1. Words in the storm

“And yet you have said, “What does God know? Can he judge through the dark cloud? The clouds, to him, are an impenetrable veil, as he goes his way on the rim of the heavens. And will you still follow the ancient trail trodden by the wicked, those who were borne off before their time, whose foundations were swamped by a flood?” (22:13-16). Much of the Book of Job revolves around the age-old problem of the word: of cursing and blessing, of saying evil and saying good (of God and his creatures, men, starting from the wager between God and Satan, right to the end, when it will be said that Job was the only one who spoke with righteousness), of correctly understanding what is said, convincingly shining the light of discourse into the darkness of ambiguity, naming things properly and thus designating clear figures which would otherwise be indistinct in a storm-whipped universe. The Book of Job foregrounds the issue of words — starting with the word Job itself, the name Job: yyîôb,¹ an ancient Semitic name that poses its fair share of interpretation problems. While on one hand these few letters are a portmanteau of the adverb of place ’ayyeh, and ’ab, (father), creating a moniker that poses an urgent and distressing question (which sounds more or less like “Where is the father?”), on the other in Hebrew the term can easily be likened to the similar word ôyyeb, meaning rival, enemy, no less (to the point that Job will one day ardently plead to God, «Perhaps you confuse me, yob, with ôyyeb, your enemy?» (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra, 16a)).² Much of the Book of Job dwells on this suspicion: that Job actually embodies a paradigmatic sin, be that impiety, non-observance of ritual, or arrogant presumption; and that his story can be understood as that of a return to order, after a lengthy period of excess (no further detail needed). As Girard explains,³ the community cannot achieve stability, or purport to be steadfast and sovereign, so long as there is indecision over the position of even one of its members (in order that the creeping, pervasive violence be entirely channelled towards a single individual, who is called to pay the price on behalf of all the others,⁴ this individual must be indisputably guilty of a crime which fully and unambiguously legitimizes the punishment). What and how much weight do words carry in this process of adjustment, and names, which have the power to identify, to pin down — if the accusation is to remain permanently associated with the person, until it is no longer viewed as a suspicion, but a state of affairs visible to all and beyond doubt? It might therefore be interesting to start from this, from the word Job, the name Job, and return to the biblical account and its undecidable ambiguity — acknowledging the metamorphic echo that accompanies its progression from century to century, passed from hand to hand, starting from the very title of the book. Traditionally grouped with the Books of Wisdom, the text offers a distinctive example of so-called “compression”:⁵ scholars agree that it is a composite element, an assemblage of passages of different styles and origins, which also present large chronological and contextual differences. Set between a prologue and an epilogue in prose — recalling an ancient tale with a folkloristic slant — it contains a complex, heterogeneous poetic series of three dialogues: to which we have to add a fourth, that of the younger Eliu, interspersed with further additions which blend in to varying degrees, such as the poetic section on wisdom (chapter 28) or the cosmological and cosmogonic passages delivered from the mouth of God. It is therefore characterised by the presence of numerous subsequent additions, textual contributions which can be traced, and which have gradually been identified (work which is always in progress and up for review) in a lengthy process of exploration and excavation that drills down through an equally lengthy, complex stratification. The entire book, however, is considered canonical — namely acknowledged to have a single or shared inspiration, refracted by what is therefore held to be a community of authors; this multiple structure notwithstanding, what emerges is an organic whole, albeit never fully consistent. So how do all these themes fit together, how can we take one (single?) message from this multitude of voices⁶ that intersect, contradicting one another, overlapping or giving rise to endless repetition? Is it possible to trace a unifying principle, identify a cornerstone that helps us read the mosaic, find a key that helps us to decide the meaning, and get our bearings? Let’s delve into the layers: from the furthest back, whose exact distance from us is obscured by its fairy tale tone — a narrative suspended in a time and a place known only to the story itself (“once upon a time, in the lost land of Us …”), to the so-called dialogues, the heated confrontations in poetry between Job and his friends — which are not properly dialogues: each speaker takes the floor and speaks for himself, and the text wisely leaves out the identity of the person each speech is directed at. Only the arrival of God, amidst the confusion and murky gloom of the storm, brings an authentic, explicit form of questioning (Then from the heart of the tempest the LORD gave Job his answer (38:1), The LORD spoke to Job, saying / Job replied to the LORD, saying (40:1-3)). Any mutual unity or correspondence between the various passages remains indefinite and without connection, abruptly interspersed with undecidable deviations, and in the same way, the contents of each section reject coherence and unambiguity – something that might silence or even detract from a multifaceted, nuanced reality. Yet, «a text is not only interesting because it is logically organized, for the apparently religious way which it develops its themes, but also for what disorganizes its order, what weakens it»;⁷ and perhaps this text in particular presents its precarious, never fully achieved consistency, its ultimately dissonant words as its signature characteristic, the characteristic that paradoxically binds it all together.