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14 THE SCAPEGOAT

the predominance of the same. Thus, paradoxicaly, it is both conictualand solipsistic.This lack of dierentiation corresponds to the reality ofhuman relations, yet it remains mythicIn our own time we have had asimiar experience which has become absolute because it is projected onthe whoe universe. The text quoted above highlights this process ofcreating uniformity through reciprocity: "Those who were buryingothers yesterday are themseves buried today No pity is shown to

friends since every sign of pity is dangerous ..chidren are suddenlyseparated from their parents, wives from husbands, brother and friendsfrom each other' The similarity of behavior creates consion and a universal lack of dierence "Peope regardless of position or weath aredrowning in mortal sadness ...Everything is reduced to an extremeconfusion

The perience of great social crisis is scarcely aected by the diver-sity of their true causes. The result is great uniformity in the descriptions that relate to the uniformity itself Guiaume de Machaut is noexception. He sees in the egotistica withdwa into the sef and in theseries or reprisas that resultthe paradox of reciproca consequencesone of the main causes of the plague.We can then speak of a stereotype\f crisis which is to be recognized, logicaly and chronoogicay, as therst stereotype of persecution. Culture is somehow eclipsed as it be-comes less dierentiated Once this is understood it is easier to understand the coherence of the process of persecution and the sort of logicthat inks al the stereotypes of which it is composed.

Men fee poweress when confronted with the ecipse of cuture;they are disconcerted by the immensity of the disaster but never lookinto the natura causes; the concept that they might aect those causes

 by learning more about them remains embryonic.Since cultural eclipse

is above a a socia crisis, there is a stong tendency to pain it bysocia and, especialy, mora causes. After al, human reations disinte-grate in the process and the subjects of those relations cannot be utterlyinnocent of this phenomenon But, rather than blame themseves,peope inevitaby bame either society as a whoe, which costs themnothing, or other people who seem particuarly harml for easilyidentiable reasonsThe suspects are accused of a particular category ofcrimes.

Certain accusations are so characteristic of collective persecutionthat their very mention makes modern observers suspect violence in the

STEREOTYPES OF PERSECUTION 15

air  They look everywhere for other likely indicationsother stereo-types of persecutionto conrm their suspicion.At rst sight the accu-sations seem fairly diverse but their unity is easy to nd. First there areviolent crimes which choose as object those people whom it is mostcriminal to attack, either in the absoute sense or in reference to the indi-vidual committing the act: a king, a father, the symbol of supremeauthority, and in biblical and modern societies the weakest and most

efenseless, especially young chidren Then there are sual crimes:pe, incest, bestiaity.The ones most frequently invoked transgress theboos that are considered the strictest in the society in question.Finalythere are religious crimes, such as profanation of the host. Here, to itis the strictest taboos that are transgressed.

Al these crimes seem to be fundamenta.They attack the very foundation of cultura order, the family and the hierarchica dierences with-out which there woud be no social order. n the sphere of individuaaction they correspond to the gobal consequences of an epidemic of theplague or of any comparabe disaster.It is not enough for the social bondto be loosened; it must be totally destroyed

f Ultimatey, the p rs cutorsJ!lwas convince themselves that a smalDumber of p op , or�asing

 

individu�i, despite his relative weak -_, . " . _ ,

ess, isxtr m�ly

harmfu to the whole of societ. The stereotypicaon

usf s and faciitates this beief by ostensiby acting the roleof mediator.It bridges the gap between the insignicance of the individ

 ual and the enormity of the social bodyIf the wrongdoers, even the dia-olical ones, are to succeed in destroying the community's distinctions,hey must either attack the community directy, by striking at its heart

r head, or else they must begin the destruction of dierence within heir own sphere by committing contagious crimes such as parricide

d incesWe need not take time to consider the utimate causes of this belief,uch as the unconscious desires described by psychoanalysts, or therxist concept of the secret will to oppressThere is no need to go that·r Our concern is more elementary; we are only interested in the mech-ism of the accusation and in the interaction between reprseation ,Vd acts of persecution. They comprise a system, and, if knowedge o�e cause is necessary to the undersanding of the system, then the most mediate and obvious causes wil suce.The terror inspid in peopeb the eclipse of culture and the universal consion of popular upris

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16 H E C A P E G OA

ings are signs of a community that is litelly undierentiated, deprivedof all that distinguishes one person from another in time and space. Asa result all are equally disordered in the same place and at the same tie.

The crowd tends toward persecution since the natural causes ofwhat troubles it and tnsforms it into a turba cannot interest it. Thecrowd by denition seeks action but cannot aect natural causes. Ittherefore looks for an accessible cause that will appease its appetite for

[ violence. Those who make up the crowd are always potential persecu-tors, for they dream of purging the community of the impure elementsthat corrupt it, the traitors who undermine it. The cwd's act of be com-ing a crowd is the same as the obscure call to assemble or mobilize, inother words to become a mob. Actually this term comes from mobile,which is as distinct

fro� t

 word crowd as the Latin turba is fromvulgus. The word mobilization reminds us of a military operation,against an already identied enemy or one soon to be identied by themobilization of the crowd.

