Hi, friends,

My pastor Emily Swan* is a historian and one of the smartest people I know, and she introduced me to René Girard's scapegoat theory**. Girard was a philosopher and literary critic, but also a historian, and his work was very much focused on the psychology of desire. He came up with the theory of mimetic desire, which says, essentially, that human beings copy each other, and when one person sees someone else with an object or performing an action, the first person starts to desire that object or to perform that action. He argues that mimetic desire is what fuels societies, everyone wanting what everyone else has. It's an interesting theory, for sure.

He expands that, however, into the idea that a society that is fueled by mimetic desire will eventualy become violent. If everyone wants what other people have, and there aren't enough things available for everyone, there will be violence when some people physically attack others to get the desired object. (Is the first image that flashed into your mind when you read that last sentence the Cabbage Patch Kid riots of Christmas 1983?)

So far this is all making sense, isn't it? But then Girard goes on to claim that as a society hits a fever pitch of constant mimetic violence, the only valve to release the pressure on society is for the society to designate a victim, a scapegoat, to become the object of the society's hatred and blame for the violence and unlivability of the current society. Once the scapegoat is killed (either by the populace or the state), the pressure valve has been released and society goes back to a comfort level and everyone pretends the absence of the scapegoat really did fix things.

Girard gives a bunch of examples of this from history, and the example Emily is interested in is Jesus. If we think of Jesus as a scapegoat who was sacrificed because society had reached a tension point of violence, the whole story makes more sense and is less dislocated and weird/miraculous. (And Jesus' divinity or lack of it has no impact on how you see the function of Jesus, if you want to look at his story through scapegoat theory.)

I've been playing around with scapegoat theory in my head for a solid eight years since I learned about it, and societal tensions have only increased in that time, and we're at a high point in mimetic violence once again. I've been wondering for awhile who the scapegoat is going to be, and I've suspected that it isn't going to be Trump.

I think Musk has painted himself into a corner, and that by trying to control everything he's turned himself into a villain to everyone. He has no actual friends. No one defends him. He's the source and locus of destruction and death for the entire world now. He can't move about freely. And what makes this so supremely wasteful is that he could switch course and make better decisions at any moment, but he doesn't have the capacity to make good decisions. His picker's bad, as they used to say. So what happens to him now?

Or is the scapegoat even further off and it's someone else entirely? I'd suggest doing a Girard scapegoat theory reading group, but I don't want to get too far into Girard's mind and I need my brain for other things right now (and so do you).

Let me just ask if any of you have heard of Girard or scapegoat theory, and what you think of it. Is it preposterous to you, or interesting, or neither or both?

252 million of us didn't vote for this.

Love,

Magda

*Emily wrote the excellent book Solus Jesus: A Theology of Resistance with my pastor emeritus Ken Wilson (who's currently working on a book debunking the texts commonly used to exclude LGBTQ people from the church). Solus Jesus is a must-read for anyone who wants a structure on which to hang your instinctive knowledge that LGBTQ people are loved as-is by God.

**The theory is thick and tough to plow through, and even the book that's supposed to be a summary of it is rough (and I read a lot of lit crit in undergrad and am usually not afraid of theory). If you get intrigued by scapegoat theory, Emily's summary of it in Solus Jesus is probably the best you'll find that's actually accessible to regular smart people.

​

If you liked this post, send it to a friend and tell them to subscribe.

If someone forwarded you this email and you want to read more or subscribe, go to https://pecsenye.kit.com/posts and you can see all the emails and put your email address in the little box to subscribe for free.

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/pecsenye.bsky.social​

IG: https://www.instagram.com/magdapecsenye/​

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@magdapecsenye​

​Join my Discord server if you want to talk about things. (I can't seem to get a link that always works, so if that link doesn't work, just hit Reply and ask for the link.)

Group Hugs is always open. We meet once a week on Zoom to talking about our feelings, fears and successes, without recording, so you can say anything and get support. Monday at 4 Eastern group here. Thursday at 8 PM Eastern group here.

​

17301 Livernois Ave, Detroit, MI 48221
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​