Overheads Fourth Cycle
From Girard to Durkheim
General introduction:
1. Statement: unanimity an effect of violence
2. Violence (re)generates unanimity
3. Sacrifice is independent of scale (Girard)
4. Now: from state violence (genocide) to community violence
(necklace).
Durkheim’s “Geometry”
1. Opening par.
2. Connection: political expulsion = rite
3. Theory: two assumptions: 1) society presents itself as
symbolizations material (flags) or ideational (ideology); 2)
renewed through ritualistic performance
4. These either positive or negative rites.
5. Deconstructing primitive/modern difference. Both posit a “sacred”
that permeates ordinary life. Myths, ancestors, gods/Communism,
Fascism.
6. Most popular modern “sacred”: historicism.
7. Acceptance = “brainwashed”; denial = “false consciousness”
[In summa: all human societies present as
 collective representations
 structured by telos
 that requires realisation and subversion
 through positive and negative rites]
8. Relation between telos, daily life and rites:
“Ritual is the lock that keeps sacred reality tied to daily reality”
(Bergesen, 1977:223).
Mythic (as opposed to causal) allegations/accusations:
9. Daily life permeated by sacred telos.
transcendental Ideas “penetrate and merge with ordinary reality so
that daily activity becomes the realization of these transcendental
realities” (Bergesen, 1977:222).
10. Of toothpaste, leather sandals and washing powder. Ordinary folk
= mythical creatures; politics = Cosmic Drama. Accusations =
ambivalent (Girard) and mythical (Durkheim)
11.Through some “ritual transformational logic, [individuals] become
part of the mythical reality of political ideology where …
‘proletarian virtue’ is battling ‘bourgeois selfishness’” (Bergesen,
1977: 223) or where “sleeping with a police man” is juxtaposed
with loyalty to the cause”.
12.Summary.
Conclusion
13.Merging of sacred and mundane = variable
14.The closer (Communism, Fascism, anti-colonialism, Liberation),
the greater the interface.
15. The more regular its ritualistic renewal.
16.Excess and extremity: where sacred/profane difference is
obliterate.
17.Result: the banality of evil (Arendt).
Question II:
1: Do we need to distinguish between “organised” and
“spontaneous” negative rites?
Organised -
… and spontaneous
Question III:
How clear is the difference between positive and negative rites?
Or are they closely related in the sense that they suppose one
another?
Necklace Murders
Readings:
1. A. J. Bergesen (1977) “Political witch hunts: the sacred and the
subversive in cross-national perspective” in American Sociological
Review, Vol. 42 (April) pp 220-233.
2. J. Ball (1994) “The ritual of the necklace,” research report for CSVR
3. A. Jeffrey, People’s war: new light on the struggle for South Africa
(2009).
Wanted: three narratives
1. Philosophical narrative (Durkheim positive and negative rites;
Girard, scapegoating as negative rite).
2. Political narrative: when (time and reasons for their occurrence);
3. Anthropological narrative (necklace as secular version of
traditional witch burning).
A. Methodological narrative (Durkheim)
1. Positive/negative rites
2. Conventional wisdom: primitive societies = intermingling of sacred
and profane; secular modernity = separation (eg. state an church).
3. Not true. See ideologies sacralise daily life.
4. Here: ideology = historicism; not God but Laws of Nature/History.
5. Examples: Hegel, Mark, Modernisation
6. Transcendental Ideas “penetrate and merge with ordinary reality so
that daily activity becomes the realization of these transcendental
realities” (Bergesen, 1977:222).
7. Realization function of positive and negative rites
8. Necklacing = negative rite (scapegoating); realises Transcendental
Drama of Liberation.
9. Accusations: ambivalent (Girard) and mythical (Durkheim).
10.1970’s-1990’s: two Dramas: Promethean Civilization vs.
Liberation from Oppression.
