The scapegoat

Résumé du document

Traditionally, a scapegoat was a goat that was led away in the wilderness, for the Day of Atonement in Judaism, Yom Kippur. That rite was described in the Bible. Christian theology is a symbolic prefiguration of the sacrifice of Jesus who offered his own life to take the sin of the world on his head, dying on a cross. Today, a scapegoat is a person or a group of people, indicated by a group to endorse a social behaviour that the group wants to get rid of. Thus, the scapegoat is excluded from the group (figurative or literal sense), and may be punished or condemned (jail or death penalties). If you analyse clearly the process of making someone a scapegoat, you can notice the following steps:

-A leader or a majority group defines the good and the evil, what may be socially done and what may not. Population believe in those values.
-When population considers that there is a problem in social order, a process will look for a responsible. The scapegoat will be a person or a group that may behave against "good values".
-The scapegoat will be excluded, or "sacrificed" publicly, for the population to see the evil leaving the social scene.

Extraits

[...] If you analyse clearly scapegoating processes, you can notice the following steps: leader or a majority group defines the good and the evil, what may be socially done and what may not. Population believe in those values. -When population considers that there is a problem in social order, a process will look for a responsible. The scapegoat will be a person or a group that may behave against “good values”. -The scapegoat will be excluded, or “sacrificed” publicly, for the population to see the evil leaving the social scene. From that point, I'm going to try to answer the following questions: In which context appear scapegoats? [...]

[...] Here does the donkey agree with the fact he has a bad behaviour. He feels guilty and has no strength to answer the harangue of the wolf. The speech of the King has shown to the entire group that it's necessary to sacrifice someone. Then the group agrees when seeing the donkey feeling guilty. -Dreyfus affair. Dreyfus is the best example of the “good scapegoat”. Clemenceau will say that this Judaism scapegoat, we can find all former crimes accumulated”. At that time, the scapegoat mechanism remained hidden. [...]

[...] A GOOD SCAPEGOAT In René Girard's theory, several conditions are necessary for the scapegoat to canalize effectively the mimetic violence. -The operation of scapegoat needs to remain hidden. -The violence of the exclusion of the scapegoat mustn't trigger a new violence cycle. That's the less violence principle. That's why it's important not to choose the scapegoat randomly. -The group must be persuaded of the guiltiness of the scapegoat. -The scapegoat must believe in his culpability. At least, the scapegoat must lack of self esteem, and need recognition of the group. [...]

[...] How the scapegoat is chosen, and what may be a good scapegoat? And finally, to what extend does the sacrifice of the scapegoat help a society finding peace? In each part, I'll try to identify different kinds of actor's games, and illustrate my analysis with great theories and historical examples. EMERGENCE CONTEXT 1 MIMETIC VIOLENCE, RENÉ GIRARD According to René Girard, scapegoats appear in a general context of indifferenciation, which follow a mimetic violence period. In Le Bouc Emissaire (1987), he describes the phenomenon of “mimetic triangle”. [...]

[...] The greatest example is Germany in the 1930's. The society was totally disoriented by an economic crisis and a non legitimated power, and lost his fundamental values. The 2 digits inflation and the Weimar Republic created an unsteady context, propitious to Adolph Hitler. In this general mimetic violence country, Hitler affirmed clearly what is good and what is bad. The population agreed because they had nothing else to agree. Thus, work, family, and nationalism became the roots of the nation. [...]