Jaber (On Girard)

The sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence. The purpose of the sacrifice is to restore harmony to the community. Men can dispose of their violence more efficiently if they regard the process not as something emanating from within themselves, but as a necessity imposed from without, a divine decree whose least infraction calls down terrible punishment. Take the expiatory procedure of the Chuckchi people who avert feuds by killing an (innocent) member of the family; by killing, not the murderer, but someone close to him, an act of reciprocity is avoided and the necessity for revenge bypassed. Only violence can put an end to violence, and that is why violence is self-propagating. Analogous to avoidance of physical contact with the anathema in Greek culture, to do violence to a violent person is to be contaminated by his violence. It is best to arrange matters so that nobody is directly responsible for his death. To abandon without provision in mid ocean. To leave stranded on top of a mountain. To force him to hurl himself from a cliff. The role of the surrogate victim is honoured by architectural sites dedicated to the spirit of collective unity: tombs of heroes, the omphalos, the agora and in the polis itself. The traditions attached to these localities and the rituals associated with them make clear that sacred mob violence formed the origin of the polis.

       Athar Jaber