From: "joan carol urquhart" <jcu-AT-execulink.com>
Subject: Re: Warfare as Sacrifice ...war is a saussurian lack...
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 14:44:23 -0400


http://why-war.com/



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Orion
Sent: October 05, 2004



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.

;;;SNIP>>>


 _____

:::SNIP>>>



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.

  _____