⁸ What is the aim of the four friends, the sincere intention of their gradually more convoluted speeches — is it a genuine attempt to share in the suffering, to bring an incoherent sinner to his senses, or is it actually a concealed form of coercion with a sacrificial bent? What is Job’s place in society: fallen, arrogant dignitary, public tophet, restored nobleman (what are we to call him)? It is no coincidence that the question of the right place and the correct position — the topological question — crops up repeatedly (it is the first utterance addressed to a specific interlocutor: “where do you come from?” God asks Satan twice in the prologue alone) and it remains without a sure answer, vague, never finding firm ground — for the entirety of the text; starting from its core, from the name of its main character, Job. We therefore come back, in a somewhat circular fashion, to what was said above. The text itself tries in part to convince us that it has a beginning and a clearly traced linear progression that starts from a precise place, and which makes it exemplary: in a time now forgotten there was a virtuous and pious man, but he cannot have been that virtuous if he was befallen with everything that happens in the story: this is basically what the first friends say — that Job must effectively be a hostile, mean-spirited ôyyeb, that he must have behaved in that way, that he must have done something wrong, that he has in some way dirtied his hands (hence the sores that disfigure them, a visible manifestation of a poorly concealed transgression). If he has to answer for something, it is because behind him, concealed, a sin has been committed, the outcome of which must be assuaged. Or perhaps, to make sense of the story: there may not be proof of wrong-doing, an identifiable material sin for us to look upon and point a finger at, a quantifiable offence, so there must therefore be an entirely spiritual vice, an excess of pride — Eliu’s reasoning: here it is, arrogance, the definitive scandal! — that the hapless fellow is being punished for (and again, rightly punished — this is not up for question). This would make the tale consistent, part of a more harmonious system, with a beginning (once upon a time), then, after a long and perilous odyssey, a happy ending of redemption and exculpation (Then Job died, old and full of days (42:17)). What’s in a name, indeed: this version of events would give his name a definitive meaning, and lend a definitive sense to the events unfolding. The story would thus become a (fulfilled) prophecy, a fate mapping the journey of the mythical hero, leaving him with no way out, no alternative but to travel the ancient path taken since time immemorial by the impious (such as Job, as the enemy of God and danger to the community, evidently was). And for the word which tells his story and in turn becomes the story, it is easier to follow and adapt to this decisive, indisputable state of things, something that is settled, for once. It is true that to some extent the text resists being reined in like this — a struggle that is played out precisely in the additional passages, the top-up lines, the sudden apparitions and exclamations that unexpectedly rumble out of the storm — just as Job eludes the path forcibly traced out for him, but not by him. So “where is the Father” in all of this? Is He effectively the basis of the discourse Job’s friends expound and profess expertise in, the foundation of that wisdom which is a moral and religious law; is He the axiomatic, proven and necessary starting point of the demonstration that leads from Job’s misfortunes to his consequent sin, to an enmity to be assuaged (and that therefore inexorably applies to the individual Job, identified as the enemy)? Or is He the artifice required to close the circle and close in on the victim, by virtue of an invented, or in any case subtly constructed enmity, because something, some shared torment, has to be alleviated – thus defining and forcing him into a zero-sum calculation? It is relevant to know whether the glitches in the narration are smoothed out and resolved by the name, or whether this is a surreptitious way to force unity on something that does not spontaneously and freely form a unit, therefore becoming a device that creates order.⁹ On the one hand, therefore, we have the poised, settled discourse, which has on its side the luminous evidence, the shining clarity, of reason, that operates on the basis of strict, iron-clad logic that — as Girard shows — underpins any kind of expiatory mechanism. On the other hand there is Job’s protest, which — starting from the name — presents itself as a question, and which exposes reason for what it is: «the Book of Job […] is the phenomenological discovery and the metaphysical announcement of the disaster to which instrumental reason leads».¹⁰ If we retrace the book from the beginning, observe once more the intersection of resistances and contrasts that arise between its characters, and between its sections, we might wonder whether it is not one single, singular, dynamic: an accumulation of questions and answers, in which it is possible for the reader to detect the dissonances — to separate the wheat from the chaff,¹¹ as it were — and to identify the misleading effect of a nebulous lie in the inscrutable truth of the sacred discourse. «In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in lightning flashes. The text is the long roll of thunder that follows»:¹² it might just be the case that, in the pages and words that gather and thicken like clouds, blocking our gaze and obstructing our understanding, there may come, like a flash, the revelation of something that the book does not even actually conceal, but rather, in the cacophony and in the storm¹³ (in Job’s voice), loudly declares.