B. Political narrative (Jeffrey)
1. Introduction
1. Our miraculously peaceful transition?
2. “Peaceful transition” itself a violence mythology
3. Concealed: criminal violence mythologised as “violence as
necessary sacrifice for liberation”
4. Example: Maki Skosana.
2. TRC: mythologizing crime as sacrifice
“The TRC testimony of the sister of Maki Skosana, a woman brutally
‘necklaced’ by an angry crowd in the 1980s for allegedly being an
informer, reveals how the TRC hearings have complicated the production
of seamless heroic resistance narratives. It shows how personal memory
and pain can be reconfigured through multiple mediations. This was
graphically demonstrated in an SABC news broadcast of Skosana’s sister
recounting to the Commission how, after her sister was burn alive, she
went to the mortuary where she saw that her grotesquely mutilated corpse
had a broken bottle inserted into the vagina. The gruesome recollection of
the horror of Skosana’s terrible death was interrupted by the
commissioner’s call for a minute of silence to salute Maki’s heroism and
martyrdom (emphasis added). This silencing of the witness sought to
transform the woman who had been necklaced as an impimpi (informer)
into a hero of the struggle, a martyr whose body had been sacrificed in
the name of the new nation. Through this reworking and reappropriation
of the traumatic memory of the mutilation of Skosana’s tortured body, a
heroic narrative of the new South African nation was manufactured for
consumption by millions of television viewers.”
- S. Robins, “Silence in my father’s house” in Negotiating the Past (1998,
138), Nuttall and Coetzee (eds). Oxford University Press).
3. Objective
(Exam) essay: demythologise the negative rite of “necklace murders” by
revealing the crime of scapegoating under a mythology of “sacrifice.”
4. Political Context
 Sharpeville, 21 March 1960.
 7 April, ANC banned.
 SACP drive to embrace violent struggle.
 Umkhonto we Sizwe est., November, 1961
 Violence: 16 December 1961
 Failure: 1963-1976 no presence at all.
 All changed, 1976
5. Rebirth of ANC: 1967-1978
 1967: Soweto revolts
 Organised by BC, not Soviet backed ANC
 All changed 1977-1978: ANC became voice of the people.
 Launched People’s War.
6. People’s War
 ANC/SACP 1978 visit Vietnam: defeated US/South and unified
 Inspiration: Marxist-Leninist “People’s War” of “armed
people,” elaborated by Mao Zedong in “On protracted war”.
 Gist: People participants, not spectators.
 Use: 1) defeat of French in Vietnam, 2) 1st N. invasion of S.
Vietnam (1959-1965), 3) 2nd war against South/US (1966-1973)
and 4), invasion of South and unification (1973)
 1983: Joe Slovo’s “Planning for People’s War.” Needed: fullscale insurrection; strategy: “the people’s war”.
 Lesson 1: Revolution must be military and political.
1. Military: terror
2. Political: ungovernability
“The theory of people’s war is clear and relatively simple. This
type of revolutionary war does not depend for its success on the
clash of competing armies. Neither does it rest upon guerrilla
attacks, though these provide one ingredient in the whole.
People’s war goes far beyond conventional conceptions of
warfare, for its principal effort revolves around organisation
and communication. It relies heavily on agitation, backed by
terror and coercion, while also holding out the promise of a
golden future”.
“People’s War” – Anthea Jeffrey
(Jonathan Ball, 2009:26).
 Support varied: education, jobs et cetera
 Participation: out of fear Fosatu (forerunner of Cosatu):
“Our members will not go to work, not because they support
the stayaway in principle, but because we know that violence
will be order of the day. Our members won’t go to work
because they are intimidated.”
 People’s War: no combatans/ civilians difference.
 Implications;
1. Every individual mythical agent of Drama. Even children
(propaganda – ref. Hector Petersen).
2. Condition for mythologizing of ordinary violence
7. Nature of People’s War:
 Five phases: (Jeffrey, 2009: 26-29):
1. Psychological warfare – agitation; politicise discontent.
2. Deploy agitators: insurgency as propaganda
3. Defensive – create United Front; “liberated areas,” people’s
structures.
4. Equilibrium – eliminate security apparatus and rivals.
5. End: war/settlement
 Not separate; layered.
 Launched 1984
 NB Third phase: municipal and juridical structures
 Result: Sept. ‘84 - April ’85 = 508 necklaced.
 ANC/UDF: neither condemned/ condoned
 Legitimate coercion?
8. Main points
 militarisation of the everyday.
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Partiipation/subversion ideologically over-determined
by infusion with telos of Liberation;
= condition for its ambivalence status.
Third aporia: (see Praeg, pp95-96). “With our boxes of matches
and our necklaces we shall liberate this country!”
 Unanswered: “burning” vis-à-vis “bullet in the head”
 Just visibility? Dramatising?
C. Cultural narrative (Ball)
1. Necklacing conceptually and historically inseparable from
“burnings”.
2. Burning = sacrificial expulsion of “witches”;
3. 1977: 14 suspected sorcerers burnt alive in Lebowa.
