From: "Orion Anderson" <libraryofsocialscience-AT-earthlink.net> Subject: Warfare as Sacrifice Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:30:48 -0400 Warfare as Sacrifice In her groundbreaking book, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation, Carolyn Marvin suggests that "our deepest secret, the collective group taboo" is knowledge that society depends on the "death of its own members at the hands of the group." At the behest of the group, according to Marvin, the lifeblood of community members must be shed. Soldiers constitute the "sacrificial class" to whom we delegate the shedding of blood. The soldier is our chosen victim. When he dies for the country, Marvin says, he dies for all of us. In most wars, the sacrificial mechanism is not transparent. We do not readily perceive that the meaning of war lies in dying rather than killing. We say that wars are waged in order to "defeat the enemy" or for the purpose of "conquest." Our conceptualization of warfare is designed to prevent us from knowing or saying what is in a certain sense obvious or self-evident: That the essence of war is destruction and self-destruction. To grasp the idea of war as form of self-destruction, one might begin by studying the First World War. For four years, soldiers were asked to get out of trenches and to attack the opposing line. For four years, soldiers were slaughtered as they ran into machine-gun fire and artillery shells. Nine million men were killed in this war and over twenty-one million wounded. During one five month period in 1916 on the Western Front, nearly one-million British, French and German soldiers were killed, an average of more than 6600 men killed every day, more than 277 every hour, nearly five each minute. What was the meaning of this massive episode of systematic killing and dying brought forth by the most "civilized" societies of the time? To this day, historians are unable to comprehend what was going on or to explain why it happened. Why did nations continue to fight this war in the face of perpetual carnage? Why did military leaders persist in practicing a battle strategy whose futility was evident from the very beginning? _____ To read Richard Koenigsberg's paper, "As the Soldier Dies, So Does the Nation Come Alive" <http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=r9mo77n6.0.d75zm7n6.85y8w8n6.1&p=http%3A%2F%2Fhome. earthlink.net%2F%7Elibraryofsocialscience%2F> PLEASE CLICK HERE or visit: <http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=r9mo77n6.0.7lcev7n6.85y8w8n6.1&p=http%3A%2F%2Fhome. earthlink.net%2F%7Elibraryofsocialscience> http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/ _____ In our conventional way of thinking, we say that the soldier has been killed by the enemy. When French soldiers got out of trenches during the First World War, ran toward enemy lines and were slaughtered, we say that Germans killed them. When Germans got out of trenches and ran toward the enemy line, we say that they were killed by the English or French. Wouldn't it be more parsimonious to say that French soldiers were killed by the French nation and its leaders--who asked them to get out of trenches and run into artillery shells and machine gun fire? Wouldn't it be more accurate to state that German soldiers were killed by the German nation and its leaders-who also asked their soldiers to get out of trenches and run into artillery shells and machine gun fire? We disguise the sacrificial meaning of warfare by pretending that the other nation is responsible for the death of the soldier. The mechanism of sacrifice that sustains societies is the thing that has been "hidden since the foundation of the world" (Rene Girard). The fact that national groups act to sacrifice their own members is "our deepest secret, the collective group taboo" (Carolyn Marvin). One might say simply that human beings repress their awareness of the sacrificial mechanism that operates to maintain and sustain civilization. Now it is time to "make conscious the unconscious on the stage of social reality" in order to "awaken from the nightmare of history." Though human beings are attracted to war, of course they are repelled by it as well. In spite of the belief that wars are necessary, it is difficult to avoid perceiving its ugliness and destructiveness. Taking a stance "for" or "against" war does nothing to change anything. The "peace movement" is part of the "war movement," acting to split off or contain the ambivalence that everyone feels. What is required is to articulate and to reveal what war actually is. _____ E-mail: <mailto:libraryofsocialscience-AT-earthlink.net> libraryofsocialscience-AT-earthlink.net Phone: 718-393-1081 Web: <http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=r9mo77n6.0.d75zm7n6.85y8w8n6.1&p=http%3A%2F%2Fhome. earthlink.net%2F%7Elibraryofsocialscience%2F> http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/ --- StripMime Warning -- MIME attachments removed --- This message may have contained attachments which were removed. Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list. --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html ---
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