The Girard Reader Read Online Free Page B

the necessary misinterpretation and transfiguration
    of the event by the religious communities themselves. This misinterpretation is an essential
    aspect of the collective murder itself insofar as it effectively resolves and terminates crises of
    mimetic rivalry among human groups.
    Sacrifice is the resolution and conclusion of ritual because a collective murder or expulsion
    resolves the mimetic crisis that ritual mimics. What kind of mechanism can this be? Judging
    from the evidence, direct and indirect, this resolution must belong to the realm of what is
    commonly called a scapegoat effect.
    The word "scapegoat" means two things: the ritual described in Le-viticus
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    viticus 16 or similar rituals which are themselves imitations of the model I have in mind. I
    distinguish between scapegoat as ritual and scapegoat as effect. By a scapegoat effect I mean
    that strange process through which two or more people are reconciled at the expense of a
    third party who appears guilty or responsible for whatever ails, disturbs, or frightens the
    scapegoaters. They feel relieved of their tensions and they coalesce into a more harmonious
    group. They now have a single purpose, which is to prevent the scapegoat from harming
    them, by expelling and destroying him.
    Scapegoat effects are not limited to mobs, but they are most conspicuously effective in the
    case of mobs. The destruction of a victim can make a mob more furious, but it can also bring
    back tranquility. In a mob situation, tranquility does not return, as a rule, without some kind
    of victimage to assuage the desire for violence. That collective belief appears so absurd to the
    detached observer, if there is one, that he is tempted to believe the mob is not duped by its
    own identification of the scapegoat as a culprit. The mob appears insincere and hypocritical.
    In reality, the mob really believes. If we understand this, we also understand that a scapegoat
    effect is real; it is an unconscious phenomenon, but not in the sense of Freud.
    How can the scapegoat effect involve real belief? How can such an effect be generated
    without an objective cause, especially with the lightning speed that can often be observed in
    the case of the scapegoating mobs? The answer is that scapegoat effects are mimetic effects;
    they are generated by mimetic rivalry itself, when it reaches a certain degree of intensity. As
    an object becomes the focus of mimetic rivalry between two or more antagonists, other
    members of the group tend to join in, mimetically attracted by the presence of mimetic desire.
    Mimesis is mimetically attractive, and we can assume that at certain stages, at least in the
    evolution of human communities, mimetic rivalry can spread to an entire group. This is what
    is suggested by the acute disorder phase with which many rituals begin. The community turns
    into a mob under the effect of mimetic rivalry. The phenomena that take place when a human group turns into a mob are identical to those produced by mimetic rivalry, and they can be
    defined as that loss of differentiation which is described in mythology and reenacted in ritual.
    We found earlier that mimetic rivalry tends toward reciprocity. The model is likely to be
    mimetically affected by the desire of his imitator. He becomes the imitator of his own
    imitator, just as the latter becomes the model of his own model. As this feedback process
    keeps reinforcing itself, each constitutes in the other's path a more and more irritating
    obstacle and each tries to remove this obstacle more and more forcefully. Violence is thus
    generated. Violence is not originary; it is a by-product of mimetic rivalry. Violence is
    mimetic rivalry itself becoming violent as
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    the antagonists who desire the same object keep thwarting each other and desiring the object
    all the more. Violence is supremely mimetic.
    The antagonists are caught in an escalation of frustration. In their dual role of obstacle and
    model, they both become more