The Barren Sacrifice: An Essay on Political Violence
241
The Barren Sacrifice: An Essay on Political Violence
241eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781628952421 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2015 |
| Series: | Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 241 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Barren Sacrifice
An Essay on Political Violence
By Paul Dumouchel, Mary Baker
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 2015 Michigan State University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62895-242-1
CHAPTER 1
Solidarity and Enmity
In Kibungo, N'tarama, Kanzenze and the town of Nyamata, anyone who publicly opposed the genocide, by word or deed, risked being executed or condemned to kill a victim on the spot. Everybody had to participate in some way, to be involved in the killings, destruction and looting, or to contribute monetarily. Still, I repeat: no one was seriously threatened with physical harm for reluctance to use a machete. ... Compared to your neighbour who killed every day, you could seem lazy or recalcitrant and, really, no competition, but you did have to show yourself worthy by reddening your hands that one time.
— Jean Hatzfeld
This quotation, taken from the study Jean Hatzfeld conducted in a prison on Rwandans who had been convicted of genocide, suggests that there was, with respect to the supposedly universal (since everybody had to take part in some way) participation in murdering Tutsis, some space for, perhaps not refusal, but at least abstinence and reticence. What is the nature of this space? What makes it possible? How can one withdraw while not opposing; how is it possible to be "recalcitrant," lazy, or "no competition" in the massacre game, and what does that mean exactly? What is the signification of such "passive" participation in collective violence?
Participation and Abstention
According to the killers' accounts in Machete Season, during the genocide it was impossible to oppose the massacres publicly or to defend a Tutsi without running the risk of either being executed oneself or being forced to kill — perhaps the very person whom one was trying to protect — in order to prove one's loyalty to the common cause. However, it was perfectly possible to demonstrate reticence, to be "recalcitrant." Anyone could essentially avoid the common "task" of murder by invoking other obligations or some special weakness, or even by paying someone to kill in his or her stead. Christopher Browning reports quite similar information concerning policemen in the German reserve who, at the beginning of the Final Solution, before the huge death camp industry was established, committed mass murders of Jewish civilians. None of the uncooperative policemen were ever seriously punished or threatened for refusing to kill so long as the refusal did not take the form of political opposition. If it was portrayed as the result of a certain "weakness" of character, a personal inability with respect to large-scale murder of civilians of all types, old people, women, children, the refusal was accepted. So long as it was presented as a failure or fault flowing from a lack of courage, nonparticipation was tolerated and had no serious consequences. In Rwanda, as behind the front lines of Operation Barbarossa, it was possible to be a "massacre slacker."
The essential was to show that one was worthy, in other words, that one approved of the genocidal policy, or at least one had to not show one's disapproval, even if it meant revealing oneself to be especially weak, incompetent, or clumsy when carrying out orders. So long as one was in agreement "in principle," refusing or being uncooperative resulted in no serious punishment. The presence of "incompetents" enhanced, by comparison, the prestige of those who were motivated and efficient. According to Hatzfeld and Browning, it is clear that there was also rivalry among many of those carrying out orders, the executors, with respect to "doing the job well," carrying out their killing "work" in an exemplary manner. Fulfilling the "violent duty" was given a positive value and well considered, though those who tried too hard were often criticized.
Afterward, murderers often say that they had "no choice," that they were forced or even threatened with death. This is possible, but the data collected by Browning, Hatzfeld, and others suggest that many who could have abstained without placing themselves in grave danger nonetheless participated in the slaughter of innocents, who were often their neighbors or even their relatives. We also know that the massive executions of Jewish civilians sometimes turned into shows that soldiers on leave and civilians attended, and that the latter sometimes asked the killers if they too could "try their hand." Researchers confronted with this kind of information wonder why so many ordinary people found it so easy to help murder those they had been living with for years. The incomprehensibility is all the greater since the mass murderers were generally neither bloodthirsty fanatics nor trained killers. They were neither true-believing Nazis nor members of the Interahamwe Militia. Why did they agree to do it? Why did they so easily comply with the norm that transformed a mass crime, if not into a moral imperative, at least into a socially acceptable practice?
