Christianity: Tragedy or Comedy?

Geoff Holsclaw's notes from Slavoj Zizek (an atheist Protestant) “Only an Atheist Can Believe: Politics between Fear and Trembling” given at Calvin College on November, 10th, 2006.

Streaming video is available in Real Audio format here: http://www.calvinseminary.edu/lectures/archive2144.ram

For those of you who have never read anything by Zizek, well, his lectures are exactly the same: entertainingly full of pop-cultural references, able to keep capture the attention of the ADHD generation through frequent (if not confusing) jumps in topic; and simultaneously keeping things light, yet able to sustain a certain gravity to the issues discussed.

It would take too long to summarize all the twists and turns of Zizek’s presentation, so instead I will focus on the themes of tragedy and comedy.

As fate would have it, just before hearing Zizek’s lecture, my wife and I saw “Stranger than Fiction,” a film about a woman writing a book, but the main character is a real person who hears her narrating his life.  Eventually ending up at the door of a literary professor, he is told that the main thing is to find out if his story is a tragedy or a comedy.  The professor explains that comedies affirm the continuity of Life and end in a wedding, but that tragedies express the inevitability of Death, ending with the demise of the hero. 

So the question before us concerns whether Christianity is a tragedy or a comedy.

Zizek began his lecture interrogating two recent films concerning the events of 9/11:  Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center and also United 93. 

The problem that Zizek has with these films is that they are terribly apolitical, both avoiding the context and situation of the event, and resisting the horror of their actual occurrence.  Instead these seek to inspire the audience, to bring out the best in the American people.  Zizek claims these films (as with most catastrophe movies) offer us an implicit “Blessing in Disguise” theology.  What he means by this is that they seek to inspire us by giving these tragedies a redemptive meaning.  But for Zizek this attempt at giving disaster a meaning is ultimately a pagan aspiration of inscribing everything into a unified whole. 

But for Zizek, Christianity is not about giving tragedy a meaning.  Zizek turns initially to the Biblical story of Job to confront the pagan political theology of “blessing in disguise.”  You can always tell a story to inspire and make sense of things, and this is exactly what Job’s friend attempt to do.  But Job refuses to make sense of it all.  He refuses to give an understandable meaning to his circumstances.  Giving meaning to everything, even the disasters, is a pagan process of bringing the universe into a unified totality, even if through the tragic perspective.  It brings the excessiveness of the human situation back into an understandable frame of reference.  The gesture of Job is to refuse to fall into this pagan discourse.

So for Zizek, Christianity is not a Tragedy, attempting to reinsert a minimal order and meaning, but instead, as revealed on the Cross, the God of transcendent Order, giving meaning from above to our darkest hours, dies.  The Cross reveals that there is no One to give reasons beyond humanity, beyond the God working within human history and freedom. 

Excursus on Fundamentalism:
The problem with Fundamentalism is that it, like Tragedy, attempts of giving a clear meaning to everything.  It attempts to fill in all the Gaps.  But Belief is full of gaps.  That is what makes it faith, not certainty.  Belief is never belief concerning the facts, but rather between the facts, or rather is itself counter-factual.  The problem with fundamentalism is that it obliterates all the gaps, or rather fills them all in, such that there is utter continuity between faith and facts.  But this reall    y ends up being the end of faith, the end of belief.  Usually this loss of faith is manifest in a believers life in a moment of disaster where they realize they haven’t had faith for a long time.  Fundamentalism, for Fact-amentalism destroys the gaps within which faith grows. 

Fundamentalism is congruous with the films such as World Trade Center and United 93 because they are seek to give a definite meaning to all circumstances, which even in its tragic form, is a return to pagan universal holism (everything has its place).  In this we can see how it is that conservative evangelical theology falls in line with Bush administration politics. 

But if Christianity is not a Tragedy, then it must be a Comedy right?  Well, yes, but not like you might think.  According to Stranger than Fiction, a Comedy is life affirming, and doesn’t the Book of Revelation end with the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.  Sounds like a Comedy to me.