All the stereotypes of accusation were made against the Jews andother scapegoats during the plague. But Guillaume de Machaut doesnot mention them. As we have seen, he accuses the ews of poisoningthe rivers. He dismisses the most improbable accusations, and his rela-tive moderation can perhaps be explained by the fact that he is an"intellectual His moderation may also have a more general signicancelinked to intellectual development at the end of the Middle Ages.

During this period beliefin occult forces diminished. Later we shallask why. The search for people to blame continues but it demands morerational crimes; it looks for a material, more substantial cause. Thisseems to me to be the reason for the frequent references to poison. Thepersecutors imagined such venomous concentrations of poison that

even very small quantities would suce to annihilate entire popula-tions. Henceforh the clearly lightweight quality of magic as a cause is

J{ weighted down by materiality and therefore "scientic logic. Chemis-try takes over from purely demoniac inuence.The objective remains the same, however The accusation of

poisoning makes it possible to lay the responsibility for real disasters onpeople whose activities have not been really proven to be criminal.Thanks o poison, it is possible to be persuaded that a small group, oreven a single individual, can harm the whole society without beingdiscovered. Thus poison is both less myhical and just as myhical as

E E O Y P E O P E E C U ON 17

pvious accusations or even the ordinary "evil eye which is used toattribute almost any evil to almost any person. We should thereforerecognize in the poisoning of drinking water a variation of a stereotypi-cal accusation. The fact that these accusations are all juxtaposed in theitch trials is proof that they all respond to the same need. The suspectsarealways convicted of nocturnal participation in the famous sabbat. Noalibi is possible since the physical presence of the accused is not neces-

sary to establish proof Participation in criminal assemblies can bepurely spiritual.The crimes and their preparation with which the sabbat is

associated have a wealth of social repercussions Among them can beund the abominations traditionally attributed to the Jews in Christian

! countries, and _�efor them to 1 _,h§JQ the Rman Emir .They always include ritual infanticide, religious profanation, incestuus relationships, and bestiality. Food poisoning as well as oensesagainst inuential or pr sti(us citizens always play a signicant role.Cons q nlY depit

her persol nicance, a witch is engaged inactivities that can potentially aect the whole of society. This explainshy the devil and his demons are not disdainful of such an alliance. Iill say no more about stereotypical accusations It is easy to recognizethe crisis caused by the lack of dierentiation as the second stereotypead its link to the rst.

turn now to the third stereotype The crowds choice of victimsay be totally random; but it is not necessarily so. t is even possible thathe crimes of which they are accused are real, but that sometimes theersecutors choose their victims because they belong to a class that isaricularly susceptible to persecution rather than because of the crimesey have committed. The Jews are among those accused by Guillaume

e Machaut of poisoning the rivers. Of all the indications he gives usis is for us the most valuable, the one that most reveals the distorionofpersecution. Within the contt of other imaginary and real stereo- we know that this stereotype must be real. In fact, in modernestern society Jews have frequently been persecuted.

Ethnic and religious minorities tend to polarize the majoritiesinst thems:   his we see o- of the criteria by which victimsa selected, which, though relative to the individual society, is transcul-ral in principle. There are very few societies that do not subject their inorities, all the poorly integrated or merely distinct groups, to certain

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20 S C A P G O A

broad contours are easiy outined. It is one thing to recognize the exist-ence of this pattern, another to establish its relevance. In some cases thisis dicut to determine, but the proof! am looking for is not aected bysuch diculty. If a stereotype of persecution cannot be clearly recognized in a particular detai of a specic event, the solution does not restony with this particuar detai in an isoated context We must determine whether or not the other stereotypes are present along with the de-tai in question

Let us look at two examples Most historians consider that theFrench monarchy bears some responsibility for the revoution in 1789.Does Marie Antoinette's ecution therefore lie outside our pattern?The queen belongs to severa famiiar categories of victims of persecu-tion; she is not only a queen but a foreigner Her Austrian origin is men-tioned repeatedly in the popuar accusations against her. The court thatcondemns her is heavily inuenced by the Paris mob Our rst stereo-type can aso be found; al the characteristics of the great crisis that pro

 voke colective persecution are discernible in the French Revoution Tobe sure historians are not in the habit of dealing with the detais of the

French Revolution as stereotypes of the one genera pattern of persecu-tion. I do not suggest that we shoud substitute this way of thinking ina our ideas about the French Revoution Nonetheess it sheds interesting ight on an accusation which is often passed over but which gurespicitly in the queen's trial, that of having committed incest with herson.2

Let's ook at another exampe of a condemned person, someone whohas actualy committed the deed that brings down on him the crowds vioence: a black male who actually rapes a white female The colective violence is no onger arbitrary in the most obvious sense of the term. It

is actually sanctioning the deed it purports to sanction. Under such circumstances the distortions of persecution might be supposed to play noroe and the existence of the stereotypes of persecution might no ongerbear the signicance I give it. Actualy, these distortions of persecutionare present and are not incompatibe with the iteral truth of the accusa-tion The persecutors' portrayal of the situation is irrational. It invertsthe reationship between the globa situation and the individua trans 

2. I am rate to Jean-Caude Gulebaud for drawng my atenon to his acsaon

of nct.

