Religion and (Mimetic) violence in Canadian native literature

Literature and Theology

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 201-219

  Derry, Ken ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249229893     PISSN: 02691205     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/litthe/16.2.201     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. The most complete summary of such criticisms can be found in R.J. Golsan, René Girard and Myth: An Introduction (New York and London: Garland, 1993), pp. 111-24.
2. See also H. White, 'Ethnological "Lie" and Mythological "Truth" ', Diacritics 8 (1978) 2-9.
3. A similar point has been made in the past regarding Girard's treatment of women, whom he ignores in his work both as victims of injustice and as authors to be studied. It has remained for others to redress this glaring omission, demonstrating that despite the many critical shortcomings of Girard's work it contains key elements that are very well-suited to an examination of both women's literature and issues of violence against women. See e.g. P. Joplin, 'Ritual Work on Human Flesh: Livy's Lucretia and the Rape of the Body Politic', Helios 17 (1990), 51-70;
4. S. Nowak, 'The Girardian Theory and Feminism: Critique and Appropriation', Contagion 1 (1994), 19-29;
5. and C. Shea, 'Victims on Violence: "Different Voices" and Girard' in T. Smith and M. Wallace (eds), Curing Violence (Sonoma: Polebridge, 1994), pp. 252-65.
6. See e.g. D. Horne, 'To Know the Difference: Mimicry, Satire, and Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water', Essays on Canadian Writing 56 (1995), 155-73;
7. and J. Lundgren, '"Being a Half-breed": Discourses of Race and Cultural Syncreticity in the Works of Three Métis Women Writers', Canadian Literature 144 (1995), 62-77.
8. Aside from numerous media reports, the events of Jonestown are recounted in detail by J.R. Hall, 'The Apocalypse at Jonestown' in Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 18-38;
9. and by J.Z. Smith, 'The Devil in Mr. Jones' in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1982), pp. 105-9.
10. J.Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, Ibid., p. 109.
11. Their movement arose in fact partly as a reaction against the series of barbaric European religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to ensure that such horrors would not be repeated. For a concise discussion of this issue see B. Lincoln, 'Culture' in W. Braun and R.T. McCutcheon (eds), Guide to the Study of Religion (New York: Cassell, 2000), pp. 416-18.
12. This is not to say that the full range of Enlightenment attitudes towards religion can neatly be summarised, or simply equated to those of learned antireligious sceptics. Knud Haakonssen e.g. following the work of J.G.A. Pocock, argues that although in general the Enlightenment resulted in the political disempowerment of religion, in certain instances it ultimately helped to preserve Church authority. K. Haakonssen, 'Enlightened Dissent: An Introduction' in K. Haakonssen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), pp. 2-4.
13. As Bruce Lincoln remarks, the critique of religion advanced by the philosophes 'is not incidental to or detachable from the bulk of their thought', but is absolutely central to their celebration of 'reason'. Lincoln, 'Culture', p. 417.
14. R. McAfee Brown, Religion and Violence 2nd edn (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987 [1973]), p. 106. Brown himself provides a fairly extensive bibliography of works on the subject published up until 1973.
15. A few more recent general works on religion and violence include: J.A. Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War: Comparative Religious Symbolisms of Military Violence (Westport, CN: Greenwood, 1981);
16. C. Catherwood, Why the Nations Rage: Killing in the Name of God (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997);
17. G. Deleury, Au péril des religions (Paris: Philippe Lebaud, 1997);
18. J.R. Hall with P.D. Schuyler and S. Trinh, Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan (London and New York: Routledge, 2000);
19. M. Juergensmeyer (ed.), Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World (London: Frank Cass, 1992);
20. S. Kakar, The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1996).
21. R.S. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p. 30.
22. R.S. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation, Ibid., p. 16.
23. Appleby's comments about religion in general are echoed by academics doing work on specific traditions as well. Elaine Pagels e.g. noted scholar of gnosticism, is quite willing to see that xenophobic hatred is manifest and encouraged in the NT; however, she views such attitudes as a later addition to the original message of peace and love at the 'heart' of these texts, the message of Jesus. Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995).
24. Rita Gross, a feminist critic, is similarly open to, and deeply angered by, the ways in which Buddhism has endorsed the oppression and abuse of women; and yet she too maintains that these crimes violate the inherently peaceful 'truth' of the historical Buddha. Rita Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction (Missoula: Scholars, 1993).
25. David Hesla provides a history of these studies in 'Religion and Literature: The Second Stage', Journal of the American Academy of Religion 46 (1978), 181-92.
26. Tillich provides his most concise, coherent account of ultimate concern in Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper, 1957). David Jasper's comment is typical of the Tillichian approach: 'Literature and religion are never far apart. The greatest literary achievements of the West, from Aeschylus to Dante to Shakespeare, cut deeply into the soul of humanity and stir in us those ultimate questions of existence, truth, and beauty which can only be answered, if they are ever answered at all, by religious commitment or the equally passionate rejection of theology and its speculation.' D. Jasper, The Study of Literature and Religion: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. ix.
27. J.S. Scott, 'A Praxis of Equity: Reading Religion and Literature in Post-Colonial Cultures' in J.S. Scott (ed.), And the Birds Began to Sing: Religion and Literature in Post-Colonial Cultures (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), p. 303.