Here, we have to resist the temptation to express moral indignation, which obscures understanding. Of course, we wonder why so many ordinary individuals agreed to participate in massacres when refusing was relatively danger free and would have had no dramatic consequences. However, this way of framing the question is misleading. It leads us to think that what was in question was an abstract individual choice. This is the question that, scandalized, we ask the murderers after the fact. The question reflects our misunderstanding, but not the context in which the murderers made their decisions. They often answer that they had no choice. We know that this is false in a sense because they could have abstained without placing themselves in serious danger. Yet, perhaps in another sense, they are telling the truth. That they had no choice would then mean that the response was automatic, that the question did not even arise.
As Harald Welzer shows, mass murderers make the decision to kill in a context that is completely different from the one familiar to us. It takes place in a world where extermination has become socially acceptable and is praised by moral authorities. The real question is actually: How are social norms changed to make the unthinkable acceptable? What collective alchemy transforms violence against defenseless innocents into a duty, a quasi-moral obligation? The question of individual choice does indeed arise, but with respect to those who actively reject or oppose the violence, not with respect to those who, from near or far, participate in and endorse the massacres. It also does not arise with respect to those who simply managed to get out, to avoid participating while they could.
Indeed, the actions of those whose refusal is limited to a form of abstinence or reticence to commit violence are entirely consistent with the moral space defined by massacres. Those who are "lazy" or uncooperative neither contradict nor reject the genocidal policy: they simply admit their personal failure, their inability to put into practice the social imperative of massacre. They do not reject genocide. They simply want to avoid the sordid task of murder. They want to avoid getting their hands dirty. They are massacre free riders. Their abstinence excludes neither indirect participation nor reaping the benefits of the crime. It is not a challenge to the violence, but an admission of personal weakness. Moreover, it is judged, tolerated, lightly punished or not, depending on the "moral" criteria of the situation, such as elimination of European Jews or extermination of Rwandan Tutsis. What is permitted, what can be excused, is non-participation, but not opposition to the goal. It is acceptable that an individual admit his or her inability to kill because by recognizing his or her failure, he or she does not defy the murderous norm but rather reasserts its well-foundedness. Accepting the goal, or at least not rejecting it openly, is the fundamental condition for nonparticipation. The possibility of avoiding getting involved in massacres, in the act of killing, exists only within the space defined by agreement with genocide. This is why the question does not arise, why it is never asked of those who cite their "weakness" to escape the labor of murder. Those who avoid participating in this way do not reject genocide: they adopt a different individual strategy within the range defined by the duty to commit genocide.
Am I My Brother's Keeper?7
In The Village of Cannibals Alain Corbin analyzes an instance of collective violence that occurred in Dordogne in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War. On August 16, 1870, at a time when things were beginning to go badly forFrance, a fair was held in Hautefaye. At the fair, before a crowd of nearly eight hundred people, a young noble from the local area, Alain de Monéys, was tortured for two hours and then burned alive in the public square. He was accused of being a Prussian, a spy, and a terrorist working for the enemy because a number of barns in the area had been burned not long before. At first sight, the event has all the features of the mechanism by which the sacrificial crisis is resolved, as described by René Girard in Violence and the Sacred: a spontaneous phenomenon of collective violence that converges on an arbitrarily chosen victim and purges the community of all its hatred and frustration. Indeed, at the end of the chapter that he devotes to a detailed reconstruction of the murder, Alain Corbin notes that "René Girard's analysis of the mechanics of victimization comes to mind." However, while there are striking similarities between what occurred in the village of Hautefaye and the resolution of the sacrificial crisis as described by Girard, there are also significant differences.
