Abstract

This essay examines the Bush administration's rhetoric of evil in the war on terror and invasion of Iraq by reframing the question of national security into one of a chosen people's recurring quest for redemption. As such, ritualized perceptions of peril are an engine of unreflective policy making. Yet the ritual of redemptive violence suggests a remedy from within war culture, which begins with reconsidering the function of the scapegoat vis-à-vis the articulation of categorical guilt. From there, the essay explores the notion of transforming the scapegoat mechanism through rehumanizing rituals into a peace-building, as opposed to enemy-making, salvation device.

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