The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity - Softcover

Zizek, Slavoj

 
9780262740258: The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0262740257 ISBN 13: 9780262740258
Publisher: MIT Press, 2003

Synopsis

One of our most daring intellectuals offers a Lacanian interpretation of religion, finding that early Christianity was the first revolutionary collective.

Slavoj Žižek 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.

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About the Author

Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher and cultural critic, is Senior Researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, The Parallax View, T he Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic (with John Milbank), and Žižek's Jokes (Did you hear the one about Hegel and negation?), these five published by the MIT Press.

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Publisher
MIT Press
Publication date
2003
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0262740257
ISBN 13 
9780262740258
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
196