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. --- from the publisher Contents:
Series Foreword vii Introduction: The Puppet Called Theology 2 1. When East Meets West 12 2. The "Thrilling Romance of Orthodoxy" 34 3. The Swerve of the Real 58 4. From Law to Love . . . and Back 92 5. Subtraction, Jewish and Christian 122 Appendix: Ideology Today 144 Notes 173 About the Author:
Slavoj Zizek is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Codirector of the Center for Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London.
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