The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For

183 Pages·2000·10.229 MB·English

by  Slavoj Zizek

THE FRAGILE ABSOLUTE
Or,
Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?
•
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
VERSO
London • New York
Slavoj ZiZek was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1949, and is a professor at
the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck
Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University ofLondon, and
a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana.
He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, New York, and
the University of Paris VIII, as well as at a number of other prestigious
institutions on both sides of the Atlantic.
In his home country, he was a prominent political figure in the 1980s.
He wrote a regular column for the newspaper Mladina and, in 1990,
finished fifth in the election for Slovenia's four-person presidency. His
international reputation as a writer and philosopher was secured in 1989
with the publication of The Sublime Object ofI deology, a book which
applied the author's pioneering distillation of Lacan, Hegel and Marx
to an analysis of agency and modern ideology. A string of much lauded
works have followed, including For They Know Not What They Do (1991),
The Ticklish Subject (1999), Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002), The
Parallax View (2006) and In Defense ofL ost Causes (2008).
As well as providing original insights into psychoanalysis, philosophy
and radical political theory, he has, through employing his extraordinary
scholarship to the examination of popular entertainment, established
himself as a witty and deeply moral cultural critic. He has been the subject
of two feature-length documentaries, SlavojZilek: The Reality oft he Virtual
(2004) andZizekl(2oo5). He also presented and wrote the three-part British
TV documentary A Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006).
His compelling, charismatic presence and puckish sense of the absurd
have prompted the press to dub him 'the Elvis of cultural theory' and an
'intellectual rock star'. However, these jocular monikers belie a seriousness
of purpose that has been nothing short of startling in an era marked by
despondency and disengagement on the Left. More than an academic or
theorist, ZiZek has the gravitas and drive of a breed once thought extinct:
the revolutionary. He has made philosophy relevant again for a whole
generation of politically committed readers.
of
A senes classic philosophical texts ftom Verso
The four pillars ofS lav oj ZiZek's work are (Lacanian) psychoanalysis,
(Hegelian) philosophy, a (Marxist) theory ofi deology, and (Christian)
theology. The structure of this scholarly edifice is mapped out in
the titles of'The Essential Zizek', four central interventions into
of
each of these fields. The focus of The Sublime Object Ideology is the
importance of Lacan's work to philosophy and contemporary
political struggle; The Ticklish Subject examines German Idealism and
of
the unsurpassable horizon of our thinking; The Plague Fantasies
anatomizes the ideological mechanisms that shape our daily
experience; and The Fragile Absolute explores the emancipatory core
of Christianity.
0/
Also availablef tom Verso the same author:
of
In Defense Lost Causes
of
Welcome to the Desert the Real
Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle
Revolution at the Gates, Zizek on Lenin: The Wn'til18s
lJ)I7
Lacan:TheSilentPanne~
Firsr edition published by Verso 2000
This edition published by Verso 2008
© Slavoj ziZek 2000
All rights reserved
Paperback edition first published by Verso 2001
23456789 10
The moral rights of rhe author have been asserted
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London WIF oEG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-302-5
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset by Hewer UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in the US by Maple Vail
Contents
Prqace to the Second Edition:
..
A Glance into the Archives o/Islam
Vll
Introduction: For Nobocfy and Nothing
XXiX
1 Giving Up the Balkan Ghost 1
2 The Spectre of Capital 9
3 Coke as objet petit a 19
4 From tragique to moque-comique 37
5 Victims, Victims Everywhere 49
6 The Fantasmatic Real
57
7 Why Is the Truth Monstrous? 63
8 ofS tones, Lizards and Men 75
9 The Structure and Its Event 85
10 From the Decalogue to Human Rights 99
11 The Principle of Charity 105
12 Christ's Uncoupling 115
13 'You must, because you can!' 121
14 From Knowledge to Truth ... and Back 127
15 The Breakout 135
Index 151
Preface to the New Edition:
of
A Glance into the Archives Islam
The axis of The Fra8ile Absolute is the radical incompatibility between
Christianity and so-called Oriental spirituality. The obvious question the
book raises is thus: where does Islam, this disturbing excess that represents
the East for the West and the West for the East, stand in relation to this?
a
In his La p~chanafyse l'!preuve de l'Islam, Fethi Benslama engages in a
systematic search for the larchive' ofIslam, for its obscene, secret, mythical
support which ne cesse pas de ne pas s'ecrire and as such sustains the explicit
dogma. Is the story of Hagar, for example, not Islam's larchive', relating
l
to Islam's explicit teaching in the same way the secret Jewish tradition of
Moses relates to the explicit teachings ofJ udaism? In his discussion oft he
Freudian figure of Moses, Eric Santner introduces the key distinction
between symbolic history (the set ofe xplicit mythical narratives and ideo
logico-ethical prescriptions that constitute the tradition of a community
- what Hegel would have called its lethical substance') and its obscene
Other, the unacknowledgeable, Ispectral', fantasmatic secret history that
effectively sustains the explicit symbolic tradition, but has to remain fore
closed ifit is to be operative.' What Freud endeav~urs to reconstitute in
Moses and Monotheism (the story of the murder ofM oses, etc.) is just such
a spectral history haunting the space oft he Jewish religious tradition. One
a
1 La p~chanafyse l'ipreuve de !'Islam, Paris: Aubier, 2002.
2 See Eric Sancner, 'Traumatic Revelations: Freud's Moses and the Origins ofA nti
Semitism', in Renata Salecl, ed., Sexuation, Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
viii PREFACE
becomes a full member of a community not simply by identifYing with
its explicit symbolic tradition, but only when one also assumes the spectral
