Appropriating Zizek for the Christian Theo-Political Task - Assuming Milbank is Right

By David Fitch

As has been hotly debated on the church and pomo blog too many times already, Zizek’s political ontology poses problems (at least for some of us) that make his work incompatible with doing Christian political theology, at least as traditionally conceived.  So, instead of rehashing the Milbank versus Zizek debate, I’d like to ask the question – for those who already agree in essence with John Milbank’s assessment of Zizek - is there still a way Zizek’s massive corpus can be put to the service of a Christian political theology?

To repeat some of Milbank’s complaint with Zizek’s political ontology, in his essay in Theology and the Political, Milbank labels Zizek “a mystical nihilist” (423) – not an unusual charge for Milbank. He asserts that Zizek’s version of dialectical materialism provides no “ontological basis” for a progress that can lead to a stable political practice (393-395). For Milbank, this can be seen in both Zizek’s ontology and in his theory of subjectivity as well.

On an ontological level, Zizek’s Hegelian negative dialectic is trapped within an immanence from which it cannot escape. Since Zizek’s Hegelian dialectic is basically an ever unfolding of the negation of the negation, his politics, according to Milbank, cannot in essence get anywhere (Monstrosity of Christ, 120) Trapped within the material, there is nothing that can take it beyond itself. Antagonism and negation are inscribed into its very being. (Monstrosity, 138). The Real is after all an antagonism - a void at the core. As a result, Zizek’s ontology, according to Milbank, reduces the goal of politics to an “agon around an empty fetish.” (Theology and the Political, 395). Political reality cannot sustain the reality of a peace of justice.  It is ‘hell-bent’ on “mutually assured destruction” (Monstrosity, 166).

In the same vane, subjectivity and consciousness for Zizek, are projected from within the material out of this same antagonism. Desire is born out of lack and is impossible of fulfillment. Yet it must tragically be persisted in for to not do so is the suicide of the self.(Monstrosity, 120). Our subjective identity therefore, Milbank says, is created ever always out of conflicts and negations. Our organizing “fantasies” can only ever cover over antagonisms and repressions. Desire can never go anywhere. And purpose is at best a superficial illusion. There is therefore no basis for progressing forward.

For Milbank then Zizek is hardly a basis from which to construct a positive Christian theology or politics, for a Christian politic is not empty at its core, it is formed around the fullness of Jesus Christ. A Christian politic is not driven therefore by conflict but rather by reconciliation. To be sure Zizek has responded to this critique. (Monstrosity 235-303, For a related more direct engagement of the nihilism charge that has sympathies with Zizek - see Alain Badiou’s Manifesto for Philosophy, ch. 4). If we however sympathize with Milbank’s argument, how do those of us who appreciate Zizek go on to put his compelling political and cultural theory in service to the task of Christian political theology.

Simple! Let us accept Milbank’s characterization that ideology as Zizek has fashioned it, is a fallen politic, a politic that is on its way to collapse if not visibly in the process already. Zizek’s political theory of ideology then in essence becomes the means for diagnosing a fallen politics. Similar to the way Milbankians appreciate Zizek for his political critique of capitalism, let us shine the light of the Zizekian political critique upon the church itself as a politic. Let us do a  Zizekian examination of the church’s political fantasies, whereby master-signifiers are revealed and irruptions of the Real are exposed, and these theories are the means to diagnose where, when and how our own politics as Christians is showing signs of being an ideology as Zizek has defined it. Let us use Zizek to understand the various ways Christian politics has taken on the fall and become an ideology itself, unfaithful to its call to be the authentic political formation around the living Christ in the world. Let us use Zizek to do some social psychoanalysis on the church, for “Lord knows” the historical church has regularly shown itself to be capable of succumbing to an “empty” politics. It could use a Zizekian check up from time to time.

This suggests of course that Zizek is at his best as a political theorist of ideology in critique of faulty political systems (as opposed to an ontologist of religion and subjectivity). Surely Zizek would be unhappy at such an appropriation of his work. In fact, on the back cover of Adrian Johnston’s book Zizek’s Ontology, Zizek bemoans people who do exactly what I am proposing, people who take him seriously only for his political and cultural theory and ignore his more recent theological moves.

Nonetheless, the results I suggest would be compelling. Take for example an examination of the politics of evangelicalism, or what has become of evangelicalism in N America over the past thirty years. Zizek can help us see - like few other theorists can - what drives evangelicalism as a political entity coalescing for worship, way of life and engagement with society. His political analysis can expose the inner contradictions and the desires (jouissance) that shape much of what has become the evangelical way of life in the last thirty-forty years. Even better, perhaps such a political analysis could make way for a Badiou-like Event where a new faithfulness could be birthed.