But for Zizek, Comedy is not merely life affirming.  While Tradegy pretends to stare straight into the horror of death, ultimately it turns away from the meaninglessness of Death, replacing it with a reason, a “blessing is disguise.”  But for Zizek, Comedy is an indirect means of looking into the meaningless of death, and the horrors of life.  He draws our attention to movies of the holocaust.  A movie, a tragedy, which brought us right into the life and death of the concentration camp would be profane.  How could a movie really attempt to portray the “blessing in disguise” of the death camps.  Impossible!  But a Comedy could depict this meaninglessness, even if indirectly, where we laugh to keep us from crying. 

Now there was quite a bit more that Zizek discussed, but I will finish here with Zizek’s suggestion that Christianity offers a political theology, not of the pagan variety bringing meaning into the disaster, but rather a political theology of Christian Comedy, able to look at the horrors of life, not demeaning them by giving them meaning, and thereby offering a particularly powerful position for bringing about change in all areas of life. 

Asides (from Q/A session):

1)    The prohibition not to make idols in OT is not meant to lead to mysticism (lacking conceptual/aesthetic form), but rather to point us always back to the truth that God is found within humanity in the face of the neighbor.  The image of God is found in the redeemed community, it is not a denial of cognative or aesthetic representations.

2)    Zizek the Protestant:  Zizek is against Eastern Orthodox view of theosis and its attempt at union with God.  How could an atheist ever buy into that?  But he is also against Catholicism because of it “symbolic exchange”.  That’s what he said and I have no idea what he means by this.  He says that Protestantism expresses what Christianity always was.  It is the true rendering of Christianity. 

Geoff's Thoughts: I’m  not sure what to make of it that an atheist could feel so secure with Protestantism.  Does that means we are already so fall off the path that an atheist finds it so inviting, or just that it picture of redemption is so compelling an atheist can’t resist it?

3)    Predestination is Right On!:  Asked by an astute, and very Reformed student, how Zizek’s account of freedom might relate to predestination, Zizek responded, “Yes, salvation is not about good deeds.  It is predestination!”  The predestinational paradox that our salvation is already decided, we just don’t know it, that it is a type of retroactive constitution of necessity, is very appealing to Zizek.  Or as he says, “True Freedom is about choosing your necessity.  True Freed is not a choice between deserts (cake or brownies), but a compulsion of destinies (to join the freedom fighter, the civil rights movement, acting justly).”

Comments

[Jason Hesiak]

Another wonderful post I think Geoff. I was just having a conversation elsewhere about the pagan urge to contain everything into a toality that offers a bastard meaning grounded in some succession of logic that points backwards to some "necessary" and logocentric "first cause" that is profanized by being forced out into the open for us to see and play with. This does a lot of "funny" things. "The persuit of happiness" (another film coming out soon) is ALWAYS the "blessing in disquise", right? It's the "necessary" techton of our fated nature. Is this why the white picket fince seems "necessary" if we are to be good American? I like "True Freedom is about choosing your necessity." Although I wouldn't exactly say WE choose it (maybe that's a Zizek thing?).

Jason

[Eric Lee]

Geoff,

Thanks for this! I'd never thought of the 'totalizing' aspect of fundamentalism before. Very interesting. Also quite intriguing that Zizek rightly picks up on this.

I also just saw Stranger Than Fiction last night. My wife and I had some good discussions over it afterwards -- we loved it!

Peace,

Eric

[Jason Hesiak]

I forgot to mention...I too saw "Stranger than Fiction" Fri. night and found it to be relatively good...

[byron]

Thanks for this summary - any chance that the talk was recorded?

