Moving Beyond Redemptive Violence
This essay is the final installment of a series. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 3.5
The purpose of this essay series is to illuminate a path toward the transcendence of the ancient pattern that Rene Girard called sacrificial violence, in which society discharges its rage, its anxiety, and its rivalries upon a dehumanized victim class. This latent force swells in times of social stress as in an economic crisis, famine, plague, or political upheaval. Then elite powers can hijack it toward fascistic ends.