So with apologies to Zizek, and all Zizek purists, and to all who see Zizek’s political ontology as ‘lacking’ (pun intended), Zizek can still aid us in furthering a more faithful church as a politic i n the world.

Comments

[Adam Kotsko]

To play devil's advocate here, why would you use a critique that is founded in a philosophy you believe theology must reject? Presumably you think a proper understanding of divine transcendence is the best way to go -- whereas for Zizek, the solution is a radical atheism. Can these two elements really be separated in your view? And why even bother? If you're a Milbankian, then doesn't Milbank himself provide both the critique and the solution? Why involve Zizek at all -- especially a kind of half-Zizek that goes against Zizek's own intentions? What are you really gaining here other than the name "Zizek"?

[Aaron Beach]

I think this approach is probably a bit too comfortable, and while such critiques may strike at deep issues, the use of Zizek probably wouldn't add much. Instead, you might just use Zizek's STYLE of critique, since that sounds more like what you mean when you say "Zizek can help us see - like few other theorists can". The spitting, passionate, paradoxical Zizek...

Not to bring up debate again, but alternatively I would suggest using Zizek directly (his ideas and not just his style) and rather than focusing on his more recent "theology" OR his social critique, focus first and simply on his ideas of subject and its relation to belief (Sublime Object of Ideology). I think that starting with something simple at the core of "Zizek" (which applies easily to theology) might allow a Christian to (meaningfully) build into the ontology... We should be careful to not too-quickly reject or embrace an entire "ontology" that Zizek never seems to fully embrace himself.

[David Fitch]

Adam, of course your question is a good one, a question first asked me by James Smith at an AAR presentation last November. The answer is implied in the post, Zizek's political theory/cultural analysis is incisive, able to illumine how ideology works in ways few other theories can.

Of course, his analysis is predicated upon a political ontology of lack.Yet I see no reason why I cannot extract Zizek's theory in a way that can then recognize any insights derived from him,as necessarily reflecting upon ideologies that are indeed operating around such a lack. I recognize this is not in keeping with Zizek's ouevre, but doesn't Zizek do the same thing with some of the theorists he uses (or at least he could be accused of doing it say with Chesterton?).
I think the opposite question is just as pertinent if asked to those like myself who cannot buy Zizek's ontology: why does Zizek's political theory make so much sense on so many levels? Milbank's answer would be because Zizek's analysis is by definition executed on systems which are secular parodies, i.e capitalism. He reveals the void! Of course capitalism is imploding and empty at its core, it is a false discourse in autonomy from God. I'd just like to take the whole thing one step further and ask how the very same analysis reveals the emptiness at the core of what has become the church, especially the church that is evangelicalism, the one I know the most about. I think it could be stunningly productive, as I hope to show someday, and even more effective in that evangelicals can see themselves revealed via an atheistic account of political formation.

[Adam Kotsko]

But his account of ideology is based on the claim that the problem is that ideology doesn't recognize the lack -- and that the solution is to figure out some kind of way to live with the lack. Whereas presumably you'd be offering some kind of fullness, a real fullness unlike the illusory fullness of ideology -- but what you'd be offering would then be structurally identical to ideology in Zizek's account. And it'd be exactly what Milbank is doing already. Why evangelicals would be more apt to listen to, or more chastened by, an atheist critic than a Christian one is unclear to me.

[Adam Kotsko]

I can see how the strategy of appropriating Zizek works in the context of apologetics directed toward an intellectual audience (or, more to the point, among Christians who want to feel reassured that they can be intellectually rigorous, too) -- basically the classic move of, "this respected philosopher is right about X, Y, and Z, but we provide a better foundation/solution for those insights/critiques."

[Bert Stabler]

I can actually testify as someone who was brought back around to attending church and considering myself Christian, partially through my reading of Zizek. I started out with his rehabilitation of utopia as apocalypse and Barth-like exaltation of agape in The Puppet and the Dwarf, and then was very moved by his "melancholic" eschatology in The Sublime Object of Ideology, and went on to read an anthology of Paul's letters and illustrious commentators from the last two millenia, which in turn introduced me to a lot of very basic theological ideas. But Zizek's idea of God as limited at times in His strength (albeit absolutely present in our suffering), and his re-evaluation (or disputation) of the "transactional" characterization of Christ's sacrifice, were pivotal and moving arguments that brought my mind in line with my long-term desire to summon the faith to be a Christian in my adult life. Zizek has to save his materialist credentials through insisting on immanence, but his constant reiteration of the enigmatic inaccessibility of this ever-mediating Creator really read to me as an attempt to save transcendence from Kant's rationalized a priori irrelevance.