2. The name, the subjection

So let’s start from the beginning again, and the encounter with Job, already beset by misfortune, struck down with malignant ulcers from the sole of his foot to the top of his head (2:7): could things have gone differently, or is his a great and supernatural misfortune, and therefore necessary? To be on the safe side, Job decamps to the edge of the city, its outer limits, and from there he airs his grievances and protests. Disconsolately perched on a heap of ashes — the Semitic term mazbele indicates a rubbish dump, a pile of detritus¹⁴ — a tangible representation of his slippery position, his situation, at this height, of considerable estrangement from the community.¹⁵ And indeed the community does not recognize him immediately, finds it hard to identify him: their first impression is of something monstrous, a foreign body (Job is a reject, situated in distance and difference, he is not part of the set-up, like someone who is excluded due to their diversity): just who is this man, bemoaning his situation, covered, almost obscured by dust – a permanently undesirable element to eliminate, or a lost member of the flock whose insubordination has been overcome, and who is to be cautiously welcomed back in? Is it Job, lost but still virtuous or at least a compliant notable, or is it Job, the incorrigible sinner? This distinction is not unimportant. If it is not yet known, and impossible to say, before long it will be necessary to make a decision: make a show of knowing, and be convincing about it. For the sake of keeping the peace in every city and group of people, each individual must have their own identifiable role, must be situated on their own (unique, indistinguishable) step of the Degree,¹⁶ so that there is harmony, for the community to find the peace that lies in acting as one, the image of an organic system working in unison. The chosen victim cannot complain, he must accept the sentence chosen for him, which comes down on him as if from above, which constrains him on all sides, superhuman, like a divine punishment: and if he does not willingly submit, he must be compelled to do so, so that he learns that no-one can escape the destiny that awaits him. And thus, as at the beginning of the book, the fable reappears, here in its performative and productive sense, as Derrida indicated: fable «in the sense of 'making like' knowledge ['faire' savoir], i.e. giving the impression of knowing, giving the effect of knowledge, resembling knowing where there isn’t necessarily any knowing».¹⁷ They raised their eyes from afar, but they did not recognize him (2:12); despite this, or precisely for this reason, the friends will have the unavoidable task of finding the right place for this suffering man, reintroducing him into the ranks he has deserted and around which he confusedly orbits, and identifying a term for him, a name. It will be necessary to reinvent a myth, a method or a path along which he can be accompanied, or rather led back to the order he has lost, starting with a public performance of mourning: a dramatic rending of clothes, howling, and raising of dust. Shocking scenes call for an immediate response, which mingles urgency and the ceremony of ritual — But who can withhold himself from speaking? (4:2) asks Eliphaz, the first to speak, almost excusing himself for his impatience. Eliphaz effectively illustrates a sophisticated differential structure, the proportioned balance that sustains human coexistence – an infallible system of retribution, manifestation of the divine (attested to by the prodigious, heavenly revelation brought on by a light breeze, a voice out of the silence (4:15-16) which traces Elijah’s encounter with the divinity in The Book of Kings). After rapidly painting a picture in which who ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright ever cut off? (4:7) it is necessary to illustrate and highlight the difference between the impious — who seem to suffer for their dissolution — the enemy, the notorious ôyyeb — and those who, on the other hand, escape suffering (or are more likely to inflict suffering, with no qualms, convinced of their good faith): but as for me (ulam), I would seek God (5:8). Efficaciously, right from the opening lines, we see a trench being dug, that is traced only afterwards but already impassable; a clear divide between the good and the bad, between Job and his friends, which legitimizes, even to the inscrutable eyes of the divinity, the disparity of their situations. Because the latter are messengers of God, or at least claim a monopoly on Him: they place themselves in the unquestionable, certain position, ex cathedra, of those who are in possession of knowledge to be imparted as if from on high, and that the lost soul evidently does not possess (otherwise he would not be in this sorry state: tautological reasoning, with a coercive, circular power), and of which he must be convinced or persuaded. His friends know they are in a better position than he is, by virtue of not being afflicted by what afflicts him — and of having witnessed similar episodes during their now long existence, the unfolding and outcome of which they followed perhaps too closely and with excessive zeal, getting involved directly, and which they (strangely enough!) have always escaped themselves; episodes that they have interpreted and worked into a positive belief system (I speak from experience (4:8), All this we have observed and it is so! Listen, you will know for yourself! (5:27)). The result is a mechanism that can be described fairly accurately, a privileged sense of flow, verified and belonging to the sphere of things and human beings. Its precipitate is history, the only version apparently possible, a chronicle with scientific claims, which «portays everything as if it could never have come otherwise. Yet it could have happened in a hundred different ways. History is on te side of what has happened, detaching it in a stringer content from was has not happened. Among all possibilities, it banks on the one, the surviving one».