In this commentary, I explore affirmative responses to the question of whether the notion of sacrifice illuminates the nature of punitive acts such as executions and lynchings. In the end, however, I maintain that the notion of sacrifice is incompatible with such efforts and may serve more to obscure than to illuminate. Not only are key aspects of sacrifice overlooked in such analyses, but attention is diverted from the specific punitive violence of law. Finally, I propose that, when separated from its sacrificial framework, René Girard's figure of the scapegoat may be helpful to understanding this punitive violence.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.