[Brad Johnson]

The problem is that this 'enigmatic inaccessibility' extends to this 'ever-mediating Creator'. This Creator, as such, is implicated in & by that which requires mediation. As such, transcendence may well be saved from Kantian irrelevance, but what kind of transcendence is this really? It (the glorification that is transcendence) is a put-on, a show, a sham. A necessary one, perhaps, for the benefit of Creator and Created alike, but one that is hard to square with traditional divinity.

[Bert Stabler]

Yeah-- in the Monstrosity of Christ, Zizek could be perceived as saying that the Holy Spirit is just the the community of believers, the "subjective spirit" that projects God, a coherent "objective spirit," on to the Being of the cosmos, the "absolute spirit." But he does, on p. 76, make an attempt to refute that perception.

In typical dialectician style, he portrays that view as a misguided Enlightenment description of the passage from "subjective spirit" to "absolute spirit," while the opposing misguided view is the straightforward and more orthodox positing of an "absolute spirit" beyond and encompassing "subjective spirit" and"objective spirit." The magic synthesis, for Zizek, is in seeing the gap between subjective and objective spirit as the absolute, a necessity for both the rational mind and the rational cosmos to acknowledge the Other within each. God needs people and people need God.

So yes, you end up with an empty space as the foundation of reality. And, as you say, the Creator is implicated in his Creation-- He arises from it, as it arises from Him. I think that is a problem. But I feel that Zizek has tactical value in arguing for a contemporary post-humanist, post-metaphysical God. I don't agree with Zizek that negating negation is a vibrant spiritual outlook, but it does allegorically characterize his position as someone attempting to hoist nihilism by its own petard.

And, in a way, the paradox advocated by Milbankis hardly going to write off relationality, as in his illustration of the disparate objects unified by mist in Monstrosity of Christ. I think that the process-based dynamic model described by Alfred North Whitehead is useful in granting subjectivity a role in Creation, just as, in a different way, does Eckhart's discussion of God actually lacking the volition that people have. God is not entirely His own medium-- there is emptiness that remains from before Creation, space He must fill and somehow cannot, and this mirrors the bottomless of our own desiring and sinning.

But these empty spaces seem secondary to me, and in that I would resist Zizek.

Personally

[Bert Stabler]

Oops, excuse that hanging "Personally."

[Adam Kotsko]

Bert, You seem to me to be seriously misreading Zizek. I do not recognize Zizek's position in essentially anything you're saying here.

For instance, Zizek has always held the position that the Holy Spirit is the social bond among believers -- from beginning to end, that has been his position. I read absolutely nothing in Monstrosity of Christ that challenged that in any way: the Hegelian reading of Christianity includes the notion that the HS is the social bond among believers, and Zizek's essay is a defense of that reading of Christianity. If you think he's distancing himself from that, you're misreading his dialectical presentation of someone else's view as his own view.

And as for the "engimatic, ever-mediating Creator" -- where on earth are you getting this? Despite your claim that it's absolutely constant, I literally have no idea what you're talking about, and I've read basically everything Zizek's written, much of it multiple times. Nor do I have any reason to believe that Zizek has any interest in reclaiming transcendence from Kant or anyone.

He's not just trying to keep up his materialist cred: he actually is a materialist. He's also actually an atheist and his reading of Christianity is meant to demonstrate that the radical core of Christianity shows us a way to the most radical atheism possible.

[David Fitch]

Adam,
Thanks for the dialogue here. Sorry to be absent from the blog for a day - but seminary and church obligations got busy.
I get that Zizek's solution is "to figure out some kind of way to live with the lack."I get that I'd be using his work against him in this respect. I also get that according to Zizek, I'd be offering something "identical to ideology in Zizek's account." What I'd be arguing is that Zizek's theory of ideology (ala Milbank) makes more sense as illustrating how such ideology cannot sustain a true politic. The therapy offered by Zizek's political theory then, let's say (to oversimplify) to "traverse the fantasy," detach from it, becomes the means to lead to another form of politics.I recognize this is a reconfiguring of Zizek, but I'm not the first, not even the first to look at Zizek this way.
I think to do what I am talking about upon the church itself is extremely effective, not because it gives a secular atheist's credibiity to an evangelical apologetic, but because Zizek's analysis illuminates in so many ways the pathological ways an "empty" politic works, it illuminates our own political pathologies. Having said all that, I think the best way to argue for this is to put it on display by the executing of it on a given church's coalescence as a people. Just as Zizek accumulates anecdotal evidences in culture that cumulatively convince one of the value of his theories, so I think I can do the same on church politics, the way for instance evangelicals have coalesced as a pathological politic in the United States in the last thirty years.
Peace

