An Undemocratic Turn?
Ever since, in the first flush of the world’s dawn, Kronos ate his own children and had his testicles cut off for it, myth and violence have been inseparable. Explanations for this are manifold, and none of them makes us look good. Otto Rank suggested that myths of the birth of heroes, like those of...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2018
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| In: |
The Cambridge quarterly
Year: 2018, Volume: 47, Issue: 3, Pages: 272-279 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Girard, René 1923-2015
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Ever since, in the first flush of the world’s dawn, Kronos ate his own children and had his testicles cut off for it, myth and violence have been inseparable. Explanations for this are manifold, and none of them makes us look good. Otto Rank suggested that myths of the birth of heroes, like those of Oedipus, Hercules, or Paris, are themselves born of our deepest childhood desire to destroy our father.1 For René Girard, myths like that of the Theban king are based, not on our subconscious wishes, but on real, historical acts of collective violence. Girard’s Le Bouc émissaire proposes a pattern of persecution in human societies, by which communities at the verge of breakdown purge their need for violence by killing or banishing an innocent they believe to be the root of all evil. In the imagination of the persecutors, whose distorted accounts of the crisis are the stuff of mythology, the scapegoat is so extraordinarily powerful that it can endanger all of society - and save it, too. Hence the throng of monstrous divinities in world mythology.2 Walter Burkert thought that the preponderance of bloody rituals in myth - Thyestes’ murder of Atreus’ children in a sacred grove, the orgies of the Dionysian festivals, the virgin sacrifices of Iphigenia and Polyxena - is rooted in the 90,000 years mankind spent hunting, killing, and eating its victims. Accordingly, Burkert amended the name of our species from homo sapiens, the knowing man, to homo necans, the killing man, in the title of his study.3 |
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| ISSN: | 1471-6836 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Cambridge quarterly
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/camqtly/bfy009 |