¹⁸ A precise scheme that apportions blame and allocates the respective punishments, that establishes who is high up in the city, and who is rejected, and must clearly be expelled. The past is semantized, translated into a system that admits no exceptions and carries the weight of divine providence and natural determinism together (so much so that an endless plethora of examples and images extrapolated from the whole universe, from the animal world to the mineral one, attest to it), in short, an entirely incontestable system. In this scheme, which is applied with surgical precision, as an “order” imposed on the real, woven into its make-up, and that can no longer be distinguished from reality itself,¹⁹ Job must be included: he cannot inhabit its margins, its substance, like a film of ash, but must play his part, must be named. Until he is convinced that he belongs in this order, until he is forced into it or, alternatively, eliminated, the figure of Job will represent an annoying flaw that will ruin every discourse, in which every word will eventually get lost, and which escapes the composition.²⁰ This is, of course, an infallible model that is applied to every story, and that where necessary, lends its tutelage to any kind of event — so much so that it could even be described as a-historical: in the sense that it goes beyond history, or rather it indicates how history is to be interpreted, and it admits the existence of a single, sole,²¹ coherent, meaningful history (this structure and functioning are what makes a universal story possible). Through this word, this discourse, each event determines and represents the totality of the drama, suggests it by referring to it: and thus, obviously, makes it true. The best course of action in any given situation is consigned to the letter of the law, which also stipulates what is to be done if the tenets are not respected. This law is distorted by the numinous aura of transcendence, which identifies with and overlays God’s will and power, leaving no grey areas, to the point of theophany (Can God deflect the course of right, or Shaddai falsify justice? [8:3]): it goes without saying that nothing escapes it, that nothing can be unexpected, or, even more so, gratuitous. Why should Job be an exception? He too must take his place in this grand plan. It therefore remains for his friends to demonstrate how his punishment corresponds to an equal and opposite crime (also and above all in the event that he is not willing to recognize and admit it himself, bring it to light, as shining evidence, and expose it to a clarity verging on the tautological). His fate is carefully sketched out, like a map: having fallen into disgrace — despite the fact that this fall may have been caused by the very hands that now offer a show of comfort and explanation — and brought to his knees outside the city, he must now show his vulnerable side and meekly turn around and head back there (or, what equates to the same thing in this grand design — be eliminated:²² either way, making himself scarce) after acknowledging the legitimacy and immediate urgency of the punishment. We therefore see the ordering power of mendacious transcendence at work, a productive power, which arises from the process of incitement. This is the case right from the prologue, in which Satan himself figures. Even before he appears as a character, a theological and mythological entity, Satan plays a specific role within the wider drama (before he even has a proper name, he has a title: the “adversary”.²³ Indeed he functions as an agent, insinuating the doubt and setting the tone for the inquisition procedure). His approach is indeed one of insinuation,²⁴ not an outright accusation — for full coercive efficacy, this must eventually come from Job himself: it must take the form of an irreversible reflection, self-accusation and confession. For Job to become an example (in the Vulgate exemplum, in the Hebrew text tophet, the subject of public derision), he himself must present himself as such; he must be persuaded or forced — the reasoning in any case is unassailable — to acknowledge his own guilt, and the fact that his position is compromising, therefore disposable, in the eyes of all others (the whole community, drawing around him menacingly), with whom he must fall back into step, and take on their perspective and discourse (including that which regards him, his nefarious reputation, his very name). And while this admission partially releases him from his alleged crime, and the accession of his suspected enmity at least enables both parties to use a shared language and