Is Slavoj Žižek a Theologian?

Perhaps even asking the question renders meaningless the idea of a post-secular age.  Now it is no longer the theologians versus the secular liberals, nor is it merely a question of secularist making room for religion.  We can't merely designate current theory as post-secular without farther distinguishing how and to way purpose religion has made a return.  But I degress...

Now, of course it goes without saying that Slavoj Žižek has much to say about theology, and even uses theological concepts and codes.  But does that make him a theologian?

My question springs from something Pete Rollins said while describing a reading group he is pulling together which would be "dedicated to introducing and exploring the work of key theorists who are contributing important insights into Christianity."  Now, framed this way, of course I would recommend reading Žižek.  But Rollins introduces Žižek as "a dialectical materialist theologian."  Really?  For me, riffing on the title of this installation piece, I would have to say, "Slavoj Žižek (the theologian) Does not Exist".  

Now I'm sure that many will jump on my intolerant exclusion, my hubristic tendency to police borders and draw lines, my pitiable need for creating Others, Monsters, and Enemies, all of which, they will say, Žižek help us to recognize and overcome.  Well, perhaps. 

But I would counter that by calling Žižek a theologian is to make a huge mistake in either one or two ways.  The first  would be to misunderstand Žižek's project, the other would be to misunderstand theology.  Žižek has been, and it seems always will be, a "fighting atheist" who really does believe that religion in its actual forms, its lived realities (which I hope this site would be about, even if tangentially) is fundamentalist and violent (see he his "Defenders of the Faith" where argues that atheists are the only true practitioners of religion).  For me, Žižek is at his best as a political theorist of ideology practicing a critique of capitalism, and for the most part I choose to walk a great distance with him. But in this way he is functioning as a provocative philosopher (and I'm not saying that while looking down my snobby theological nose).

But the only way to understand Žižek as a theologian is to serious downgrade theology itself, which is the second mistake. If theology is merely the sociology or anthropology of religion run through the Lacanian registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real, then I might as well become a stock broker.  If theology is merely explication of the immanent infinitude of human subjectivity, the void of the cosmos, the height and depth of reality, then let's own up to that (which I believe Žižek has). But if theology is truly about something, someone, transcending reality as we know/perceive/construct it, something, someone, that, yes, stands beyond/above/outside what we can conceive, then it is plain that Žižek is not a theologian, and clearly states as much.  Some version of the latter is what I hope theology is, even in all its apophatic, kataphaic relations, even in all its discursive permutations through the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real.

For these reasons, for me, Žižek is not a theologian.

What have I missed?  What do you think?

Comments

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Geoff,

I guess I just don't see what is at stake here for you. I mean, taking Zizek at his word would be to, you know, count him as engaged in theological discourse. Questioning whether or not that makes him a theologian or a philosopher is about as helpful to reading him as questioning if he is a researcher at the University of Ljubljana or the Director of the Birkbeck Centre for the Humanities. So, no, to describe the theological aspects of Zizek's work that he's explicit about as an atheist is to correctly understand what Zizek is doing.

I'm a little confused. When you write, "And so I, not merely as a theologian, but as a reader of philosophy, want to read Zizek well, and that means taking him at his word. But this doesn't rule out dialogue or inter-disciplinary work between Zizek's philosophy and theology of any form. Let's just do it well, instead of making Zizek into a mirror of some theological project we are fond of", are you implying that Adam's book make Zizek into a mirror os some theological project? Please clarify who has made Zizek into a mirror of a theological project if that's not what you mean.

I guess what I mean is, I see a lot of assertions, but very little in the way of convincing evidence or even an argument and no real context as to what the stakes of this are.

[Carl Raschke]

The debate over who is a theologian and who isn't a theologian, which has been going on as long as I've been in the field (which is a long time), sometimes reminds me of the debate over what's cool and what isn't. It can get passionate, but it's purely arbitrary in many respects. FYI I think that BOTH Milbank and Žižek can be considered theologians - the question is not "whether", but "what kind" of theologians they are. But "arbitrary" has its boundaries as well as criteria, and is always contingent on a certain criteriology one either buys into, or doesn't. The same debate BTW has been going on for decades over what's pomo and what isn't.