28. Tillich, Dynamics, pp. 10-12.
29. A. Wilder, Theology and Modern Literature (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958), p. 1.
30. It is no surprise in this regard that the stories of Flannery O'Connor - stories steeped in violent confrontation and spiritual revelation - have received a disproportionate amount of attention from religion and literature critics. Nathan Scott e.g. describes O'Connor's work as 'an art that very much wanted to wake the spirit's sleep, to break that somnolence into which we flee from the exactions of the moral life'. N.A. Scott, Jr., Craters of the Spirit: Studies in the Modern Novel (London: Sheed & Ward, 1969), p. 272.
31. R. Detweiler and D. Jasper, Religion and Literature: A Reader (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), p. 174.
32. R. Detweiler and D. Jasper, Religion and Literature: A Reader, Ibid., p. 174.
33. For a discussion and critique of this trend see R.T. McCutcheon, '"My Theory of the Brontosaurus": Postmodernism and the "Theory" of Religion', Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 26 (1997), 3-23.
34. Note that McCutcheon sees this situation as part of a more basic and enduring problem, namely 'that many scholars of religion have failed to understand just what it means to theorise and have most recently disguised this shortcoming through conveniently selective appropriation of the postmodern turn'. R.T. McCutcheon, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, Ibid., p. 17.
35. trans. Y. Frecerro as Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965])
36. trans. P. Gregory as Violence and the Sacred [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1977]).
37. Perhaps the most concise statement issued by Girard on his theory is 'Mimesis and Violence: Perspectives in Cultural Criticism' in J.G. Williams (ed.), The Girard Reader (New York: Crossroad, 1996), pp. 9-19.
38. Although often considered a form of cultural anthropology, Girard's ideas were originally derived from his studies of literature, and they tend to remain most useful when restricted to literary contexts. Compare e.g. E. Traube, 'Incest and Mythology: Anthropological and Girardian Perspectives', Berkshire Review 14 (1979), 37-54
39. with C. Kirk-Duggan, 'Gender, Violence, and Transformation in Alice Walker's Colour Purple' in M.I. Wallace and T.H. Smith (eds), Curing Violence (Sonoma: Polebridge, 1994), pp. 266-86.
40. Girard, Deceit, pp. 14-16.
41. cf. Girard, Violence, p. 161.
42. Myths and rituals are notoriously opaque, of course, and so in Girard's view it often takes a highly-skilled interpreter to discern their relation to notions of mimetic violence and scapegoating. Still, there is clearly a methodological problem with his stance that all myths and rituals are products of these forces, since this predetermines their possible meaning. See e.g. F. Meltzer, 'A Response to René Girard's Reading of Salome', New Literary History 15 (1984) 328;
43. and J.-M. Domenach, 'Voyage au bout des sciences de l'homme' in P. Dumouchel (ed.), Violence et vérité: autour de René Girard (Paris: Grasset, 1985), pp. 235-42.
44. R. Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. S. Bann and M. Metteer (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1987), pp. 158-67. Girard thus argues that the NT accounts of Jesus are fundamentally unlike other myths, and that in fact the NT is 'the only text that can bring an end to all of mythology'.
45. R. Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Y. Frecerro (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1986), p. 101.
46. Girard, Things, pp. 143-4;
47. H.K. Bhabha, 'Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse', October 28 (1984) 126.
48. H.K. Bhabha, 'Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse', Ibid., p. 130.
49. Cf. Marx's point that the religion of the ruling and proletariat classes in a Christian society differ; the latter e.g. absorb the servile virtues promoted by such texts as Jesus' sermon on the mount, virtues typically ignored by the elite. K. Marx and F. Engels, On Religion (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957), pp. 35, 84.
50. Bhabha, 'Mimicry', p. 127.
51. H. Lutz, Contemporary Challenges: Conversations with Canadian Native Authors (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1991), p. 41.
52. Maria Campbell, interview with Lutz, Contemporary Challenges: Conversations with Canadian Native Authors, ibid., pp. 42, 53.
53. M. Campbell, Halfbreed (Halifax: Formac, 1983 [1973]), p. 28. All page references are cited from this edition.
54. M. Campbell, Halfbreed, See e.g. ibid., pp. 144, 162.
55. For example, B. Culleton, In Search of April Raintree (Winnipeg: Peguis, 1992 [1983]), p. 49. All page references are cited from this edition.
56. B. Culleton, In Search of April Raintree, For example, ibid., pp. 166-7, 228.
57. T. King, Green Grass, Running Water (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 43. All page references are cited from this edition.
58. T. King, Green Grass, Running Water, For example, ibid., p. 57.
59. For example, Girard, 'Mimesis and Violence', pp. 14-17.
60. For example, Horne, 'To Know'.
61. M.H. Ellis, Unholy Alliance: Religion and Atrocity in Our Time (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).
62. Cf Stanley Tambiah's position in his discussion of Buddhism's responsibility for the violence in Sri Lanka: 'All too often a certain type of scholarship ... has essentialised Buddhism in terms of its "pristine" teachings and has viewed all subsequent historical developments, especially those of a political kind, as deviations and distortions from the canonical form'. S.J. Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1992), p. 3.
63. H.K. Bhabha, 'Representation and the Colonial Text: A Critical Exploration of Some Forms of Mimeticism' in F. Gloversmith (ed.), The Theory of Reading (New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1984), p. 96.
64. Note that Bhabha was rebutting the view of literature scholars in general, not specifically those in the academic study of religion. Edward Said has similarly complained of the 'ahistorical, manifestly religious aestheticism' of most literary criticism, its 'appeals to the extra-human, the vague abstraction, the divine, the esoteric and secret'. E. Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983), pp. 291-2.