Conference
LCCP Colloquium: Scapegoating History: #RhodesMustFall and a Girardian Unveiling of Radical Decolonization
- Date
- Thursday 20 March 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.48
The Leiden Centre of Continental Philosophy is pleased to announce a lecture by Hayden Weaver, PhD candidate at our Institute for Philosophy.
Abstract
René Girard’s theory of functional violence, exemplified through the process of the scapegoat, has predominantly been limited to mythology and religion. What are the implications of utilizing a Girardian lens when examining contemporary political situations? The presentation will begin with a contextualization and explication of Girard’s theory of functional violence. Following this, I will provide a Girardian examination of the #RhodesMustFall movement, which engulfed South African universities in 2015. I will be attempting to create a means through which the Fallist mass movements can be examined in order to gain a more nuanced understanding of both the motivations of the movements as well as their consequences. In identifying history as the scapegoat of the movement I delimit the notion of the scapegoat altogether. This delimitation of the scapegoat raises numerous questions about the validity of this process, which I will attempt to address throughout the presentation. Furthermore, I claim that the examination of history as a scapegoat unveils the dangers of dichotomizing the value and importance of history in general. Ultimately, through the examination of the #RhodesMustFall movements I aim to push the theory of the scapegoat to its limits in an attempt to determine the consequences of this interpretation. Within this presentation, I aim to open up Girard’s theory of functional violence and test its capability to go beyond the mythic into the realm of contemporary politics. I present this not as a definitive claim that it can be utilized as such, but rather to pose the question of the possibilities of such an interpretation. Is the Girardian theory of the scapegoat able to be utilized in this manner? If so, what are the benefits of performing this delimiting of the scapegoating process?
About
Hayden Weaver is a South African PhD candidate in Global and Comparative Philosophy at Leiden University. His research attempts to combine decolonial scholarship and continental philosophy in an examination of the role that violence has played and continues to play in the South African state.
All are welcome!