The question of whether you can have an "atheist" as a theologian (Altizer), or what Taylor terms an "a/theologian", is sort of beside the point. If the community (academic theological community at least) accepts that sort of definition, which in the case of these guys it has, then there's really no question any more. If we follow Wittgenstein's famous dictum of "meaning as use," then the evolution of language alone settles the point. And even before Altizer and his cronies unveiled in the late 1960s what came to be known as "death of God theology aka radical theology" the possibility of an "a-theist" theology had already gone down fairly well (at mainline Protestant seminaries no less) with the writings of Paul Tillich. Tillich's "God beyond God" enunciated in THE COURAGE TO BE is a pure statement of theological immanence (even more simple and elegant than Deleuze's "pure immanence") that caught fire, believe it or not, in the Eisenhower era.

Schleiermacher in the early 1800s was the first to make the point forcefully that you don't need "transcendence" as your chief ingredient in theology. Most so-called "liberal theology" since Schliermacher has been built around some controlling principle of immanence. It is debatable how much of all this is truly "Christian theology," but it is still theology.

I would call Žižek a theological Dadaist, or a Dadaist theologian. Dadaists by their very nature are party crashers, breaking into someone else's quiet reserve in order to force the question about whether the space in question really has the credentials to be the exclusive club that it claims to be. When Dadaist found Marcel Duchamp, in order to make a statement about the criteriology of art, right at the end of WWI took a "ready made" toilet, entered it in an exhibition, and declared it was "art," art was never the same anymore. But Dadaism is now studied as equally part of the "tradition" of art history the way the British landscape painters of the 18th century are. Žižek is our Duchamp.

Personally, I find the debate between Milbank and Žižek not all that interesting. Žižek is simply doing what many intellectual Marxists (including Tillich when he was still in Germany) were doing in the 1920s, when they were seeking to develop a new theology compatible with dialectical materialism. Same thing was going on in the 1970s with Liberation Theology. Žižek uses a lot of Hegel (a lot more than you realize), as do all Marxists.

What troubles me is how historically old-hat and stale the kind of debates you find in THE MONSTROSITY OF CHRIST really are. Unfortunately, the great age of postmodernist innovation and radicalism seems to have faded into the sunset, and American academics are now doing what they've always done all my adult life - hanging on every word of some self-made European celebrity (they're celebrities because they're European) instead of digging into their history and the very legacy these guys are mining.

The recent fame of Žižek astounds me, because I think French thinkers like Derrida, Deleuze (the last two admittedly recently dead, but that doesn't negate their significance), Marion, and Nancy (admittedly old guys, which may make them less appealing) as well as German philosophers such as Peter Sloterdijk), all of whom talk about religion and "theological" matters have a lot more to say on the topic. Žižek is a great entertainer, and someone whose captured the American academic "tonight show" circuit, but that doesn't mean he's got more depth. Rather less. Žižek decoded Lacan for theologians - I think that is his greatest contribution.

This blog is called "church and pomo." I would remind readers that as someone present at the creation of "postmodern theology" in the 1970s, and as one who along with people like Taylor birthed it and shaped it in its early stages, that the same issues were then up for grabs. In those days it was "assumed" that the only theology was Neo-Orthodox theology (unless you were some sort of sectarian fundamentalist who attended schools where they read anything except the Bible, anti-evolutionist tirades, and perhaps Francis Schaefer).

Because Neo-Orthodoxy by then had become so, well, uh, booorrring, anyone studying theology was looking for something more insightful and more engaging. Along came the death of God movement, and it drew a lot of attention, but it was perceived academically as more show than substance. Altizer actually became a serious thinker (and I would say a great Christian thinker) after this early days of fame. His later writings are much more interesting than what he wrote in the Sixties.