On that day, when Alain de Monéys arrived at the Hautefaye Fair, he was challenged by peasants who accused his cousin, Camille de Maillard, of having cried "Vive la République!" Alain, though he was a sickly man, had just had his "weak constitution" exemption from military service rescinded in order to enlist in the emperor's troops and fight against the invader. He refused to accept that his cousin could have said something "so unpatriotic" at a time when the empire was in danger. It was this rejection of their accusation that attracted the crowd's anger onto him. In fact, a few days before, Camille de Maillard had said things in the public square that were much more scandalous. He had announced to all within hearing that "The Emperor is done for ... he is out of ammunition." Peasants who were outraged by this pessimistic (though accurate) analysis of the military situation had asked him about this on the sixteenth, as he arrived at the Hautefaye Fair. Quick to sense the danger, de Maillard had decamped immediately. Alain de Monéys, who arrived after Camille had fled, really was therefore a substitute victim, one onto whom the violence was shifted since the original target was no longer available. He was chosen arbitrarily simply because he was related to Camille de Maillard. He was accused of collaborating with the enemy even though he was preparing to join the army. His only fault was probably that he did not run away fast enough, or that he thought that he did not need to run away.
Alain de Monéys was soon accused of having cried "Vive la République!" himself, and the crowd, persuaded that this time they had a real "Prussian" in their hands, attacked him. He was hit and beaten. At one point there was an attempt to hang him, but then there was a change of plan. Corbin's theory is that hanging would perhaps have been too quick, for de Monéys's suffering was to last two hours. Finally, unconscious but perhaps still alive, he was burned in a bonfire around which participants gave patriotic speeches. As one of the witnesses said during the enquiry: "the way those lunatics saw it, everyone had to have a hand in torturing the victim. One person struck the man, then stood aside so that somebody else could have a turn, and so on until they'd all had a shot." At the beginning of the incident, the village priest jumped over his garden wall with a revolver in his hand to try to get Alain de Monéys away, but he quickly saw that if he persisted in trying to protect him, he would suffer the same fate. He thus abandoned the victim, and had wine brought from his cellar, which he himself served to all who asked! A little later, Alain de Monéys, already injured but helped by a few faithful friends, managed to climb the stairs of the mayor's house, but the latter barred him from entering. Shortly afterward the door of a bar was shut brutally in his face when he tried to take refuge. He was rejected everywhere and by all — it indeed seems that there was a unanimous opinion against the "Prussian," the "Republican," the universal enemy of all the peasants, who were faithful supporters of Napoleon III, had sons on the front lines, or were themselves soon to leave for a war that was going badly. He was the scapegoat victim on which all hatred and resentment converged.
This was certainly the case, but the unanimity was not as clear as it seems at first sight. To begin with, there were the friends who accompanied de Monéys, supported him, helped him, and tried to protect him throughout his ordeal. Of course, they were brutally pushed away from time to time, but they were not attacked directly. They were fended off like irritating flies, but not pursued like enemies. There were also, and above all, some six hundred people who did not take part in the killing, but who also did not take action on behalf of de Monéys. Indeed, it is estimated that, on that day, there were around eight hundred people at the Hautefaye Fair, and that around two hundred participated directly in the lynching. What were the others doing? They were either watching with more or less interest, or simply going about their business.
In Hautefaye, thus, as in Rwanda and in the reserve units of the German police, it was possible to not participate. However, to oppose, as the priest briefly tried to do, was to run the risk of becoming a victim oneself. The friends who tried to help and protect Alain de Monéys did not try, like the priest, to be obstacles, to confront the crowd. They pleaded before it, constantly repeating that Alain de Monéys was neither a traitor nor a "Prussian," but a young nobleman from the area, a municipal councillor known for his generosity, that they had only to ask and everyone would testify to his good heart, and so on. They did not reject the policy of violence against "Prussians" and enemies of the empire, but argued that Alain de Monéys was innocent. Finally, it was clearly quite possible to remain a spectator, fascinated or indifferent, and to turn one's eyes away to continue discussing the cow that one was trying to buy or sell.