S R O Y P S O F P R S C I O N 21

 ssion. If there is a causal o r motivationa ink between the tw o levels,it can only move from the coective to the individual. The persecutorsmentaity moves in the reverse direction. Instead of seeing in the microosm a reection or imitation of the globa level, it seeks in the individ-ual the origin and cause of all that is harmful The responsibility of theictims suers the same fantastic exaggeratin whether it is real or not.s far as we are concerned there is very litte dierence between Marie

ntoinettes situation and that of the persecuted black mae.W E HAVE SEEN the close  reationship  that e xists between the  rst two

tereotypes. In or der to bame v ictims for the loss  of distinctio" n� sult-from the crisis, the are accuse of crimes that eliminate distinc-

.ti

�

 

 

'

"

 

S. But in actuaity th� ar e identied  as victims for'pon us e they bear the signs of  victims. W hat is the relations hip of the 

   hird type to the r st two stereotypes? At r st sight the signs of  a victim

purey dierentia. But cultura signs are equaly so. There must  herefore be two ways of being dierent, two types of dierences.

No culture ists within which everyone does not feel "dierentrom others and does not consider such  "dierences legitimate andecessary. Far from being radical and progressive, the current goricaion of dierence is merely the abstract expression of an outlookommon to al cutures. There exists in every individua a tendency to

ink of himsef not only as dierent from others but as extremely diernt, because every cuture entertains this feeling of dierence among thed  viduas who compose it

The signs that indicate a victims selection result not from theerence within the system but from the dierence outside the system,e potential for the system to dier from its own dierence, in other

' ords  not to be dierent at all, to cease to exist as a sys tem T his is easiy en in the case of physical disabiities. The human body is a system of

atomic dierences. If a disability, even as the resut of an accident, is

turbing, it is because it gives the impression of a disturbing dyna m It seems to threaten the very system Eorts o limit it are unsuc

s; it disturbs the dierences that suround it These in turnome monstrous, rush together, are compressed and bended togethert the point of destruction Dierence that exists outside the system isr iying because it reveas the truth of the system, its relativity, its iity, and its mortaity

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22 T H E S C A P E G O A T

The arious kinds of icims seem predisposed o crimes ha eimi-nae dierences. Religious, ehnic, or naional minoriies are neer acualy reproached for heir dierence, bu for no being as dieren asexpeced and in he end for no diering a all. Foreigners are incapabeof respecing "real dierences; hey are acking in culure or in ase, ashe case may be. They hae diculy in perceiing exacly wha isdieren. The barbaros is no he person who speaks a dieren language

bu he person who mixes he only ruly signican disincions, hoseof he Greek language. In all he ocabuary of ribal or naionalprejudices hared is pressed, no for dierence, bu for is absence. Iis no he oher nomos ha is seen in he oher, bu anomay, nor is ianoher norm bu abnormaliy; he disabled becomes deformed; heforeigner becomes he apatride. I is no good o be a cosmopolian inRussia. Aliens imiae all he dierences because hey hae none. Themechanisms of our ancesors are reproduced unconsciousy, from gener-aion o generaion, and, i is imporan o recognize, oen a a less ehaleel han in he pas. For insance oday aniAmericanism preends o"dier from preious prejudices because i espouses all dierences andrejecs he uniquely American irus of uniformiy.

We hear eerywhere ha "dierence is persecued. This is hefaorie saemen of conemporary pluralism, and i can be somewhamiseading in he presen conex.

Een in he mos cosed cuures men beiee hey are free and openo he uniersa; heir dierenia characer makes he narowes culural elds seem inexhausibe from wihin. Anything ha compromiseshis iusion erries us and sirs up he immemorial endency o perse-cuion. This endency always akes he same direcion, i is embodied bye same sereoypes and always responds o he same hrea. espie

( wha is said around us persecuors are neer obsessed by dierence bu_ raher by is unuerable conrary, he lack of dierence.

Sereoypes of persecuion canno be dissociaed, and remarkabymos anguages do no dissociae hem. This is rue ofain and Greek,for example, and hus of French or English, which forces us consanlyin our sudy of sereoypes o urn o words ha are reaed: crisis, crime,criteria, critique, all share a common roo in he Greek erb krino, whichmeans no only o judge, disinguish, diereniae, bu also o accuseand condemn a icim. Too much reiance should no be paced on ey-moogy, nor do I reason from ha basis. Bu he phenomenon is so

S E R E O T Y P E S O F P E S E C O 23

 onstan i deseres o be menioned. I impies an as ye concealed rea-onship beween colecie persecuions and he cuure as a whoe If h a relaionship exiss, i has neer been expained by any linguis,iosopher, or poliician.