Zizek and Theology

Slavoj Žižek has been called an “academic rock star.” As public visibility of the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst increases, so too does the depth of his engagement with Christian theology. Žižek’s recent work includes extended treatments of key Christian thinkers from Paul, Pascal, and Kierkegaard to G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, while Christology and other theological themes have provided crucial points of reference. Žižek has even said that “to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience".

But Žižek’s work on Christianity often overwhelms students of theology. To be sure, Žižek’s style of argumentation is unusual and his concepts are complex. But the more basic problem is that the work on Christianity is a further development of a broader intellectual project established in many thick volumes produced in the course of the 1990s. This book will bring students of theology up to speed on this broader intellectual project, with an eye toward what brings him to an explicit engagement with Christianity and how both his earlier and more recent works are relevant for theological reflection.

Part I
Introduction - A Materialist Theology?
Short biography
General overview of Žižek’s trajectory

1. Ideology critique and nationalism (early 90’s)
2. Theory of revolutionary subjectivity (late 90’s/early 2000’s)
3. Philosophy of freedom (current work)
   Initial background
4. Basic concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis used by Žižek
5. The Hegelian style of argument
6. Žižek’s materialism: revising Marx, reviving Lenin
7. Use of popular culture
   Part II
8. Ideology critique (Sublime Object of Ideology)
9. A theory of nationalism (Tarrying With the Negative)
10. The revolutionary subject (The Ticklish Subject)
11. The subversive core of Christianity (Fragile Absolute, Puppet and the Dwarf, The Parallax View)
12. Freedom and materialism (The Parallax View)
13. Appendix: Cultural and political analysis
    Part III
14. The reception/response in theology
15. Radical Orthodox critics
16. Assessing Žižek’s contribution as a philosophical reader of Paul
17. Possible future connections
18. Žižek in light of Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity”

19. Žižek and “death of God” theology

    Adam Kotsko is a teaching assistant at Chicago Theological Seminary. His current research interests include 20th century European philosophy and early Christian thought.