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Word for Word
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Scapegoating Out of Date
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Love and Affection
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What Day Is It?
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A Useful Phrase
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Scapegoating Out of Date
March 18,2005
“Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious power behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the goat’s back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. It worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died , and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help. Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism. The censor was born, in the Roman sense. Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was replaced by the purge.”The protagonist David Lurie in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
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