Staging sacri ce,

overcoming rivalry
David García-Ramos

Catholic University of Valencia “San Vicente Mártir”

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 Victims & Mimetic The
1. Mimetic
Desire

Mimetic desire illustrated by Carly Osborn

Sometimes, not even the love of our
life we desire in an original way
Victims & Mimetic The
 Victims & Mimetic The

2. Mimetic Rivalry

From resentment to
violence there is only
one step and
immediately we find
rivals and victims at
hand: the escalation of
mimetic violence will
take place sooner or
later in spite of
everything.
Come to blows is not only a matter of men... the
mimetic rivalry is a matter of all humankind.
 Victims & Mimetic The
3. Scapegoat
Mechanism

It is a universal mechanism [image

of the Codex Magliabechiano].
 Victims & Mimetic The

Other elements of the #MT

Mèconnaissance
Guilty / Innocent
Random
Indifferentiation
Individual [marks] >>>
Collective [neatness]
Differences & Sacrifice
New Gods, new myths Victim’s divinization by Carly Osborn

 Victims & Mimetic The

The modern concern of victims

Our society is the most preoccupied with
victims of any that ever was. Even if it is
insincere, a big show, the phenomenon has no
precedent. No historical period, no society we
know, has ever spoken of victims as we do. We
can detect in the recent past the beginnings of
the contemporary attitude, but every day new
records are broken. We are all actors as well as
witnesses in a great anthropological rst.

René Girard, I see Satan fall like lightning 2001: p. 161

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Tragedy
The theater participated as a
party (religious): the Leneas
and the Great Dionysias
Theatre and Catharsis
The theatre and the
characters: the choir and
the chorus, the mass and
the victim: theater as a
perfect social lab
Burkert, Walter. “Greek
Tragedy and Sacrificial
Ritual.” Greek, Roman,
and Byzantine Studies
7, no. 2 (1966): 87–121.
ί
ί
It is a single aspect that shall be considered here, the question
why tragedy is called τραγωδ α –a word which seems to impose
the animal on the development of high human civilisation, the
primitive and grotesque on sublime literary creations. If we seek
an explanation of the word, we cannot avoid going back to earlier
strata, to the religious basis of tragedy and indeed to Greek cult
in general. Whether this has any bearing on fully-developed Attic
tragedy cannot be determined in advance. The theory most
prevalent today, going back to Welcker and owing its popularity
to Wilamowitz, who claimed Aristotle's authority for it,
understands τραγωδ α to mean "song of goats," sc. of dancers
dressed as goats. Scholars more concerned with the history of
religion, however, still uphold the ancient etymology, "song at the
sacrifice of a goat." It will be necessary to establish first that
philological criticism of the sources does not lead to a decision.
When, however, the essence of sacrificial ritual is studied, a new
perspective seems to emerge in which, eventually, even plays of
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides may reveal a ritual
background.
Is sacri ce still working in theater?

If the answer is YES, in which way

it works? Which is its function?
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 There are three different responses:

1. Rodrigo Garcia, Gólgota Picnic

2. Angelica Liddell, La casa de la fuerza
3. Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg

First of all we have to set the main role of public/

audience: as mass, as collectivity, as believers.

Theater is a special language in which gesture

and linguistics are very related: not only what we
are listening, but what we are watching / seeing;
not only what we are listening and / or watching/
seeing, but what the play make us listen and/or
watching/seeing.

So, public is interacting in different levels with

the play, with the stage.

 From this interaction public can

evolve into a lynching mass or can
disappear as collectivity and
become individuals
Rodrigo García, Golgota Picnic
Rodrigo García, Golgota Picnic
Textual and performative subversion:

• The text is characterize by spreading out an

encyclopedic catalogue of violences and excess

• The staging plays with religious elements: the

bread, religious music (Haydn), biblical references,
sacred art references, …

• The religious topics are everywhere in the play: the

man’s fall, the apocalyps(es), the sins, the
condemnation, …
Rodrigo García, Golgota Picnic

“With language we create the most seducer

monster: Desire / Desire existed unnamed, was a
being with no name / After being nicked, desire was
loaded of moral meanings and in its name camp res
are planted in the squares / Lucifer felt in earth and
gave men language / and with devil’s language, men
invented faith” (GP, 73)

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Rodrigo García, Golgota Picnic
The only truth Rodrigo discover is performative:
there is scandal and his only worry is to show the
scandal to the public.