In the age of the late 1960s and early 70s social ferment, cultural revolution, and radicalism, Marx and Hegel were all the rage. If you read an old chestnut like Juergen Moltmann's THEOLOGY OF HOPE (which interestingly is much like Derrida's SPECTERS OF MARX without speaking Derridese), you can get a sense of all this. Then because the philosophical establishment was so boring because it was so densely and decadently analytical(how many books can you write about the relation/difference between "denotation" and "connotation"?), the new generation slowly turned to Continental philosophy, which was driven by the late Heidegger. Then Derrida came on the scene, and the rest is history.

Of course I would point out until Jack Caputo published PRAYERS AND TEARS in the late 1990s, most theologians of all kinds (even "radical ones") wouldn't touch Derrida. Taylor's writings during this period, which feature Derrida, are really far less about Derrida and more about Taylor's own sort of "neo-Hegelian" vision, which naturally has to consider the importance of everything. When I offered my first Derrida seminar in 1998 I could only scrape up two students, and they were in English and political theory. No theologians. Freakout. Now everybody wants to study Derrida. I thank Jack for that. And of course we have people talking about "deconstructive theology," though I'm not sure how Derridean it really is what they are talking about.

BTW's 75 percent of the American philosophical academy (which is non-Continental) STILL doesn't consider Derrida a "real philosopher." Real philosophers argue, debate, demonstrate, and refute. "Real philosophers" don't deconstruct, which is what, according to this canard as expressed by one of my own philosophical associates, only "literary types" do.

Yes, good people, from my humble point of view, I would say Žižek IS a theologian in the same way that Duchamp and Andy Warhol are artists. But he may not be a "real theologian." Thirty years ago we referred to theologians who did all the Christian confessional stuff as "confessional theologians" and people like Tillich or Taylor as "philosophical theologians." So maybe we can reach consensus on the latter point. Of course it still raises the unresolved question - still fiercely debated - whether you can Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, or neo-pagan "theologians," which in a lot of non-evangelical seminary faculty many claim to actually do.

I think the only way to settle the issue is what I would call the "smell a theologian" criterion. If you get a whiff that there's a theologian in the room, or in a book, you've got to go with your sense. But it's probably not worth debating. A more polite version of this principle could be called the theological "Gamaliel test." If it endures, it is of God, or it is of theology.

Otherwise, it's just a question of taste, and de gustibus non est disputandum.

[Adam Kotsko]

Geoff, You seemed to bring in questions of community here:

"Žižek has been, and it seems always will be, a "fighting atheist" who really does believe that religion in its actual forms, its lived realities (which I hope this site would be about, even if tangentially) is fundamentalist and violent..." (emphasis added).

That's where I'm making the connection. I was reading charitably, assuming that you meant that Zizek is saying "actual existing Christianity" is fundamentalist and violent rather than that everything with a religious reference is necessarily bad (he thinks the Pauline communities were pretty cool, for instance). I think there is a sense in which Zizek would be looking for a community founded in what he calls "the Christian experience," but it wouldn't be in continuity with the existing institutions -- nor indeed would it be "institutionalized" at all (cue Ben Myers to get pissed off that I'm saying this...).

[geoffrey holsclaw]

a couple of quick things before I put my boys to bed.

First, Anthony, my initial post was aimed at Pete Rollings, and by extension some of my 'emerging church' friends. I actually did not have you are adam in mind at all (in other words, I wasn't baiting you into a conversation...but I'm definitely glad to be conversing with you all for I generally find it helpful). Anyway, but since this is a blog and more like an editorial rather than some investigative reporting or closely researched paper, and b/c I frankly don't have that much time, I to settle for mere assertions rather than detailed arguments.

second, Carl, I guess I'm just not that comfortable with the designations of "confessional" and "philosophical" theology. Everyone is always doing both. But you raising the issue that way does help me clarify my thought, so thank you. Also, as you said, Hegel is all over the place in Zizek (which he is totally open about, but for those who don't know Hegel it is hard to know to what extent). And I really think we need to revisit Hegel in theology in an explicit sense.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Why not just not assert?

[Degree Psychology]

Hey, great post, very well written. You should blog more about this. I'll definitely be subscribing.

Cheers;

http://degree-psychology.hassaidi.com