[Bert Stabler]

This is kind of like that moment in Annie Hall when the professor is loudly opining about Marshall MacLuhan, and Woody Allen conjures Marshall MacLuhan himself, who tells the professor "You know nothing of my work. How you ever became a professor of anything is amazing."

Anyway, to compare bookshelves, I've only read four and a half Zizek books (still working on Monstrosity); that's certainly not everything he's written. And I think your main talking points are solid--specifically, I certainly don't believe he's NOT an atheist materialist.

But to get specific... well, I actually did cite you chapter and verse (or at least page number) on that bit about passing from the objective to the absolute spirit. I'm not making that up. Zizek actually talks about empty space all the time, in regard to desire, politics, love, Otherness-- which doesn't make him a Christian, but hardly makes my assertions delusional.

He does use the word "radical" a lot- in particular he presents the Passion as a touchstone of what is most radical, a sublime "truth-event," and is obviously not spending all this time talking about Christianity in order to debunk, deconstruct, or relativize it-- although he is deflating it somewhat. I think that he's actually more of a reformer than a radical, in a sense, as far as presenting a version of intellectual orthodoxy that speaks to reflective people disillusioned by humanism.

To put the ball back in your court, Adam (or whomsoever cares to respond), why would you talk about appropriating Zizek for Christian theopolitics if he has no "abject kernel" of profundity or relevance?

[Brad Johnson]

David,

It is more than a reconfiguring, though. Essentially, what you're doing is using Zizek's name to underwrite a critique you could do on your own or by appealing to somebody who does not require such a dramatic reconstructive surgery. The crucial difference between what you want to do with Zizek, and what Zizek has done with people like Chesterston, is that he does not ignore the aspects he disagrees with, but exposes those aspects in the course of using them -- and in the process presents a far better alternative, namely, his own. That is to say, Chesterton is a peculiar tool for Zizek, in that it, Chesterton-as-tool (fun to write, btw), only functions by not doing what it was made to do. This, I suppose, gets back to Adam's point, re: apologetics.

[Adam Kotsko]

Bert, You did cite a page number, but you misread what was on that page -- in fact, on that very page, he says that "all that happens in the passage from Objective Spirit to Absolute Spirit is that one takes into account that 'there is no big Other'," in this case meaning there is no God. That's where all his stuff on Christianity points us: the "Christian experience" of Christ dying on the cross is an experience of complete disillusionment, complete atheism. Atheists need to go through this experience because they so often sneak in a God substitute (such as the laws of historical progress) in through the back door. That is what you should've picked up from The Puppet and the Dwarf.

If you want to see what I think is relevant in Zizek for theology, you could check out my book Zizek and Theology, which also functions as an introduction to his thought focusing on why he turned to theology in his more recent work.

I suppose there's nothing wrong with your technique of taking isolated nuggets from Zizek that speak to you -- we all do that with authors we like, and not all of us have the time or inclination to come up with a systematic account of someone's thought. What I am complaining about, however, is that you are taking those isolated nuggets, putting them through your own thought process and concerns, and then claiming that the result is what Zizek thinks. But it's actually just what you think, inspired partly by a few remarks by Zizek. I can't argue with the idea that people could take chunks out of Zizek and use them to come up with a more contemporary concept of God, etc. -- obviously you've done so. But that doesn't mean that's what Zizek is doing. You're appropriating him in a way that goes against his intentions. Just admit that's in fact what you're doing, and we have absolutely no quarrel whatsoever.

[David Fitch]

Brad,
I'm open to this particular challenge, that I am doing something different than what Zizek is doing say with Chesterton. I'm open to reconfiguring my approach to make it my own, not using Zizek to make my points. But still, it could be just "tit for tat," in say the way Milbank accuses Zizek of using Meister Eckhart in a disingenuous way, and vice versa - or say the way some tradionalist Hegelians might even say Zizek used Hegel in a way that turned Hegel's dialectic on its head. Of course part of Zizek's brilliance is the way he defended that this is indeed the true Hegel. But I think, in a different way (I know), I'd like the chance to say to say this a 'truer' way to read Zizek than even himself is aware of.