As analyzed by René Girard in Violence and the Sacred, the functioning of the mechanism for resolving the sacrificial crisis excludes the possibility of such distance and such indifference to the victim. At the climax of the crisis, the killing that brings back peace requires "unanimity less one": the convergence of all hatred onto a single victim. During the crisis, violence gradually invades all of the community. It eats away at differences among individuals and transforms them into doubles with nothing to distinguish one from the other. It is at the point of the most extreme violence, when differences among individuals have disappeared, that there is a convergence on the victim. At that stage, there should no longer be any indifferent spectators or defenders of the victim. Why did Alain de Monéys' friends never completely abandon him? If violence is mimetic and contagious, as Girard argues, why was the contagion limited in this case to two hundred participants, around a quarter of those who were present?
Was it because of the composition of the crowd, because of differences among the individuals assembled for the Hautefaye Fair that could have created obstacles to mimetic contagion and prevented the violence from propagating to all? In fact, the crowd was relatively homogenous. There were neither many women on the Hautefaye fairgrounds that day nor many children because, as Corbin notes, a fair is something for men old enough to engage in trade. Most of the people were peasants, landowners, tenant farmers, craftsmen, and minor noblemen or their representatives. Thus it seems that among those present there were no major differences isolating certain people into closed subgroups that could explain the containment of the violent contagion. Why did only some persist in hatred against Alain de Monéys, while others just went about their business? Why, despite the efforts of the "fanatics" to ensure that all played a part in torturing the victim, did so many remain indifferent to and outside of the violence?
In his analysis of the tragedy in Hautefaye, Alain Corbin insists on the fact that most of the participants in the fair did not know one another. They came from a number of places in the surrounding area. The center of the village, located close to the fairground, had around fifteen houses where some forty-five people lived. Nearly all of the eight hundred people assembled that day thus came from elsewhere, and while some of them had met or glimpsed each other before, few really knew one another. At the trial that followed the incident, it was revealed that the twenty-one accused, who were considered to be the leaders, did not know one another and did not know the victim. Corbin insists on this, rightly, to show that the murder "was not ... the work of the inhabitants of Hautefaye" and that the "kinship structure of the vicinity has nothing to teach us, nor is there much to learn from an understanding of the tensions that existed within the village community." The crowd at the Hautefaye Fair was neither a harmonious village community nor one that was torn apart by hatred and jealousy, but the anonymous crowd of those who meet to trade. The enquiry also established that the accused were normal workers, some were heads of families and none had had any clashes with justice. The violence was therefore also not the work of unemployed vagabonds or criminal elements, but of ordinary people that chance alone had brought together and transformed into murderers. But why did the event leave so many others in peace?
According to Alain Corbin, the Hautefaye tragedy was a political crime. The reason it was so shocking to people at the time is because "after nineteen years of universal suffrage, murder and mayhem had ceased to be acceptable forms of political expression." In the eyes of Alain Corbin, the murder of Alain de Monéys was a singular, isolated manifestation of an obsolete form of political violence, a vestige of a world of violent behavior that had virtually disappeared and was gradually giving way to new forms of collective violence. What forms?
The "modern" form of urban carnage, perpetrated by troops armed with rifles and artillery.
The nineteenth-century form of mass killing, the response to obsessive fears of frenzied mob violence, was a disciplined affair, inspired by images borrowed from the battlefield. Death was now instantaneous. It had shed those traits that once linked it to torture. Its ritual was simplified. Its narration became elliptical. Its traces were quickly erased. This new, permissible, understated form of bloodbath was calming and reassuring. Too little attention has been paid to the fundamental importance of mass killing in nineteenth-century French history. The violent events of 1831–1835, June 1848, December 1851, and May 1871 have rightly been perceived and analyzed as episodes in a single revolutionary process. The crushing of mass movements has been interpreted as a manifestation of repressive will and nothing more. Yet it is as if no regime could establish itself firmly until it had proved its capacity to bathe in the blood of the monster: the angry populace, the frenzied mob.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Barren Sacrifice by Paul Dumouchel, Mary Baker. Copyright © 2015 Michigan State University Press. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.