THE ROLE OF ECONOMY AND ART IN THE SOCIAL REGULATION OF VIOLENCE
THE ROLE OF ECONOMY AND ART IN THE SOCIAL REGULATION OF VIOLENCE

Summary/Abstract: The regulation of the violence in the society was problematized in several of Rene Girard’s important works. Girard based his theory mostly on the detailed analysis of literary works but the results spurred attention within the wider academic circles. His claim is that the great literary and mythological texts cover up the truth about the human nature and the way the violence was regulated in the society. The hidden truth is anthropological in nature: it veils the true nature of the human desire. The anthropological essence of man lies in his tendency to possess the world. This tendency is deeply rooted in his desires and needs. Since his desires are unconscious, man has no contact with the reality of his needs and the objects of the desire. Man, simply does not know what he wants and his desires are, as Lacan has truculently pointed out, “the desires of the other”. The other conversely does not desire man: quite the contrary, the other is completely disinterested about human individual existence. The way to approach the other or the sacred is only through the collective by the way of the utter disrespect for the individual existence. The article attempts to investigate whether the role of this collective suppression of violence is in modern times allocated to the market economy. In addition, the text considers how art reflects on the strategy of the system to utterly suppress the mythological view on violence from its cultural representation.

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