Sacrifice and the Self: The Feminine Sacrificial Identity and the Case of Milada Horáková

Abstract

This study aims to portray the self of the sacrificial subject, specifically the feminine sacrificial self. The Christian discourse on sacrifice is dominated by the scholarship of René Girard and his followers. This study briefly presents Girard’s approach and pinpoints its weaknesses in order to complement it with the work of Julia Kristeva and Jan Patočka. All these approaches, taken together, provide a complex picture of what the autonomous feminine sacrificial self looks like. Starting from thorough theoretical and analytical analyses of Girard, Kristeva and Patočka, this study then applies their insights through the particular example of the feminine sacrificial self of Milada Horáková. The example of this political prisoner and victim of a Stalinist showtrial in 1950s Czechoslovakia aptly illustrates the uniqueness of the feminine sacrificial self.