And this perforation of scandal gives the public two

options: to accept you are a moralist, bigot, or to be
agree with the play. Both cases are a consequence
of an accusatory situation. The whole play is a trial
and you, as public, should ght against some guilty
feelings.
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Rodrigo García, Golgota Picnic
After some scandals Rodrigo García claims that the
bigot protesters against his plays and spectacles
have not a face –quoting Lévinas– and therefore
there is no dialogue.

Therefore, is there any chance of dialogue?

I think not. He acuses the public.

And the public barely knows why (méconnaissance)
Angelica Liddell, La casa de la fuerza
Angelica Liddell, La casa de la fuerza
In the age of collective deaths we need individual
sacri ce, as rebellion and barricade. Art, the intimate
sacri ce in public space, is our rebellion. Thanks to
poetical sacri ce we recover the identity we have
lost in the massacre (…) We are discontinuous
beings, following Bataille, and only “the
contemplation of death” in the sacri ce makes us
recover the experience of continuity [from her text
“Abraham y el sacri cio dramático”]
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Angelica Liddell, La casa de la fuerza

“So, sacri ce is the highest appearance, the highest

visibility, even if it causes pain and fear”

Theater is the sacri ce of sacri ce (Derrida), but

following Liddell it should be real sacri ce.

“Therefore [showing real sacri ces in stage],

spectator witness a non-ethical event, but he
cannot stop to admire and love sacri ce, which is
also oneself hatred, one’s hidden part, just now
revealed”
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Angelica Liddell, La casa de la fuerza

She wants to show real horror, not just only

informative
Angelica Liddell, La casa de la fuerza
Liddell theater is sacred, but aware of it. This
awareness explains why she puts the victims in the
core of the play: the missing and killed women of
Ciudad Juárez, México. Killers are out of stage
(obscena)
Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg
 Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg

“The topic should not master the play. It has to be

rounded, like the spotlight by the ellipse”.
 Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg

1. Red Cross delegate monologue where the whole

plot is told to the public, by a guilty witness of
none (he did not see the crime: was he a real
witness).
2. Rehearsals. Where we nd a victim killed out of
stage, obscena.
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 Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg

Pronouns: no identity / Go on with the play or not to /

if we want to have a future we have to believe we
need to go on with the big theater of the world
 Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg

3. Nazi o cer monologue. It is an invitation to see

without watch: an invitation not to be an witness.
As a good hegelian, the commander says: “the
world is moving towards unity. This war is a
enormous step towards that”.
4. Dialogue between the nazi o cer and the jews’
chief. This parte reveals the mechanism which
makes us claim: we are not guilty.
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 Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg

Anonymous substitution (loss of identity)

/ Changing name: Gershom to Gerhard [name as
identity]
 Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg

5. Gottfried’s instructions to actors and actress.

Anamnesis vs Anesthetic.
 Juan Mayorga, Himmelweg

The only identity is playing in the play is the

identity of the spectator. Mayorga writes against
the public, as himself says several times.
Spectators receives from actors and actress their
identities: they are no longer lynching masses,
they are no longer anonymous spectators, but
they should be witness.
René Girard, La conversion de l’art

La foule a littéralement tout cassé. Et je pense

que cette émeute est essentielle: à partir du
moment où l’art moderne ne crée plus des
réactions de ce genre, il est mort. Il est devenu
beaucoup plus académique que tout art
académique, en ce sens qu’il essaie de ritualiser
la révolution. On peut dire que tout le monde
moderne depuis très peu de temps, après 1913,
n’a été qu’un e ort pour ritualiser le non-
ritualisable. Il a échoué en tant que religion.
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