenge and puts it on society, much like sacrifice according to Girard.

The scapegoat mechanism that comes forward in sacrifice is the way that civilizations without a judiciary keep the violence inherent within themselves at bay, according to Girard. The judiciary that Girard brings up is beyond the scope of this essay for the most part, and Girard’s points about it will only be applicable should his ideas on sacrifice test out. It is for this that we are going to test the scapegoat mechanism against our test cases, the Judaic sacrifices ordered in Leviticus, the Greek animal sacrifice and feast, and the Mexica’s human sacrifice.

Judaic Sacrifice and Violence

The Law given to the Israelites and explained in Leviticus provides instructions for sacrifice, and what objects should be sacrificed, and how it ought be used. The sacrifice in the Jewish culture is meant to make amends to God for guilt, either personal or social. Is Girard’s ideas on sacrifice applicable here?

Two preliminary points must be made. In the following paper, whenver the concept of Judaic sacrifice is brought up, it is in regards to the practice as set down in Leviticus. The second point is that Girard speaks of the scapegoat in Job, as in the modern sense, as an object or being that is blamed, and specifically not in the Jewish sense of Leviticus, as an actual goat. As Girard says in Job, “the scapegoat is the innocent party who polarizes a universal hatred” (5). These two are not to be confused, as there are connotations involved with the Jewish scapegoat that ought not be involved with Girard’s view.

As it stands, the Jewish sacrifice is a highly ritualized affair, allowing for both animal and vegetable sacrifice. They choose animals without blemish in order to sacrifice them to God, either in total or in part with the priests consuming the remaining parts. In Leviticus 7:34 “I have taken the breast that is waved and the thigh that is presented and have gien them to Aaron the priest…”. Already, from within the society giving the reasons on the surface for sacrifice, Girard’s theory seems not to apply.

Girard’s idea for the victim having similarity to the intended victim of the violence holds to some degree here. The animals chosen to be sacrificed are calm, incapable of striking back(in a directed conscious sense), and have no way of continuing the cycle of violence through surviving members. All of these criteria fit for Girard’s scapegoat. The problem with applying Girard’s views to this sacrificial act is the why of the sacrifice.

Only in a few instances was the Judaic sacrifice intended to be for everyone in the society, and then it was given to the priest to choose the victim. The choice was not effected by the entire community. The society did not did not use sacrifice to channel the violence within, it chose the sacrifice as penance for already committed sins. This is an important point that makes this sacrifice improper for applying Girard’s theory. Girard’s theory states that the violence is muted and stifled for a time after the sacrifice, and implicitly this violence has not occurred because a victim was introduced for it to be channeled onto. The concept of sacrifice for forgiveness makes Girard’s theory a poor fit for the Judaic system of sacrifice.

That aside, however, let us look briefly at the judiciary idea of Girard’s. The presence of a judiciary would mark a culture where sacrifice was not needed, though in this instance of biblical sacrifice, we have both judiciary and sacrifice. The judges were installed to mediate in troubles by Moses, showing clear installment of the judiciary. This was set up by Moses, “He chose capable men from all Israel and made them leaders[…]they served as judges for the people at all times” (Exodus 18:25-26). There is also the small matter of the concept of ‘Cities of Refuge’ that completely refutes the application of Girard’s theory.

The Cities of Refuge were so labeled where if a man had killed someone, there was a place of neutrality where he could flee where there was safety for a time from the ‘avenger of blood’, or revenge-killer. These were set up by God where “they[the cities] will be places of refuge from the avenger, so that a person accused of murder may not die before he stands before the assembly”(Deu. 35:12). The avenger is defined in The New Compact Bible Dictionary being created when “if a man is killed, his nearest kin is made the avenger of blood” (64). Without dwelling on this fact very much longer, if sacrifice was intended to stifle the need for revenge, and as sacrifice was a common activity for the Jews, why then were refuges needed to protect against the revenge of the relatives?

It is clear that Girard’s theory about the function of sacrifice is inapplicable in the Jewish culture. Is this culture an exception to the rule, or is Girard’s theory unusable for application?

Sacrifice in Greek Culture

The Greeks took their sacrifice seriously. Their sacrifices were followed by meals where the meat of the sacrificed was consumed. The gods were given the odor of the parts that were burnt to please and honor them. How does the concept of sacrifice as violence diversion fit here?

Royden Yerkes, in his book Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early Judaism explains that poeple in the Greek era, especially at Thusias(feasts of sacrifice) had accepted gods as a very integral part of life. Yerkes says “So much a part of life had the gods become that their presence at any important meal was taken for granted” (95) and that “Men were convinced that to kill and eat without due recognition of the gods would be to stir their anger and bring misfortune” (95).

Sacrifice was the only way to honor the gods and please them. As Yerkes says, “Thus only can men give the gods the honor due them. Thus only can they maintain friendly or co-operative relation with the gods whom to ignore is folly” (97). Examples throughout Greek mythology give evidence of this, the most blatant one being Oeneus, whose lapse brought the Calydonian Boar.
Marcel Detienne explains this in “Culinary Practices and the Spirit of Sacrifice”. That is why the mystery religions, or heretics, such as the Orphics were viewed as rebellious, they chose the path of avoiding the meats of the sacrifice. “To refuse to eat meat is not only to behave in a manner different from one’s fellows, it is to decide not to carry out the most important act in civil religion” (6).

