ABSTRACT
The sacrificial crisis, that is, the disappearance of the sacrificial rites, coincides with the disappearance of the difference between impure violence and purifying violence. The difference between sacrificial and nonsacrificial violence is anything but exact; it is even arbitrary. The catastrophic inversion of the sacrificial act would appear to be an essential element in the Heracles myth. The scientifically inclined have a tendency to regard literary folk as dubious company, whose society grows increasingly dangerous as their own efforts remain obstinately theoretical. The conflict between the 'two cultures', science and literature, rests on a common failure, a negative complicity shared by literary critics and religious specialists. The extreme poverty of the Kaingang culture on a religious as well as a technological level made a strong impression on Henry, who attributed it to the blood feuds carried on among close relatives. The Kaingang seem to have abandoned all their old mythology in favour of stories of actual acts of revenge.
