Rene Girard, Law, Literature, and Cinema: The Legal Drama of the Scapegoat

Preface
	Reference
Contents
1 Rene Girard, Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, and the Goat Song of tragoidia
	1.1 Sophocles, Scapegoating, and the Sacrificial Mechanism
		1.1.1 Sophistry
		1.1.2 Plague and Incest
		1.1.3 Oracles and Meconnaissance
		1.1.4 Oedipus the Foundling
	1.2 Symbolization, Sacralization, and Meconnaissance
		1.2.1 Mimesis and Desire
		1.2.2 The Scapegoat and Evolution
		1.2.3 Myth and Sacralization
	1.3 Metaphysical Desire, Interdividual Psychology, and Ressentiment
	1.4 Mimesis, Ethics, and Deconstruction
	1.5 Law-and-Literature-and-Film as the Demystification of the Scapegoat
	1.6 The Scapegoat as the Secret of Law-and-Literature
	References
2 ‘El sueno de la razon produce monstruos’ or, ‘The Dream of Reason Creates Monsters’: Two Little Piggies Went to the Apocalypse in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
	2.1 Lord of the Flies, Fundamental Anthropology, and Meconnaissance
	2.2 Social Contracting on the Beach: The Inadequacy of Secular Reason
	2.3 From the State to Religion: Justice as Vengeance
	2.4 ‘I’m the Reason Why It’s No Go…’’: Rene Girard and Max Scheler on Mimesis and Ressentiment
	2.5 ‘They Used to Call Me “Piggy”’: Meconnaissance, Undifferentiation, and Censorship
	2.6 ‘I’m not Going to Play Any Longer. Not with You.’: The Parallels of Mimetic Crisis and Political Crisis
	2.7 ‘Roger Sharpened a Stick at Both Ends’: The Return of the Repressed
	2.8 ‘Close, Close, Close!’’: The One Who Brings Existential Envy with Him
	References
3 ‘Does Anybody Know Anything About the Law?’: White Male Suburbanites in the Wilderness and Their Regression to the State of Nature in James Dickey’s Deliverance
	3.1 Thomas Hobbes in the Wilderness
		3.1.1 Thomas Hobbes on the Family
	3.2 ‘The World is Easily Lost’: In the Country of the Nine-Fingered People
		3.2.1 The Geographical: ‘Savage Sacredness’
		3.2.2 The Existential: ‘Man-The-Hunter’
	3.3 Katabasis 1: Dueling Banjos
	3.4 ‘Why Do You Go on These Trips with Me, Ed?’
		3.4.1 The Model
		3.4.2 The Deer
		3.4.3 Lewis (= Ed)
	3.5 Katabasis 2: The Monstrous Doubles
	3.6 ‘Well Now, How About This? Just…How About This?’: The Primordial Epiphany of Sacralization and Sovereignty
	3.7 Conclusion: ‘Something or Other Was Being Made Good’
	References
4 ‘A Little Law and Order Wouldn’t Hurt Anybody Around Here’: ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ and ‘High Noon’
	4.1 Catharsis: The Western and Classical Mythology
	4.2 I Kill Therefore I Am: Western Mythology and American History
		4.2.1 The Westerner as Rugged Individualist
	4.3 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): The Murder-Crafted Garden
	4.4 The Precarious Sovereignty of the Westerner: Carl Schmitt and the Friend-Enemy Distinction
		4.4.1 Nomos: The Originating Violence of Everywhere
		4.4.2 Das Feind: The Problem of Being Serious
		4.4.3 The Death of Universalism: ‘He Who Decides on the Decision of the Exception is the Sovereign’
		4.4.4 The Deadly Reversal: Decisionism as Sovereignty
	4.5 ‘Although You’re Grievin’, I Can’t be Leavin’, Until I Shoot Frank Miller Dead’: High Noon (1952) or, the Tin Star of Decisionism
	References
5 ‘A Woman Only Loves a Real Man’: Metaphysical Desire and the Crisis of Undifferentiation in Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Rashomon
	5.1 The Archetypal Themes of the Chambara
	5.2 Chambara, Mimetic Rivalry, and the Crisis of Undifferentiation
	5.3 Yojimbo: Trauma and the Bodyguard
		5.3.1 The Apocalypse of Mr. Mulberry Field
	5.4 Rashomon, or Metaphysical Desire in a Grove of Bamboo
	5.5 The Male Gaze and the Triangle of Desire
	5.6 Psychological Time and the Grove of Internal Mediation
	5.7 What Really Happened in the Grove: Metaphysical Desire and Saving Face
	References
6 ‘I Just Want to Talk…’: Liberalism, Generative Unanimity, and Post-sacrificial Scapegoating in 12 Angry Men
	6.1 The Law Movie as Genre
	6.2 Law Noir
		6.2.1 Sidney Lumet and 12 Angry Men: Preliminary Thoughts
	6.3 Critical Legal Theory and Law Noir
	6.4 The Thin Blue Line: Law Noir and Epistemological Undifferentiation
	6.5 The Specter of the Scapegoat: A Girardian Reading of 12 Angry Men
	References