The Greek view of Sacrifice was that it was an integral part of everyday life and in relations to the gods. It was the only way in which to keep on their good side. Does Girard’s theory apply in any form?

Sacrifice as a conduit to stifle violence does not fit here. Girard’s theory can only work if the victim is one which society is willfully violent towards, taking care of that innate impulse towards undirected violence. The Greeks, though, in their rites of sacrifice were not necessarily violent. Detienne points out that in the act of sacrifice, there was a drive to mute the violence of it, to disclaim the murder at the outset. Detienne says “there is a desire to play down the violence in the sacrificial ceremony, as if from the very outset it were necessary to disclaim any guilt of the murder” (9).

The effectiveness of Girard’s scapegoat mechanism relies on the ability of it to stifle the urge for continuing violence by exorcising it against a chosen victim. This is not applicable to the Greeks. Their idea of sacrifice was to honor the gods, in a way that was as non-violent(according to Detienne) as possible.
The violence aspect of sacrifice was downplayed so much that when there was an aberration by the animal, the ritual moved away from sacrifice and toward another domain. Detienne states that “when some animals refuse to move toward the altar or, more rarely, they spontaneously rush forward, often to kill one another, the sacrificial ritual is perverted and corrupted by traits that carry it into the domain of hunting or warfare” (9).

The idea that sacrifice is there to stifle vengeance is hard to apply to a culture where sacrifice is first seen as attempting to be non-violent, and when there DOES occur violence by the victim it carries it away from the meaning of the sacrifice. Girard’s theory is a poor fit for the Greek sacrificial culture.
There is one more culture we will attempt to apply Girard’s theory to, one that is predominantly human sacrifice oriented, that of the Mexicas.

Violence and Sacrifice Among the Mexicas

The Mexicas were a culture from South America, noted for their human sacrifices. Their worldview was one of balance through diet, and that is how they saw their sacrificial victim: as food for the gods. Can Girard’s theory apply to diet?

There is a problem in the very worldview that clashes with Girard’s idea of the Scapegoat Mechanism. Girard says in Job, that the sacrifice mechanism is the “prototype of every sacred epiphany” (75). What happens when a society doesn’t have sacred epiphanies, but has the idea that everything is part of the sacred? That aspect of the theory definitely fails, but whether it applies to the act of sacrifice itself we will see.

The Mexicas sacrificed people in order to feed the gods, to keep things in balance. As Read says in The Cosmic Meal “Sacrifice was not just an act of destroying one thing to make another, it also was an act of eating one thing to create another” (134).

The New Fire ceremony exemplified this. A captive was taken by the priests, who then lit a fire on his chest and cut out his heart. This sacrifice allowed for the binding of the reed years, which were years of unbalance. The fire was then taken out to everyone in the domain to relight the hearth and cooking fires in a rebirth ceremony.

There isn’t an aspect of scapegoating in order to quell the violent vengeance cycles, quite the opposite in fact. The Mexicas and their neighbors instituted the “Flowery Wars”(132) where they raided each other to find fresh sacrificial victims. These victims do not fit Girard’s outline of a scapegoat where revenge was impossible. This culture did not care so much for that aspect, and as such, the sacrifices never stopped the cycle of violence and vengeance. Girard’s theory falls flat with this example of sacrifice as well.

Does the theory work?

The theory of the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ is an attractive one for people who want to find an underlying cause for sacrifice in the cultures that practice it. However this theory does not fit in three example cultures that practiced sacrifice, and its efficacy as such is questionable.

Girard himself points out in Job, “It[the scapegoat mechanism] is, in essence, comparative and hypothetical” (31). Girard’s theory is still workable, if it is applied mainly to myths and stories that are open to interpretation. It fails, however, when offered some concrete examples of sacrifice.

The theory of the scapegoat mechanism and the function of sacrifice to quell violence fails the application test to real examples of sacrifice. Girard may continue to work on this theory, but until it can stand up under concrete examples, it cannot be the underlying explanation of the function of sacrifice.

Works Cited

“Avenger.” The New Compact Bible Dictionary. Ed. T. Alton Bryant. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1967.

Detienne, Marcel. “Culinary Practices and the Spirit of Sacrifice.” The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks. Trans. Paula Wissing. Chicago: U of Chicago,
1-20.

Girard, Rene. Job The Victim of His People. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1987.

---. “Violence and the Sacred: Sacrifice”. Readings in Ritual Studies. Ed. Ronald L. Grimes. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1996. 239-256.

Henninger, Joseph. “Sacrifice”. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Mircea Eliade. 16 vols. New York: Macmillian, 1987.

Read, Kay. “The Cosmic Meal,: Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998. 124-137; 144-155.

Yerkes, Royden Keith. Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early Judaism. London: A. and C. Ltd., 1953.

The NIV Bible, 1974.

Works Consulted

Apollodorus. The Library of Greek Mythology. Trans. by Robin Hard. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Hubert, Henri , and Marcel Mauss. Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1964.

Maccoby, Hyam. The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt. Bath: Thames and Hudson, 1982.

Posted by john at May 15, 2005 07:05 PM