dimension that sustains this tradition, the ghosts who haunt the living,
the secret history of traumatic fantasies transmitted (between the lines',
through the lacks in, and distortions of, the explicit symbolic tradition.
Judaism's stubborn attachment to the unacknowledged violent founding
gesture that haunts the public legal order as its spectral supplement
enabled the Jews to survive for thousands of years without a land or
common institutional tradition: they refused to give up their ghost, to
sever their link to their secret, disavowed tradition. The paradox ofJ udaism
is that it maintains fidelity to the founding violent Event precisely by not
confessing and symbolizing it: this (repressed' status of the Event is what
gives Judaism its unprecedented vitality.
To what repressed Event, then, does Islam owe its vitality? The key is
provided by the reply to another question: how does Islam, the third Religion
of the Book, fit into this series? Judaism is the religion of genealogy, of the
succession of generations. When, in Christianity, the Son dies on the Cross,
this means (as Hegel was fully aware) not only that the Father also dies, but
that the patriarchal genealogical order as such dies - since the Holy Spirit
does not fit into the family series, it introduces a post-paternal/familial
community. In contrast to both Judaism and Christianity, Islam excludes
God from the domain of the paternal logic: Allah is not a father, not even a
symbolic one - God is one, he is neither born nor does he give birth. There
is no placef or a HOfy Famify in Islam This is why Islam emphasizes so heavily
the fact that Mohammed himself was an orphan; this is why, in Islam, God
intervenes precisely at the moments of the suspension, withdrawal, failure,
(black-out', of the paternal function (when the mother or the child are
abandoned or ignored by the biological father). What this means is that God
remains thoroughly in the domain oft he impossible Real: he is the impossible
Real outside father, so that there is a (genealogical desert between man and
God'.3 For Freud, this was the problem with Islam, since his entire theory
3 Ibid., p. 320.
PREFACE ix
ofr eligion is based on the parallel between God and the father. More impor
tantly, it inscribes politics into the very heart ofIslam, since the 'genealogical
desert' renders the grounding of a community in the structures of parent
hood or other blood ties impossible: 'the desert between God and Father is
the place where the political institutes itself. With Islam, it is no longer
4
possible to ground a community in the mode of Totem and Taboo, through
the murder of the father and the ensuing guilt that brings the brothers
together - thence Islam's unexpected actuality. This problem lies at the very
heart of the (in)famous umma, the Muslim 'community of believers'; it
accounts for the overlapping oft he religious and the political (the community
should be grounded directly in God's word), as well as for the fact that Islam
is'atitsbest'whenitgroundstheformationofacommunity'outofnowhere',
in the genealogical desert, as an egalitarian revolutionary fraternity - no
wonder Islam succeeds where young men find themselves lacking the
security of a traditional family network. And, perhaps, it is this orphan
character ofIslam that accounts for its lack ofi nherent institutionalization:
the distinctive mark ofIslam is that it is a religion which did not insti
tutionalize itself, it did not, like Christianity, equip itselfw ith a Church.
The Islamic Church is in fact the Islamic State: it is the state which
invented the so-called highest religious authority and it is the head of
state who appoints the man to occupy that office; it is the state which
builds the great mosques, which supervises religious education, it is the
state again which creates the universities, exercises censorship in all the
fields of culture, and considers itself as the guardian of morality.s
We can see here again how the best and the worst are combined in Islam:
it is precisely because Islam lacks an inherent principle of institutional
ization that it was so vulnerable to being co-opted by a state power that
did the work of institutionalization for it. Therein lies the choice that
4 Ibid.
5 Moustapha Safouan, W/pt Are the Arabs Not Free: The Politics ofWritina (unpublished
manuscript).
x PREFACE
confronts Islam: direct 'politicization' is inscribed into its very nature, and
this overlapping of the religious and the political can be achieved either
in the guise of statist co-option, or in the guise of anti-statist collectives.
In contrast to Judaism and Islam, in which the sacrifice of the son is
prevented at the last moment (the Angel intervenes to save Isaac), onfy
Christiamjy optsf or the actual samjice (killing) oft he son. 6This is why, although
Islam recognizes the Bible as a sacred text, it has to deny this fact - in
Islam, Jesus did not really die on the Cross: the Jews 'said (in boast), "We
killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah"; but they
killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them'
(4: 157)· There is in Islam, effectively, a consistent anti-sacrificial logic: in
the Opr' anic version ofIsaac's sacrifice, Abraham's decision to kill his son
is read not as the ultimate indication of his willingness to do God's will,
but as a consequence ofA braham's misinterpretation ofhis dream. When the
angel prevents the act, his message is that Abraham had got it wrong, that
God did not really want him to do it?
Insofar as, in Islam, God is an impossible Real, this works both ways
with regard to sacrifice: it can work against it (there is no symbolic economy
ofe xchange between the believers and God; God is the pure One ofB eyond),
but also in favour of it (when the divine Real turns into the superego
figure of'obscure gods who demand continuous blood').B Islam seems to
oscillate between these two extremes, with the obscene sacrificial logic
culminating in its redescription of the story of Cain and Abel. Here is how
the Opr' an reports on
the truth of the story of the two sons of Adam. Behold! they each
presented a sacrifice (to Allah): It was accepted from one, but not from
the other. Said the latter: 'Be sure I will slay thee.' 'Surely,' said the
former, 'Allah doth accept of the sacrifice of those who are righteous.
a
6 Benslama, La p!ychanafyse !'fpreuve de !'Islam, p. 268.
7 Ibid., p. 275·
8 Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Anafysis, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1979, p. 249.