What is the Gift of Grace?: On Dogville

In this article the political question of the gift is posed in relation to the enigmatic and excessive final sequence of Lars von Trier's "Dogville" (2003). Provides a dense articulation of this "gift of Grace" via a sustained encounter between the thinking of Jacques Lacan and that of Mauss and Bataille, drawing out a Lacanian ethics of controlled destruction that intervenes against the perverse will to accumulate visible in the town of Dogville. The excess of Grace's revenge is linked to the difficult question of political violence, with a suggestion of both the necessity of her gesture and its limits. (Quotes from original text)