4. 1983 “standard way of disposing of witches”.
5. Secularisation:
 ontological (witches) -> political (“traitors and
collaborators”) and criminal (criminals, rapists et cetera)
 technologically -> defused to technologically specific (tyre)
 with its own ritualised execution.
6. Our interest: ontological-political. “those burnt – be they
murderers, witches or collaborators – share a common crime”
(Ball, 1994: 24; emphasis added).
7. What is this crime? Can Girard help?
1. From ontology to politics (Ball, 1994:23-24):
1. Pre-colonial Africa gradation:
 treason, murder, sorcery, incest = death/banishment;
 assault, bestiality, disrespect et cetera = fine, bodily correction,
confiscation of property.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Especially among the Nguni, Tsonga and Sortho: witches = death.
Decline “Witchcraft Suppression Act” (1957).
1950-1976 killing of witches rare.
Objection: state introduced different conception of justice and
personhood.
6. Marginalised: state and its concept of personhood illegitimate.
7. Personhood and betrayal = ontological.
2. Betrayal: as ontological crime. (Praeg, pp64-70)
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Hierarchical
primogeniture
Girard: “age makes the difference.”
Interdependence vertically and horizontally
“I am because we are”
“Morality depends on things ontologically understood”.
Witches: healing = sustaining interdependence, i.e. resolving
conflict, tensions et cetera. Destructive = destructive capacity to
destroy interdependence. Former = sangoma; latter = witch).
Girard: the power of sustain or destroy Degree.
Betrayal = ontological offense.
Ball (1994:24): “it is this idea of treason against the kin group
itself, an attack on the very basis of the social structure, which
makes witch activity such a heinous offence. It is the quintessence
of immortality”.
Expulsion of witch = sacrificial regeneration of Degree. This nexus
of community and ontological justice continued in rural and
township.
Ball (1994:24) –
“I suggest that if we consider witches at this level … the
connection between these and other victims of necklacing (or
burning in general) become apparent. Victims such as
‘collaborators’ are also seen to be traitors, they break the social
solidarity of the group, they “sell out’ to the enemy and assist in
the continued suppression of the black community”
3. Symbolism of burning
1. destruction severs link with ancestors (p8)
2. purification purposes: “there may be some idea among those who
participate in burnings that fire can destroy evil, that it can cleanse
the society.”
3. Summary p9: “Thus a link can be established between the victims
of necklacing: collaborators, witches and murderers. They all
threaten the cohesion of the community in that they break the
social norms in a devastating way”.
4. Burning in its social context
1. Functionalist = “homeostatic control system” – a controlled outlet
for anxiety and hatred, helping to maintain the social system.
2. Conclusion: p13: “Thus it would seem that changes in the social,
political and economic arenas can result in the fierce hunting out of
traitors or witches or scapegoats, as a means of overcoming
uncertainty and restoring order”.
3. “As to why burnings began, it was suggested that the initial rural
witch burnings developed in a climate of great social and economic
change. There was intense social interaction which had become illdefined, due to such things as high unemployment, migrant labour
and the demise of chiefly authority. This threat uncertainty was
also to be found in the urban townships in the mid-eighties, which
was when the necklace gained notoriety. It was suggested that
these ‘witch hunts’ of traitors or murderers or witches, are a means
of reasserting communal values. The internal enemy is expunged in
an attempt to grasp some form of control over the new
uncertainties” through the deployment of a symbolic act that has
the meaning both of final destruction and purification”.
5. Conclusion: The crime uncovered
1. Crisis of Degree: primogeniture to democracy
2. Ontological (kin/clan) Degree to political (struggle, solidarity)
Degree.
3. Ontological interdependence = political solidarity
4. Paradox: recourse to collectivist justice in the name of modernity
5. Winnie Mandela “With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we
shall liberate this country!” [Read: “With our strategies of coercion
we will bring about a culture of individual rights”]
6. General founding paradox: founding violence justifies itself (moral
category) with reference to the past order of things but legitimises
itself (juridical category) with reference to the values of the order
that is yet to come (rights discourse).
7. TRC myth: the narrative of the founding of the liberal democratic
order. Conceals crime/scapegoating
8. See Praeg 2007: 95-96
Conclusion (Ball, p20):
 Linda and the excess of indifference: see Praeg p88-89 and
elsewhere.
 Essay topic: The double death of Maki Skosana