alleviates some of the tension, it does not exonerate him from persecution and mistrust. Althusser showed how the subordination of the subject frequently occurs through language and naming, the interpellation of an authoritative voice that summons the individual, beckons him, asks him to turn around, effecting a conversion²⁵ (in Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, the image is that of a police officer who hails a passer-by, and of the passer-by who, responding to the order, is also ordered by it, identified by it). Can this device be applied to Job? Here again it is striking to note the performative power of the authoritative voice, embodied by the friends, the wise, elderly spokesmen of a wisdom that is at once religious, natural and social (the performative power transmitted in their voice of injunction and threat, above all). Job is therefore required to turn back, acknowledge that he is in the wrong, admit that he is an enemy or hostile presence and meekly accept his punishment without so much as raising his head in protest — thus returning from the so-called rubbish dump to the city, from the de-consecrated periphery to the regulated centre, from protest to established order, or alternatively he must succumb to his destiny, to the barely disguised lynching that is underway. What the friends are attempting to do with the naming process is to cast Job as a well identified subject: in this way, as an enemy, as ôyyeb, he would definitively belong to the category of others, those individuals that are abhorrent due to their alien, extraneous status. «As we know […] the “others” are not only excluded and inferior; they become, as individuals and as a collectivity, the point of support for a second-order imaginary crystallization whereby they are endowed with a series of attributes and, behind these attributes, an evil and perverse essence justifying in advance everything one might propose to subject them to».²⁶ From this perspective, a harmonious whole would be recreated, in which «every individual is called by his name, in the passive sense»²⁷ — in which each individual is contained in the word, is framed and defined by it, and therefore, because interpellated, comes to occupy a precise place in the world: recalled, he would take up a fixed, incontestable position, a role foreseen only for him. The name therefore signifies much more than a mere vocal flow, becoming almost vice-like: around it grows the binding recognition of a destination that there is the attempt to impose, and through it an order is given (in the double sense of command and organization). And this multiple interpellation, refracted by the various individuals, orders a broad structure, a community — a disciplined, well-established multiplicity, a universal hierarchy that obviously could not exist without a primary referent, a cornerstone (the sole, absolute subject which is the divinity). After all, isn’t God the subject par excellence²⁸ — I am who i am, I am the one who is (Ex. 3:14), being itself — the unequivocal, central starting point of every centred ideology? Yet Job challenges this centre, asks it to show its position, asks for it to be repositioned: where is the father?²⁹ What lends legitimacy to the events unfolding? This is a possibility that, as per Althusser, resides inside the mechanism itself; there is always the chance that the call might go unanswered, that the injunction runs the risk of not being acknowledged, the person hailed may well not recognize himself in what the name given to him, at that moment, defines — he might distance himself from the charges, and refuse to point the finger against himself; and if this happens, everything that the discursive constitution fails to fix in place or classify will generate disorder, starting from the contested identity. If an integral part of the mechanism is an entire material, tangible dimension of confession and penance,³⁰ if the verbal discourse of paradoxical self-accusation (against all common sense, against all evidence! protests Job) cannot remain an interior discourse, or something that is passively accepted, but has to be actively embraced, not least by the victim himself, and externalized by him, translated into tangible or audible gestures — in practices that do not arise autonomously from the subject that produces them, because he is forced to do so, but which actually produce the subject that embodies (realigning the individual they have been prescribed to and imposed on with the status quo) —, then Job’s refusal to do so ruins the general order of things. In this scenario, it is no coincidence that it is an enormous sin (the greatest of all?) to speak evil, and to malign: to say words that are out of place and that clash with the given order, including words opposed to the order itself. To threaten Job, mention is made of the person in whose mouth evil is sweet, and he would hide it under his tongue, cultivating it carefully, (20:12-13); the person whose voice, whose words are venom and poison (20:14-16). Indeed this very thing will be his retribution — a precise, aseptic punishment (as Augustine recalled: «matters are so arranged at your command that every disordered soul is its own punishment»³¹): the toxin injected into the enemy’s body strikes and poisons, not least, he who inserted it: he used to suck