The Unspeakable Real: A Lacanian Burroughsian Scapegoatology

In the churning id of organizations and belief systems, a primal drama unfolds. The scapegoat, a spectral Other, becomes the stage upon which unspoken desires are projected. A witch hunt, a play defined by the absence of the Real (the true source of societal ills), demands a sacrifice. To admit the accused’s innocence is to shatter the narcissistic mirror of the group, revealing their own festering lack.

This, the Real, a Lacanian term for the ungraspable, the forever outside-of-language, lurks beneath the signifying order that binds these structures. This spectral Other, a dangling signifier on the Lacanian stage, is the target of a repressed, primordial violence. But here’s the rub, mon ami – to utter this truth is to rip the scab off the social order, exposing the raw, pulsating id beneath.

Imagine, if you will, the Witch Hunters – those grim cowboys of righteousness. To confess the witches’ innocence would be to castrate their own power, to render their brand of control as limp as a forgotten phallus. No, the witches must be burned, their screams a perverse symphony that binds the group in a morbid jouissance.

Those agents of the symbolic order, cannot integrate the truth: their victims, mere sacrificial pawns. To acknowledge their innocence would be to sever the very limb upon which they perch, to dismantle the power they wield.

Girard, the subsidized explorer of the human psyche, delves into the grimoires of history, myth, and sacred texts, unearthing a treasure trove of scapegoating rituals. He exposes this mechanism – the most potent secret in the human drama. Why secret? Because it’s the perverse engine that drives group cohesion, yet whispers of its existence are met with a deafening silence within the collective ear. This primal script demands silence. To utter its name is to rupture the symbolic order, the carefully constructed reality of the group. The scapegoat mechanism, a perverse communion, binds yet forbids recognition. We are all tangled in its viscid web.

This is the true horror: the blind spot. We, entangled in the web of mimetic desire, fail to perceive the very scapegoats we manufacture. The persecution continues, a grotesque ballet of violence, while each player clutches their self-righteous mask, absolving themselves of guilt.

The human condition, a grotesque carnival of mimesis, compels us to punish. We are blind to the glint of the scapegoat’s fabricated guilt in our own eyes.

Even Girard, the supposed seer, confesses his own blindness. “My own [scapegoating] eludes me,” he confesses, mirroring the plight of his readers. We traffic only in the realm of “legitimate enemies,” conveniently blind to the universe overflowing with innocent victims. The persecutor? Always the Other. We are all flagellants, whipping the innocent while screaming accusations at phantoms. The “enormity of this mystery” pulsates with a primal horror – a truth we desperately claw away from. The scapegoat becomes the fleshy avatar of our collective shadow, a sacrifice to the insatiable maw of our own unconscious desires.

The enormity of this mystery, a Burroughsian virus infecting the human condition, speaks to the depth of this scapegoating impulse. Mimetic rivalry, the insatiable desire to possess what the Other possesses, fuels the fires of punishment. Any suggestion that the victim might be undeserving ignites a primal resistance. Thus, the dance continues, a macabre charade fueled by the unspoken, the unspeakable. The scapegoat, a spectral figure haunting the margins, a constant reminder of the Real that threatens to tear apart the fragile fabric of our symbolic world.

So, the next time you find yourself pointing the finger, remember – you might just be dancing to the silent symphony of the scapegoat. A symphony fueled by desire, veiled by righteousness, and conducted by the unconscious.