1) The prohibition not to make idols in OT is not meant to lead to mysticism (lacking conceptual/aesthetic form), but rather to point us always back to the truth that God is found within humanity in the face of the neighbor. The image of God is found in the redeemed community, it is not a denial of cognative or aesthetic representations.
I found this very profound, especially in the light of Augustine's discussion of the beatific vision in City of God 22.29, where he says basically the same thing (I posted on this here).

Did he discuss specific movies of the holocaust/shoah? Life is Beautiful springs to mind.

As for Zizek's atheism, I suspect that it is 'close to the kingdom', indeed much closer than much that today passes for religion. We need more atheists like him! (Moltmann has a good short paper on this point here).

[Andy]

Geoff - intriguing post. I like the discussion regarding tragedy and comedy.

"Giving meaning to everything, even the disasters, is a pagan process of bringing the universe into a unified totality, even if through the tragic perspective. It brings the excessiveness of the human situation back into an understandable frame of reference. The gesture of Job is to refuse to fall into this pagan discourse."

I'm not convinced of the comparison between the perspective of Job's friends and that of Job - although I grant that they are different perspectives. In Chapter 42, Job acknowledges that he spoke of things he did not understand...but he also affirms what he does know - that God can do all things and that no plan of his can be thwarted. While this does not represent a total understanding of God - it does seem to imply an understanding of God that contains the totality of creation.

What's more - prooftexting Job ignores the remainder of Scripture - a classic error in modern theology whether fundamental or liberal. Jesus himself seems to reinterpret (or interpret) all of history in light of himself - not in a way that gives us the total view of God - but in a way that gives meaning to the totality of history. Perhaps the desire to bring the universe into a unified totality is more purely human than pagan?

[Zizek]

Calvin English Dept:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engl/

Streaming Video:
http://www.calvinseminary.edu/lectures/archive2144.ram

[Jason Hesiak]

Seems like the guy who makes statements about the end of belief also means the end of commentary...usually the boat in front of Finnagins Wake circles back around...

:)

[Geoff Holsclaw]

byron,

in response to your thoughts on Z.'s atheism, I totally agree. He is a model of belief in his unbelief. And no he didn't discuss "life is beautiful" which is a comedy (of sorts) and would have worked very well with where he is going.

andy,
Z. certainly is proof-texting in a sense, but he is not bound by any creed or tradition. He is a Hegelian Christian, even before he is protestant, after.

and as an interesting nugget he said he is working on a book about hegel and Christianity. maybe this will be his definitive statement of his theology, b/c in his other books on christianity you never get a clear picture of where he is going and what he really thinks.

[David]

Geoff,

Very nice post. In addition to "Life is Beautiful," I think Zizek really needs to discuss Dante in relation to the question of "Christian Comedy." Perhaps he already has, but I have yet to hear anything about it. It seems like the dichotomy between tragedy and comedy is a little stiff and limiting, though. Are not comedies a way of capturing and manipulating the drama of life in such a way as to cater to an audience that would rather laugh than cry? Is a comedy really a better genre for the passion narrative than tragedy? Is not the cross a kind of "blessing in disguise"?

I ask these somewhat rhetorically because I agree with Zizek that comedy is the supremely Christian genre; Dante is the greatest writer who ever lived, in my opinion. Even so, I think we need some more flexibility in his typology. Why not a tragi-comedy? I think some of the reflections by Auden in The Dyer's Hand, such as "Notes on the Comic" and "The Frivolous & the Earnest."

Also, the statement on finding "humanity in the face of the neighbor" seems taken directly from the pages of Levinas. Is there a connection there?

[Jason Hesiak]

David,

I haven't read your Auden references, and don't know Levinas...but from what I gather about what Zizek was trying to say in the lecture, the Cross can't really be compared to United 93. There is definitely an element of illusion and escape from an acceptance of a harsh reality in those pop culture movies that, if we are to truly encounter the Cross, CAN'T be avoided. AND, from my experience in Christain community, our tentative approach toward the cross usually more resembles United 93's approach to 9/11 than Jesus' march to Calvary. Maybe, though, I'm misuderstanding what you were saying about "blessing in disquise", and you meant something else anyway...

