Shattered Voices. Teresa Godwin Phelps
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revenge; we want justice,” indicating by this duality our conviction that a desire for revenge is shameful. When we use “justice” to deny any desire for revenge, we demonstrate our belief that justice is completely distinct from revenge, unrelated in any way.
But it was not always so. In early societies, the taking of revenge was a sacred duty, a right, and a responsibility that was both individual and familial, depending on the structure of the society. If a person was harmed, he would have a natural right to return the harm. If a family or clan member was killed or harmed, it was not only a right but, in many societies,3 the duty of a clan to avenge the wrong, to enter into a blood feud with the offender’s clan.4 The responsibility to avenge as well as the punishment was often personal but also collective, clan versus clan. Thus the actions of every person involved the clan: in killing someone, the offender brought the enmity of the victim’s clan not only upon himself but also upon his entire familial group.5
This chapter tells the story of the shift away from private dutiful and honorable revenge to dispassionate state punishment, what we have come to call retribution. Although the focus is on trying to understand the human need for revenge, with all its nuances, I do not, of course, advocate the taking of violent revenge. Instead, I am interested in what it means to want revenge: to feel something, not necessarily to do something. Does the feeling necessarily mean desiring an act of violence? Or can wanting revenge mean—as I think it can—wanting something back that was lost as a result of the initial harm? What has happened to this impulse as the personal has given way to the public? Do state systems of punishment include or acknowledge any desire for revenge on the part of the victim or the victim’s family? What becomes of Paulina’s “good”? Within the larger argument I am making in this book about the role that stories can play in revenge and retribution, I am concerned with a reappraisal of the desire for revenge, in particular in the context of transitional democracies, in which there is a justifiable temptation to put the past behind. What are the consequences and possibilities of reintegrating the need (the need, not the act) for revenge into emerging and changing justice systems of new and fragile countries? What are the consequences of any state’s efforts to repress a desire for redress as a legitimate, even necessary, part of the human psyche?
To answer these questions, we require a picture of what the desire for revenge looked like and how it was acted out before such a desire came to be considered reprehensible, before a harm against a person was the state’s business at all. The progression (real and constructed) has three steps:6 first, revenge as an honorable, measured act of balancing that focused on a victim’s need; second, the state’s appropriation of revenge in the form of state punishment and, along with that shift, personal revenge being characterized as always excessive and destructive; third, the change in focus from the victim’s need to the perpetrator’s desert—the contemporary understanding of retributivism7—and, concomitantly, the attaching of shame to a victim’s desires. Some understanding of this progression and its hold on us will help us to appreciate why hearing Paulina ask about her “good” makes us feel puzzled and uncomfortable.
The evolution within cultures from private revenge to state punishment was anything but regular and linear, and any attempt to tell the story of this shift in the form of a chronological history is filled with problems.8 The evolution occurred variously in different societies, depending upon such factors as geography, culture, and time. A pattern does emerge, nonetheless, in that societies develop laws concerning revenge at particular points in their evolution, regardless of when those points occur on some master calendar. Essentially (in an oversimplified way), the pattern develops along these lines: first, homicide and other crimes against people are personal matters appropriately settled by the family or clan, usually by the death of the killer or his relatives; next, the necessity of the death of the wrongdoer gives way to the willingness to accept other forms of restitution, usually, but not exclusively, money or property; then, crimes come to be seen not as personal matters but as wrongs against the community at large (an idea sometimes referred to as the “pollution doctrine”); and finally, as central authority strengthens, personal crimes become matters of concern to the state, the state assumes the duty to punish the wrongdoer, and personal revenge is outlawed.
The ancient Babylonian laws (the Code of Hammurabi), for example, demonstrate that blood feuds became more and more limited as the central government grew stronger. “The State by degrees forced composition [payment of a fine] and restricted gratification of vengeance…. This process of limitation by the State was slowly extended, and the injured party was only allowed to carry out the execution himself under the supervision of some central authority and sometimes merely to be present at it.”9 We see in these codes, perhaps for the first time, the notion of the state punishing a wrong against another person entering the civic imagination.
As states developed and legal codes were written, the right to private revenge was gradually ceded to official authorities, who assumed not merely the right but also the obligation to enact revenge for the victim and the victim’s family. The gradual rise of central authority in kings moved the avenging of wrongs from the private and familial to the public, a difficult yet critical transference in that warring clans had the potentiality to undermine and even destroy a king’s authority over the people. The advent of Christianity with its message of turning the other cheek in forgiveness may have played a small part,10 but the major reason for the change was utilitarian rather than Christian. The destructive potentiality of blood feuds in addition to the emergence of nation-states made private vengeance an impracticable and unwise practice and, perhaps most critically, a threat to the centralized state. In time it became a ruler’s right to seek revenge, by punishment, fine, or both, and crimes were seen not as private matters but as offenses against the king’s peace.11
Yet the surrender of blood feud to state-controlled punishment was uneven and gradual, occurring at vastly different times in different cultures,12 always revealing a struggle to balance revenge and restraint. The giving over was also reluctant and tentative because taking revenge was regarded as a sign of character. In heroic societies, for example, it was a right, an obligation, and a mark of character, particularly if a blood relative had been murdered, to enact revenge upon not only the murderer but also his relatives and even his descendants: “If someone kills you, my friend or brother, I owe you their death and when I have paid my debt to you their friend or brother owes them my death.”13 This loyalty and fidelity to duty was not condemned as emotional wrongheadedness but honored as virtue. Nor was seeking revenge evidence of lawlessness for it operated firmly within the established boundaries of customary law. In a kinship or friendship relationship, the virtues of courage and fidelity were paramount: courage assuring that a friend or kinsman had the power to respond and fidelity assuring the will to do so. These virtues held the social structure in place and thus blood vengeance was a duty and an honorable act.14
The tension between the customary power of revenge and the gradual ceding of the right to the state can be seen in numerous societies. For example, although England in the tenth and eleventh centuries saw a rapid growth in the power of kings and in the development and centralization of law, surrendering the right to revenge was still greatly resisted. Up until the Norman conquest, kinship was the strongest of bonds and that bond was never more palpable than in the blood feud. The blood feud was the visual equivalent of the strength of the familial bond. “A man’s kindred are his avengers; and, it is their right and honour to avenge him…. Step-by-step, as the power of the State waxes, the self-centered and self-helping of the kindred wanes. Private feud is controlled, regulated, put … into legal harness.”15 Slowly, and only by degrees, did the principles of state retribution prevail, and only gradually did the members of a community or family become, at least overtly, content with the remedies afforded by law.
This transition from a culture’s practice of personal revenge to a growing dependence on the state for retribution can be usefully illustrated through a look at the values reflected in the literature and history of pre-Christian Greek culture. The Greek word for avenging the dead is etymologically related to the word for honor, signifying that revenge is more than satisfaction for the revenger, but also a requisite restoration of honor.16 This double meaning is reflected throughout both the Iliad and