7 ‘You Must Always Point…’:  The Post-heroic Lawyer as Scapegoat and Scapegoater in Presumed Innocent, The Verdict, and Cape Fear
	7.1 The Dramatic Peril of the Post-heroic Lawyer
	7.2 ‘Is That You Here, Dear Rusty?’ or, Rusty Sabich Who Art in Hell…
	7.3 The Pernicious Legacy of Legal Realism: Legal Culture in Popular Culture
		7.3.1 The Paradoxical Status of the Lawyer as Esoteric Knowledge-Worker
	7.4 The Verdict: The Pathetic Case of Frank Gavin
		7.4.1 Anti-heroic Lawyers: Virtue, Money, and Power
	7.5 Frank Gavin as Post-heroic Lawyer
	7.6 Cape Fear or, When the Client from Hell Returns
	7.7 ‘You Sacrificed Me!’: Sam Bowden Rediscovers the Scapegoat
	References
8 The Telling of Lies and the Casting of Lots: Franz Kafka’s The Trial and the Eternal Undecidability of the Scapegoat
	8.1 ‘Someone Must Have Been Casting Lots About Josef K.’: The Indeterminate ‘Truth’ of Franz Kafka
		8.1.1 Girard’s Interpretive Reading of the Book of Job
	8.2 Nightmare/Profane
	8.3 The Endless Undecidable
		8.3.1 Justice-as-Organism
		8.3.2 Justice-as-Desire
		8.3.3 Justice-as-Desire = Law-as-Undecidable
	8.4 Sacrificial/Sacred/Sacralizing
	8.5 At the End There is a Window
	References
9 ‘…Why do we, All of us, have to Keep Judging and Being Judged?’: The Scapegoat and the Scapegoater in Albert Camus’ The Stranger and The Fall
	9.1 L’absurde: Fate Versus the Accident
	9.2 The Facts of the Strange Case of M. Mersault (a.k.a. ‘M. Death-Jump’)
		9.2.1 Katharsis/Pharmakos/Pharmakon/Katharma
	9.3 Mersault as Tragic Hero, or the Accident Waiting to Happen
	9.4 Jean-Baptiste Clamence: The Judge-Penitent as Universal Sacrifice
	9.5 Jean-Baptiste Clamence Meets the Anti-Christ
	References
10 ‘Out There’: Monstrous Doubles and the Folie a Deux in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood
	10.1 ‘The Odor of Windfall Apples Rotting Under the Apple Trees’: Ghosts and Monsters
		10.1.1 Alvin Dewey’s Uncanny Encounter in the Graveyard
	10.2 The Double-Monstrosity of Hickock-Smith: The Non-fiction Novel and the Techniques of Allegory
	10.3 The Folie a Deux: Monstrous Doubles or Monsters Who are Brothers
	10.4 ‘Of All the People in the World, the Clutters Were the Least Likely to Be Murdered’: Herb Clutter and the Villagers of Holcomb
		10.4.1 Herb Clutter and ‘Tex’ Smith
		10.4.2 Herb Clutter and Perry Smith
		10.4.3 Perry Smith and Truman Capote
	10.5 ‘No Chicken-Hearted Jurors, They’: The Brothers in the Breed of Cain
	10.6 Mythic Un-Truth: The Sacred Murder of Nancy Clutter
	References
11 The ‘Good Murderer’ Gary Gilmore: The Re-sacralization of the Scapegoat in the Age of Public Reason
	11.1 Murder, Sacralization, and Apocalypse
	11.2 Authenticity as Metaphysical Desire: John Rawls and the Violence of Neutrality
	11.3 John Rawls and the Problem of Religion or, Isotropic Men of No Qualities
		11.3.1 Objection I: The Un-Civil ‘Friend or Foe’ Distinction of Carl Schmitt
		11.3.2 Objection II: Paul Dumouchel on the Violent Paradox of ‘Those Who Exclude Themselves’
		11.3.3 The Problem of Religion for Fundamentalist Neutralism
	11.4 The Stumbling-Block of Public Reason: The Scandalizing Case of Gary Gilmore
		11.4.1 The Visitations
		11.4.2 Visitation One: Sacramento, Late 1946
		11.4.3 Visitation Two: January 1, 1952, Salt Lake City
		11.4.4 Visitation Three: Nevada, Summer 1946
	11.5 The Violence of the Exclusion of Those Who Exclude Themselves by Refusing the Gift of Neutrality or, Scapegoating the Scapegoaters
		11.5.1 The Just War of the Decent Peoples Against the Indecent Peoples of the World
		11.5.2 Fundamentalist Neutralism and the Universal Crisis of Undifferentiation
	11.6 Concluding Post-secularist Transcript
	References
12 Spare a Thought for the Hangman: The Apocalypse of Rene Girard
	12.1 Rene Girard and the Problem of Meconnaissance
		12.1.1 ‘Sacrifice with a Bad Conscience’: Modernity and De-sacralization
	12.2 Political Religion: The Failed Substitute for the Katechon
	12.3 The Persecution Society: Political Religion as Skandalon
	12.4 From De-sacralization to the Neo-Sacralized Cult of the Victim
	12.5 Victimology: The Sign of Citizenship in the Time of Globalized Undifferentiation
	12.6 Sacrifice with a Good Conscience: The Super-Victimary Machine
	12.7 Demystifying the Demystifiers: The Skandalon of Cancel Culture
	References