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The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity

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
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780262740258
  • Genres
  • philosophy, religion, theology, christianity, psychoanalysis, theory, psychology, politics, christian
  • Release date
  • 2003