vipers’ venom, and the tongue of the adder will kill him (20:16). The system that plunges into chaos, plunges its members into chaos, enveloping them in an ever more chaotic turmoil. And still Job continues to protest: How much longer are you going to talk like this, the words of your mouth a great puff of wind? (8:2), Bildad reproaches him. Like a wind that has the power to uproot, to throw everything into disarray, the very disorder of the words reveals Job’s refusal to comply, reveals that he is not part of the order of the world and the law, the mechanism that specifically and pervasively structures it. “One must pose oneself as the question”:³² Job proceeds hesitantly, grappling with false images and taking his distance from the moral order that those theologians present, and consequently rejecting the god that underpins them, that they assert as their primary reference. If the only possible system is that of the justice proclaimed by his friends, then Job — in spite of himself — becomes the upholder of disorder³³ (in fact, he does not want to speak to them — he asks to speak to God, and indeed speaks to God through them). So let’s listen to what he has to say, let’s go back to the beginning, when Job spoke after a long silence — the seven ritual days, during which he was surrounded, encircled by the attentive, inquisitive gaze of his friends. His expression is less of a reasoned set of ideas, a rational conception, and more of a lament (with the same raving urgency). In the end it was Job who broke the silence and cursed the day of his birth (3:1). “That is why the verse begins here, in a quite unusual way, with the words patah yyîôb, 'Job opened his mouth.' The verb patah is not used at random; it literally means «the door” […]. Job has to open the door of language: it must burst open».³⁴

3. The disaster of circumlocution. Let me hear none of your strumming, but let justice flow

Job finds himself basically surrounded — his friends’ words engulf and enclose him, caging him in on all sides, urging him to surrender. A process of structuring is underway, in which it is vital that unity be achieved, that the circle be completed: the three friends try to consolidate the system of representation based on identifying Job as a scapegoat — a conception that he himself has to take on, surrender and consent to. The discourse directed at him, and that traps him in its clutches, has the weight of a definitive pronouncement, an appellation that offers no possibility to appeal. It is a final reckoning, set in stone, that makes the victim the inception of social unity, and transfigures Job (still disfigured by disease, and hard to make out) into the enemy to be converted and disciplined, or the incurable evil to eradicate. The ancient path of the wicked thus opens up beneath his feet, casting him into utter anguish: with no-one to talk to, his speech is reduced to a private language that is cast adrift — rejected, ignored, or twisted. «Words, too, form a crowd; countless, they swirl about the head of the victim, gathering to deliver the coup de grace. The three series of speeches are like volleys of arrows aimed at the enemy of God»:³⁵ the friends’ malevolent voices (a glaring oxymoron) are not just an image of and metaphor for collective violence, its sublimation, but also actively participate in the violence itself, in an intense, aggressive form of arrogance.³⁶ Their performative value is evident: in their words³⁷ Job sees himself being redefined as ôyyeb, the enemy, the predestined victim, the definitive persecuted figure (rightly persecuted, because he is an outlaw) — and he cannot answer back. All that is needed now is his consent for the insinuations to become a proven reality, and for any defamation to be avenged and consequently expiated. Then there would no longer be a gap between what is said and what took place, the only possible story would be mendacious mythography³⁸ — Job’s destiny would become as deadly as it is inevitable, a destiny that is up to the bystanders to complete and conclude. «As mirrors set around in a circle transform a slender flame into a fairyland, acts of authority reflected in the constellation of consciousness are transfigured, and the reflections of these reflections create an appearance which is the proper place — the truth, in short — of historical action».³⁹ However, the condition for this refraction is that there must not be any cracks, and that the surface is flat throughout, so it reflects a consolidated, magnified image (glorified as mythical). To ensure that the reverberation is homogeneous, that it comes from all round and finds everyone in agreement, it has to be unanimous — all points of view must merge into one, which is no longer questionable and therefore (so it is agreed) is based on firm, shared ground. As has been said, the accused himself must be convinced of the truth of this perfect, definitive system, this binding causal relationship: he must be able to continually declare himself guilty as charged, in the wrong and ready to make amends, turning his cheek to the accuser as if in reparation. This rigorous, circular perfection, always equal to itself, is however underpinned by a tautological fallacy: it relies less on strength of reason and more on the reason of the strong, and it also underpins violence and abuse (the «violence» that is the «true 'referent' barely disguised in the threats of the friends and not disguised at all in Job’s laments»⁴⁰). And the discourse deployed by the friends is in fact the expression of a theology that chases its tail, an essentially simple propaganda which is based on and reinforced by repetition: so much so that in the course of the book they invent and basically reiterate the same arguments, merely in an increasingly hostile, intolerant manner. This reiteration and reinforcement closes the circle even more tightly, leaving no way out for the victim, who is held firmly in its grasp. Yet by opposing them with his own discourse, Job subverts the mythology that was created to destroy him; he escape the name imposed on him,⁴¹ he «escapes [his] own history and renews [himself]».⁴² His attempt to distinguish between the two overlapping, blurred entities — god and the community⁴³ — both equally and tenaciously opposed to him, represents a brusque rupture, a dramatic breach. Are you really defending God by falsehood, and by speaking deceit for him, and, taking his side like this, appoint yourselves as his advocates? (13:7-8). Job frantically attacks the validity of the orderly kosmos proposed by his friends, its claim to justice and justness (the deception of the law and the violence that it conceals, like «what was in force — on condition of remaining latent and tacit —»⁴⁴). He rails against the legitimacy of the universal scientia that his friends propose to him — he struggles to break free from their persuasive arguments, which surround and entrap him. Hence the two registers, the two radically different discourses, that of the friends and that of Job. The sublime discourse of the friends, which not least cloaks itself in a sacred and esoteric aura, possesses creative power: the words that do not merely evoke the referent, but rather actively produce it. It is a religious sermon that constitutes the same order that it preaches (and that without the support of the sacred word would not continue to exist) — words that envelop bodies, apply to them and adhere to them, in order to take root in them, build and base its knowledge in them. Job’s harsh, inopportune voice, on the other hand, corrodes what is built up around him; his discourse has the power to dissolve things (discourse of course issued from a mouth viewed as impious and dissolute): where is the Father? Are we really entitled to use that name, the load-bearing structure of the crystalline glass house that is being constructed — can it be used, handled and appropriated as a source, as a horizon of meaning? Job’s speech, albeit rambling, takes the form of a question and a challenge: it brings down the foundations, at a stroke it cancels out the justification for the (sacrificial) technique being applied and its iron-clad, compelling, even suffocating logic. He cannot therefore present himself as a counterpart, an alternative — what wonder if my words have been wild? (6:3). He cannot appropriate the model he intends to combat, or share its lexicon and tone, which he must first escape and survive, before he can challenge it, so much so that the encounter between the two types of discourse cannot really be deemed a dialogue. However, it is equally opportune that he intervenes and speaks out as soon as possible — using not «current communication, that serves the controlling society of control, but a non-communicative word, capable of breaking, weakening this control»,⁴⁵ to delineate something that inevitably remains unfinished, which does not accumulate and solidify into an alternative system, but which «is not a residue or a sequel of the past: it is a positive present».⁴⁶ Where is the Father? If I go to the east, he is not there; or to the west, I cannot see him. If I seek him in the north, he is not to be found, invisible as ever, if I turn to the south (23:8-9). Once the centre of the edifice structured by the sacred has been removed and delegitimized,⁴⁷ Job sees it being ruined and gradually becoming agitated — the institutional break-down that he embodies causes the institution itself to abandon its stance, to collapse: even from here, Girard suspects, the passages added subsequently, as attempts to silence or rectify the scandal — in a whirlwind which is indeed one of violent indifferentiation (which heightens the hostility against him), but which can also open up yet another scenario of dispersion. «There is always an exodus in the world, an exodus from the particular status quo. And there is always a hope, which is connected with rebellion»:⁴⁸ in the Book of Job rebellion exerts a forceful, throbbing presence, but this ramping up of conflict does not necessarily call for a sacrifice — the restoring of a longed for unity and harmony by means of an expulsion. As we have said, its paradoxical fulcrum might lie precisely in its rejection of unity,⁴⁹ the rupture with the centre of gravity and the settled, non-disturbable balance. Plunged into a scenario of absolute dispersion, Job cannot anticipate, in the name of the Father, the destiny of a new and different future, he cannot propose, or propose himself as, a starting point for an alternative scenario (he does not yet have a foothold anywhere, he is as if suspended, rarefied): the only options open to him are removal, desertion and withdrawal. And