No Victims Without Sacrifice, No Sacrifice Without Victims: Conceptualizing Violence and the “Oklahoma City Bombing”

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AbstractThis article proposes a conceptualization of violence that builds on a tripartite relationship between violence, victims, and sacrifice that frames violence as a self-justifying sacrificial act. This conceptualization delineates the nature of violence by addressing its transformation from an instrumental act to a constitutional act, making violence possible, ongoing, contagious, and productive. In particular, I argue, with the help of René Girard’s theoretical framework, that conceptual accounts of violence can gain further insights through an engagement with his concepts of sacrifice and victims. Violence, this article illustrates, becomes a societal feature by producing victims via sacrifice rather than drawing simplified boundaries between the relation of perpetrator and victim, mediated by the act of violence. To illustrate the epistemological value of this conceptualization, the article re-examines Timothy McVeigh’s justification of his Oklahoma City bombing. The article concludes that not only terrorism’s atrocities reflect this proposed conceptualization of violence but also potentially all acts of political violence.