GR 'Father Rapier's Sermon'

[Richard Ryan]

Thanks for suggesting that those of us interested in the issues that Keith
raised look at Gans's work, Michael.  I knew a little about Girard, but Gans
was new to me.  What I've gleaned from the web is very suggestive, and makes
me want to read more.

For those interested, Gans's homepage at UCLA is:

http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/french/faculty/gans/home.html

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org]On
> Behalf Of Michael Joseph
> Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 5:18 PM
> To: s~Z
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: GR 'Father Rapier's Sermon'
>
>
> Ken, You might wnat to check out Rene Girard's work on scapegoating, or
> eric Gans' on language as the deferral of violence, if you haven't
> already. I think they both have some pretty useful points to make about
> the social causes of violence that could conceivably lend themselves to
> your critique.
>
> Best,
>
> Michael J.
>
>
>
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2003, s~Z wrote:
>
> > When people become victims of the negative Atman project, they become
> > victims, substitute sacrifices, scapegoats--and war, the mass
> potlatch of
> > death-dealing for immortality, is merely wholesale victimage in outright
> > form. And victimage, as Robert Jay Lifton put it, is simply "the need to
> > reassert one's own immortality, or that of one's group, by
> contrasting it
> > with the absolute absence of it in one's death-tainted victim." So could
> > Kenneth Burke point out that the heart of man's social motivation is the
> > "civic enactment of redemption through sacrificial victim." And Eugene
> > Ionesco summed it up beautifully: "As long as we are not assured of
> > immortality, we shall go on hating each other in spite of our need for
> > mutual love." Hating each other, and killing each other.
> Indeed, Mumford has
> > really built his extraordinary study of history, politics, and technics
> > around the phenomenon of sacrifice itself, and the special
> necessity of mass
> > sacrifice and war in maintaining the social equilibrium of the state.
> >
> >                 --Ken Wilber
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>