yet by the end of the book God will acknowledge that Job proved he was a more faithful witness than those who are accustomed to injustice, and therefore justify injustice; more truthful than those who unhesitatingly view it as a necessary fact within the human system, find a place for it (by mapping it within a system of retribution that is as impeccable as it is ruthless). Without making a direct attack, without explicitly unmasking the violent dimension of practices now entrenched and simply taken for granted, the fact of insinuating a doubt is enough to jeopardize its terrifying facade — and expose the reality that its constitution is not a given: though Job is not aware of, so cannot knowingly reveal, the fact that religion’s peace is rooted in a mechanism of violence, one hesitant word from him suffices to unleash an anything but peaceful reprisal. And yet, where the totality is structured as a concert of voices, in which any discrepancy is eliminated or forced to comply with the norm, this right to speak that he claims becomes justice;⁵⁰ it becomes a precious testimony that safeguards and reinstates a different history. On one hand, the word of the sacred, as «the numinous [that] annuls the links between persons by making beings participate […] in a drama not brought about willingly by them, an order in which they founder»,⁵¹ and on the other the desecrating discourse, words that are disruptive, inadequate, insufficient for the context in which they arise; that raise dust and shake in the whirlwind, in the confusion of the storm: the place from which God will speak, and which Job foresees with fear — he crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds (9:17) — and which, once uttered «demands that one behave in an irresponsible manner (by means of treachery or betrayal), while still recognizing, confirming and reaffirming the very one thing sacrifices namely the order of ethics and human responsibilities».⁵² If the act of turning towards what the law requires, of submitting to and enduring its call and admonishment, also contains the promise of an identity that is at least secure — because it is inserted into a system of coherent representation, because it is ordered in and by that system — what is the result of refusing to yield to that and refusing to submissively join the hierarchy? Is he, from now on, expelled from what is intellegible and thus “real”, consigned to its margins?⁵³ What Job makes clear is that the subject exists before being named as such, that the subject’s existence precedes his baptism in the embrace of the community and having a position assigned to him; and by breaking free from the sublime, persuasive words of his friends — rejecting their discourse and with it «the great form of tragedy, the highest of all forms»,⁵⁴ Job makes it clear that this certainty cannot be removed by any voice, any claim. Therefore I shall not keep quiet: in anguish of my spirit I shall speak, in the bitterness of my soul I shall complain (7:11). Submission does not bring the individual to life out of thin air, and for this reason he can very well refuse the order given, and the profile traced for him – along with the impeccably finished rules envisaged for him. And thus he can prevent the closure of the loop, and sabotage it; which therefore means acting retroactively against the ordering authority, exceeding its reproach and undermining its unified operation — and now here it is, thrown into disarray, in pieces. We might then «reread being as precisely the potentiality that remains unexhausted by any particular interpellation»,⁵⁵ which undermines both the identity that is prescribed for the subject and the identity of that community⁵⁶ (including the individual in question) that draws him in to assign him a rank, but in doing so opens up new and not yet envisaged perspectives⁵⁷ (and it is anybody’s guess whether these will come together homogeneously). «What is oneness and singularity of a voice? What is this formation or conformation which has nothing of a “universal particular”, aut which executes (interprets), on the contrary, this sharing in which, paradoxically, everything universal disappears? […] No meaning originates there, nor is any achieved there, but an always different (other) announcement is delivery there: that of the other, exactely».⁵⁸Why not leave the set open, the door flung back — patah yyîôb — and allow multiple convergences and divergences, without demanding obedience to the normative telos of a definitional closure? Why not hope for a more just justice — and speak out for it, and take a stand? Let the text unfold beyond measure, to escape surreptitious attempts to silence it; let it overcome what is grafted into it, and grow over that, extinguishing it; let the word thunder out once more, cacophonous, indistinct and inopportune; let clouds gather round it, and, at the height of the tension, let it break open and rain down torrentially: I hate, I scorn your festivals; I take no pleasure in your solemn assemblies. When you bring me burnt offerings, your grain offerings, I do not accept them and I do not look at your communion sacrifices of fat cattle. Spare me the din of your chanting, let me hear none of your strumming on lyres but let justice flow like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream! (Am 5:21-24).