Žižek and Theology PDF
Preview Žižek and Theology
Zˇizˇek and Theology This page intentionally left blank ˇ Zizek and ˇ Theology Adam Kotsko Published by T&T Clark A Continuum imprint The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in anyformorbyany means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Copyright © Adam Kotsko, 2008 Adam Kotsko has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-10: PB: 0-567-03245-0 ISBN-13: PB: 978-0-567-03245-4 Typeset by Kenneth Burnley, Irby, Wirral, Cheshire Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall Introduction Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction: A materialist theology? 1 The approach of this book 3 Hegel 8 Lacan 13 Marx 16 1 Ideology critique 19 Ideology in practice 21 The challenge of cynicism 26 Ideology and the big Other 28 The stumbling block of the Real 31 Keeping enjoyment at bay 34 Liberal democracy and nationalism 38 2 Subjectivity and ethics 43 The Real as sexual difference 46 The‘vanishing mediator’ 51 Fantasy and the big Other 55 Diagnosing ethics 60 The cure 65 3 The Christian experience 71 Prefiguring the theological turn 74 A politics of truth 77 The reign of perversion 83 Job and Judaism 88 Cross and collective 93 Love beyond the law 96 Contents 4 Dialectical materialism, or the philosophy of freedom 101 What is dialectical materialism? 103 Self-consciousness as short circuit 108 The anti-adaptive animal 113 Theological materialism 118 The politics of refusal, or waiting on the Holy Spirit 123 5 Theological responses 129 An inventory of theological themes 130 Responses from Radical Orthodoxy 133 Other theological responses 137 Zˇizˇek’s‘method of correlation’ 141 Zˇizˇek and tradition 145 Religionless Christianity and the death of God 149 Notes 155 Index 171 vi Introduction Acknowledgements I would like to thank Ted Jennings, who first encouraged me to undertake this project and who read and commented on multiple drafts at all stages – a better doctoral adviser cannot be imagined. Brad Johnson also responded to all drafts and served as an in- valuable, and long-suffering, sounding board on all aspects of this project. I would also like to thank the following people for their help at various points in this process: Michael Bérubé, Bill Brower, Young-Ho Chun, Joshua Davis, Jodi Dean, Scott McLemee, Tedra Osell, Eric Santner and Karl James Villarmea; my editor, Thomas Kraft; the staff of the Hammond Library at the Chicago Theological Seminary; and my family. vii This page intentionally left blank Introduction A materialist theology? In the early years of the twenty-first century, Slavoj Zˇizˇek became famous. He had been a widely discussed figure in certain English- speaking academic circles for over ten years at that point, ever since the publication of his break-out work, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989).1 As political events in the United States and around the world began once more to seem urgent after the rela- tive calm of the 1990s, however, Zˇizˇek started to become famous in a different way. More than an academic celebrity, he became a public intellectual, following his popular response to the 9/11 attacks, Welcome to the Desert of the Real,2 with a series of political essays on seemingly every pressing issue, in seemingly every pos- sible forum: The New York Times, The London Review of Books, In These Times, even Foreign Policy. Beyond that, his many public lectures drew overflow crowds, and he was the subject of a docu- mentary film, entitled simply Zˇizˇek! (2005), and of another film called The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006), in which he provides commentary on scenes from his favourite movies. All in all, he was attaining a level of notoriety, and even of celebrity, normally unimaginable for philosophers. Indeed, after the death of Jacques Derrida in 2004, he arguably became not only the most famous living philosopher, but perhaps the only properly famous living philosopher. As a result of his increasingly high profile, recent years have seen a number of introductory volumes on Zˇizˇek’s thought. Like those books, mine is motivated in part by the growing demand for help in getting up to speed on Zˇizˇek’s complex and voluminous body of work. Its more immediate occasion, however, is one particular aspect of Zˇizˇek’s output in those years: as his fame has grown, so has his interest in theology. His engagement with theology began in a serious way with The Ticklish Subject (1999), where he devoted a full chapter to a critical response to Alain 1
The list of books you might like
