Violence Unveiled, Gil Bailie
Violence Unveiled, Gil Bailie
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Violence Unveiled
Humanity at the Crossroads

Author: Gil Bailie

Narrator: Randy Coleman-Riese

Unabridged: 14 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/12/2021


Synopsis

This is a Girardian-influenced, engagingly written classic on the nature of violence and the hope for overcoming it in our conflict-ridden world. It is also a literary work, an often miraculous interplay between cultural documents and historical periods. Gil Bailie wrote Violence Unveiled in the mid-1990s after learning of René Girard’s mimetic theory of human cultural origins. The mimetic theory posits that human interspecies violence posed an existential threat to the continuation of any early human community until the evolution/discovery of a particular kind of directed social violence – scapegoating violence - which in times of social crisis brought peace and harmony to the community at the expense of what would later be understood as a sacred victim or god who becomes a focus of religious awe. Bailie intertwines various accounts of this phenomenon from history, literature and (then ‘90s) current journalistic sources. The Christian gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the theological reflection on its effects and meaning are understood as the revelatory "unveiling" of the truth of the victim as the source of communal peace. However, with this new knowledge and its moral implications cultures influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition scapegoating violence has gradually lost its ability to bring people in crisis together. Without a change in the human heart, a conversion, this will eventually lead to apocalyptic forms of violence.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sean on June 26, 2014

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that. What the world needs is people who have come alive." With these words, Gil Bailie's exploration of Rene Girard's work began. Sacred violence helps to put an end to other forms of violence when it arose. C......more

Goodreads review by Douglas on January 17, 2009

Appalling and glorious both.......more

Goodreads review by Philemon on October 19, 2024

Der Autor ist ein Schüler von René Girard. Mit dem Buch will er Girards Denken um eigene Aspekte fortführen. Er macht das indem er Anekdotisches aus Popkultur, Zeitgeschehen, Mythen, Philosophie und Bibelgeschichten heranzieht und darin mimetisches Begehren, den Sündenbockmechanismus und andere Konz......more

Goodreads review by Adam on February 23, 2016

Bailie has done what I previously thought impossible, and actually managed to write a comprehensive, readable introduction to the work and thought of Rene Girard. A French literary theorist and sociologist, Girard's work is, much like Joseph Campbell, Michael Foucault, and other visionaries, graspin......more

Goodreads review by Raully on December 17, 2007

Rene Girard's work on sacrificial culture, Christian theology, and modern theory remains for me the most compelling work of the past decades. Apparently the same can be said of Gil Bailie, a Christian theologian who heads his own California institute. This book is an extended reflection (and restate......more