Lynching and the Sacred in Latin America. Regarding “The part of Crimes” in 2666 of Roberto
There are collective behaviors that lead violence: one of these is lynching. It is a type of violence where mimesis act in all its power. In fact, when the crowd unites to exert violence on one, it tends to imitate the aggressiveness that arises in the other: they are all infected by the same feeling: to persecute and lynch a subject who is criminalized by the group and is symbolized as the source of evil, since he is the catalyst of common bewilderment. Our interpretative bet is developed in three moments. First, we will make a general presentation of the theory of mimetic desire proposed by René Girard. From there we are interested in describing the motivational inputs that feed a conception of violence and that will have a foothold in the sacrificial mechanism. In a second moment we will conceptualize the theory of sacrifice and its relationship with the sacred, emphasizing the idea of the crowd and lynching. Finally, we will address from a literary interpretation the phenomenon of violence, sacrifice, and lynching that is recreated in the novel 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.