And all,

I was just having a bit of a conversation with Geoff on his own blog site...from a post he did on Badio (who I don't know a small fraction as well as Goeff...in fact what I DO know I pretty much owe entirely to Geoff). However, there I came across a paper that claimed that the FIGURE of the homosexual is the "absent center" of fundamentalism placed there as a result of the doctrinally written demarcation lines that constitute the defining lines of the community. In other words, fundamentalism definitively excludes the homosexual, and just as the Jew became the "absent center" hidden at the "sacred interior" of Nazism...in fundamentalism's effort to "close the gaps", the figure of the homosexual becomes the definition of it.

If you want a better explanation...go to Geoff's site to find the paper in the comments section:

http://for-the-time-being.blogspot.com/2006/09/badiou-event-truth-subject.html#links

Anyway, I say all this to lead to a point of connection to Zizek that I find interesting. That paper sets up a figurative and sturcutral relationship between center and boundary. This is a relationship that is very important to me as an Architect. Let me quote to you what I said to Geoff on the matter:

"'Insead of being the guardians of a threshold, here Angels appear to be teh unsurpassable demons of the Limit. The tradition that had always imagined them as guides, clarifiers undergoes in the Duino Elegies a radical questioning. The image of the Angel is not reduced to fable nor does its function cease because - as in the rabbinical orthodoxy - one fears the idolatrous aspects of the cult or because - as in the great syntheses of Byzantine theology in Palmas and Cabasilus - it is deemed unnecessary after the Incarnation of the Verbum, but because its figure has been concentrated and absolutized in the terrible figure of the limit which, unsurpassable, afflicts every human...' - from The Necessary Angel, by Massimo Cicciari, p. 9.

Interestingly, as well, the major and most identifiable marker between ancient and modern architecture is the center of the primary space of a building or public space. In an ancient space, the 'center' typically has SOMETHING 'present' there...take [Bernini's] 'Four Fountains' in Rome as an example (although one could argue that that was actually modern)...OK, better example...Michaelangelo's Campidoglio. In any modern space, the center is conspicuously absent. In fact, it has been said, if a PERSON can't stand in the center of a space and view the whole thing from that location...it's not a modern space."

And..."...someone or some link on the 'church and contemporary culture' blog mentioned that the a/theology folk Zizek, Taylor ect. are returning to a pre-modern and pre-medieval way. What I was writing above about absence and presence and the center...remind me of something you wrote on your recent post on Zizek:

'1) The prohibition not to make idols in OT is not meant to lead to mysticism (lacking conceptual/aesthetic form), but rather to point us always back to the truth that God is found within humanity in the face of the neighbor. The image of God is found in the redeemed community, it is not a denial of cognative or aesthetic representations.'"

Something that is still left in question for me "here", is, if we primarily relate ourselves to "the face of the redeemed community" as a "figurative center" (rather than a set of excluded figures as constituted by a written/non-actual "body" of doctrine), in which case either there IS NO "boundary", or the "boundary" is simply our actions that REFLECT our redemption (center and boundary are always mirrors to each other)...then is God like some "unseen" mirror to the whole "construct"/actuality of the center/boundary configuration, or what? Am I holding onto something (some idea of God as what we don't see) that is unnecessary and useless here?

Is God simply...I dunno, the "divine substance" in an of itself as a Thomist might say, or - as another might say - the hidden under-Grounds on the other side of the horizon from which Reality appears (and stands up) to us (even in thinking)? In other words, in my questioning of the figurative relationship between what we do and don't see, when the "absent" center of modernity is replaced by a presence...uuhhh...not that I expect my picture to be "complete", as incompletion is part of what's going on...but, uuhhh....something's still missing for me! Is THIS why Zizek calls himself WHAT WE WOULD NOW DEEM an "athiest"? Is Zizek really more of a "theist" than I? Or is Zizek actually just an "unbeliever", plain and simple, who can help me clarify and strengthen my con-figuration of realtiy?

