Puppet and the Dwarf : The Perverse Core of Christianity

by Slavoj Zizek

• ISBN13: 9780262740258
• ISBN10: 0262740257
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-12
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

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 Dwarfhe 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.

Author Biography

Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher and Lacanian psychoanalyst and Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	p. vii
Introduction: The Puppet Called Theology	p. 2
When East Meets West	p. 12
The "Thrilling Romance of Orthodoxy"	p. 34
The Swerve of the Real	p. 58
From Law to Love . . . and Back	p. 92
Subtraction, Jewish and Christian	p. 122
Appendix: Ideology Today	p. 144
Notes	p. 173
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