Founding Murder
Every “culture” is founded on certain rituals, institutions, prohibitions, taboos—things that, according to Girard, are all predicated on a founding murder. Cultural rituals, institutions, prohibitions, and taboos are all thing devised to manage the spread of violence and, in essence, to re-enact the founding murder that was the foundation of culture through rituals rather than […]
The Head Beneath the Altar: Hindu Mythology and the Critique of Sacrifice – by Brian Collins
In the beginning, says the ancient Hindu text the Rg Veda, was a man. And from man’s sacrifice and dismemberment came the entire world, including the hierarchical ordering of human society. The Head Beneath the Altar is the first book to present a wide-ranging study of Hindu texts read through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory of […]