I point here with my question to what Geoff in that very post referenced, in the commnents, talks about as the credal history of the church...which, it seems, Badio deems the "production of meaning". How does Zizek relate to the creeds (maybe here I should just read Zizek?)? And how does that relate exactly to my question? Are the creeds characters or scenery in the story? Or is it more pertinent to ask if we view them as definitive or descriptive?

God bless,

Jason

[geoff holsclaw]

David,

I think you are right that Zizek hasn't looked at Dante (or the entire corpus of pre-Enlightenment literature for that matter).  He comes at these issues not as a literary critic, but a philosopher influence by Hegel and Lacan (and he loves Kafka).  Also, Zizek said in the lecture that the only thing he could agree with Levinas is that the face of God is reveal in human community. 

jason,
concerning Zizek's atheist, well, I think he is "just" an atheist.  But he might be protest atheist (as Moltmann puts it here, thanks byron for the reference) and that Protest-antism is the best version. 

I left this part out of the summary...But Zizek talked about Rumsfeld and a press conference he gave talking about "knowing what we know."  According to Rumsfeld there are 3 "knowns": 1) the "known knowns" (those things you know that you know- "I know my train leaves at 8am"), 2) then there is the "known unknowns" (that when you know that you don't know something- "I know that I do know know which track it is leaving on."), 3) the "unknown unknowns" (which are those thing we didn't even know could be known- "I had no idea that the train station had teleporters!").  But Zizek adds a 4th category, the "unknown knowns."  This is when you know something, but didn't know that you knew.  It is implicit knowledge, or unconscious knowledge, which works itself out on the social level.    So back to atheism, perhaps zizek really is a believer, but just doesn't know it yet?

[Jason Hesiak]

And one more thing...a bit more pertinent to the post itself. Vitruvius, a Roman architect known less for his buildings and more for being the guy wrote the first "treatise" on architecture (the composition of "treatises" itself being relevant to this whole thing of "filling in the gaps"), said that the background (what sets the scene, the "ground" IN which everything in the ACTION appears) of comic theater is the street, whereas that background of tragedy is the column. Now, to understand what he's saying you have to get out of the world constituted by definitions in the first place, but I don't think that it really helps us render Christianity as either comedy or tragedy anyway.

At first thought (where I used to be), it would render Christianity more of a tragedy...because the figure of the column is a con-figuration of a sacred space...an emblem of the relationship of what appears to what does not appear. The sacra-ficial (facial) GROUND upon which the column stands (earth) itself figuratively takes a face up to the heavens. The column, a representation of demo-cracy (in Gk. meaning both "man" and "land"), faces the man it represents. The street (usually in a classical city actually BELOW the site of the sacred spaces), however, is the site of what is more "common", more accessable to an audience composed of a more "common man".

I think, maybe though, that this Roman line between the sanctuary and the street itself betrays a bit the message of Jesus...that is "shouted from the rootops"...but not by an elitite priest allowed to enter the interior sacred room of the temple.

:)

[Jason Hesiak]

Thanks Geoff!

Maybe I need to study some more philosophy (in other words, maybe Zizek's idea of "knowledge" comes out of his loyalty to Hegel as opposed to Heiddeger, an opposition I really couldn't state to anyone), but from what you said about a fourth category of knowledge, according to how I think in terms of appearing - and notappearing - instead of consciousness - and unconsciousness - (which, I dunno...maybe I owe to Heiddegher and don't even "know" it?)...that would make me an atheist as much as Zizek. "Now we know in part, later..." Or maybe it's simply a question of belief, and your "he's 'just an athiest' means he "doesn't believe".

? Thanks again...(oh, and I read Byron's link to Moltman before...didn't really help...maybe when I get home I need to read it again more closely...

Jason