The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Short Circuits) - Softcover

Slavoj Zizek

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.

About this title

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, The 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.

Review:

With this book Žižek 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 Žižek.

―Richard Wolin, Distinguished Professor of History and Comparative Literature, the Graduate Center, City University of New York

About this edition

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