In Violence and the Sacred (1972) René Girard points out that waves of violence may explode at any moment in human societies and presents the religious sacrifice ritual as the rational tactic for stopping such waves and conserving social structure. He distinguishes two dimensions:

1) Violence is how people reciprocally break each other: It is imagined as a stain or curse that spreads like the plague via people’s sameness. Let’s call this aspect symmetric breaking.

2) The sacrifice ritual misdirects violence and breaks the symmetry; this is how one founds symbolic differentiation in society. Let’s call this aspect symmetry-breaking.

Girard handles this issue by naive utilitarian language, emphatizing with the primitive societies and portraying sacrifice as the logical method to limit the violent contagion: Given that symmetric breaking (violence) is an immense danger, it is legitimate to mobilize in the name of “society” and break the symmetry (sacrifice).

But from Freudian perspective the religious structure that Girard emphatizes with is revealed to be mere obsessional compulsions that feed on the fear of hysteric contagions. The purpose of the sacrifice ritual is to magically undo (Ungeschehenmachen) the wave of violence that has manifested in the society, so as to behave as if it had never exploded. This operation is truly masculine imposture and it sacrifices women [1].

So could there be another way to break the symmetry and stop the wave of violence? To find the alternative way, one must distinguish acts from states:

1) If symmetric breaking remains as a state, it produces envious people who demand equality: “I demand equality! (if I won’t have it, let them also be deprived).” (e.g. American protesters chant: “If we don’t get it, shut it down!”)

2) If symmetric breaking passes to the act, it takes revenge from the fate; but destructive (imprecise) acts should be called backlash, not revenge; precision does not refer to physical violence but the symbolic precision of speech and stance [2].

3) If symmetry-breaking intervenes in the envious state of humanity, it inevitably produces hierarchical power structures.

4) If symmetry-breaking is forced to respond to an (symbolic) act of revenge, it cannot form hierarchical stratification, it is forced to give and receive gratitude.

Thus we have made two basic distinctions:
1) State of envy vs. act of revenge
2) State of hierarchy vs. act of gratitude

Nietzsche had pointed out the affinity between revenge and gratitude (Human, All Too Human) and also emphasized that both were incompatible with slave morality (Beyond Good and Evil). If the envious person who demands equality, who grounds the current hierarchies, is going to change, (s)he must pass through the (symbolic, not physical!) act of revenge to open the way for giving and receiving gratitude [3].

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “Ben De: Kadınlar Erkekler İçin Feda Olmayı Reddediyor”

[2] See “Imposition, Criticism, Analysis: Loyalty, Fidelity, Precision”, “Just Revenge Against The Superego”, “Günü ve Geceyi Bitirebilmek: Rahatlar, Rahatsızlar ve Felekten İntikam Almak”

[3] See “Make Gratitude Cool Again”