Annette Messager is most widely known for her flock of stuffed and taxidermized sparrows clothed in tiny, knitted woolen garments. Here we find not only the germination of ideas regarding violence and the sacred, but an enduring connection between the two. Yet, to date, very little has been critically written about Messager's work in terms of violence and the sacred, most critics choosing instead to contextualize her in the received categories of feminism, identity politics, desire and postmodem conditions of the fragmented body. This perpetuated, one-directional reading denies opportunity for new interpretation. My argumentative lens will take specific examples in her reuvre to contextualize her work among three key thinkers: Georges Bataille, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and René Girard—all of whom have developed critical treatises about violence and the sacred. Using theoretical discourses that already exist will provide a framework for looking at Messager's art in a new light.