by Mladen Dolar (Author), Mladen Dolar (Author), Zupancic (Author), Slavoj Zizek (Author), Alenka (Author)
One of our most daring intellectuals offers a Lacanian interpretation of religion, finding that early Christianity was the first revolutionary collective. Slavoj Zizek has been called an academic rock star and the wild man of theory ; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties. In The Puppet and the Dwarf he offers a close reading of today's religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today's spirituality-New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaism-and then tries to redeem the materialist kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jurgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a postsecular age, this book-with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy-is certain to stir controversy.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 196
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 03 Oct 2003
ISBN 10: 0262740257
ISBN 13: 9780262740258
Book Overview: With this book Zizek consolidates his reputation as the foremost intellectual gadfly of the postmodern cosmopolis. For anyone interested in the contemporary vogue of the 'theological turn' or theories of 'religion without God,' The Puppet and the Dwarf is indispensable reading...If Socrates underwent a ten-year analysis with Jacques Lacan, the result would be Slavoj Zizek. -- Richard Wolin, Distinguished Professor of History and Comparative Literature, the Graduate Center, City University of New York