[Adam Kotsko]

It seems different to use that strategy with a living author, much more questionable.

Have you read the Schelling book? I think that's arguably where he most fully "shows his cards" on his interpretation of Lacan and Hegel.

[Bert Stabler]

I fully acknowledge Zizek's oft-repeated Lacanian dictum that there is no "big Other." And, if I were interested in rehabilitating Zizek as a proper Christian, or even a Christian atheist a la Thomas Alitzer, I would have a lot of work to do. But my point on that contested page 76 has Zizek attributing anthropological Holy-Spirit-as-group-fantasy to Feuerbach and the young Marx. And this is reflective of Zizek's tropes in general-- his concept of the Real is all about an element that cannot be absorbed into language or fantasy. Writing him off as the same variety of materialist atheist as, say, John Dewey, or even the psychologized spirit-ology of existentialism, ignores that he is much more interested in what cannot be explained or quantified than in what can be. Zizek writes against himself, aggressively, as did Emerson.

So, actually, I would argue that I'm not being any more self-serving in my reading of Zizek than you are, Adam. I have no interest in passing judgement on anyone's theoretical rigor, but I can't really be convinced that his unique deployment of economics and psychology is disposable for contemporary theology, when everything he writes is consumed with the nature of God.

What are Zizek's monolithic intentions? Is he different from Bertrand Russell, or Bill Maher? Karl Barth goes to great lengths to qualify the contingent nature of the Church and even Scripture as central instruments of the Word-- I think Zizek's role could be more complex than your characterization would imply.

[Adam Kotsko]

How am I "writing him off" as a materialist atheist? He actually is -- though certainly in his own idiosyncratic way. How am I implying that he's useless for theology? I've been arguing against a selective appropriation by traditional theologians in the vein of Milbank, but as I noted, I wrote an entire book about Zizek's relationship to theology -- indicating, perhaps, that I don't think he's useless or irrelevant to theology tout court, even if I don't think he can be easily or responsibly deployed by orthodoxy.

I still maintain you're misreading the passage from Monstrosity. I don't understand why you keep shifting back and forth between "I admittedly haven't read a ton of Zizek" and "I am still absolutely right in everything I'm saying." I realize I may have been overly aggressive and therefore put you on the defensive, but the conclusion-jumping way you're reading my comments here doesn't incline me to trust your reading of Zizek.

[Adam Kotsko]

On a more substantive level, you can't simultaneously embrace Zizek's claim that there is no big Other and keep a transcendent God, even one that is somewhat different from the traditional concept of God. The two things are contradictory -- saying there is no big Other is the same as saying there's no God. The descriptions of the Real may sound like descriptions of God, but for Zizek the Real is a void -- not anything even remotely approaching a personal God. You are consistently getting the absolute most basic points of Zizek's thought wrong.

[Bert Stabler]

Well, at least I'm consistent about something.

And I may certainly not be right about anything I say, even if I do question that there is only one proper reading (aka usage) of Zizek. What I should really be trying to get hold of for this discussion, however, is not my own experience of Zizek, but your view, Adam, of Zizek as a critic of the church as a political institution, as you delineate in your opening paragraph above: you see hope for a certain Zizekian critique to bring about a "new faithfulness."

I found an online blurb from your book that backs this up-- "For Christianity to regain its subversive kernel today, therefore, it must take the risk of an authentic Žižekian ethical act, in the sense of a self-directed choice of the worst, by ‘abandoning the shell of its institutional organization (and, even more so, of its specific religious experience)'"

You certainly do not dismiss his relevance (although your vehemence was initially confusing), and I am now grasping your interest in drawing a line in the sand about his "selective appropriation"-- it's okay to engage him as a political and theoretical writer, but when he drifts into theology and ontology, he's too heterodox to engage useful discussions or even responsible refutations by theologians (Milbank, etc.). I think it should be recognized that your appropriation is selective as well, but it's hardly arbitrary. Milbank might be okay with letting Zizek occupy one facet of his paradoxical ontological scheme, but Hegelian void, empty Real, no big Other-- those are not negotiable for you.

I think that, to deal more specifically with your concerns, Zizek's thoughts on Paul and the Law might be interesting to think about (not that you haven't-- I just haven't read your book). Zizek models his critique, at least in part, on the spirit of the new Church, in which institutional critique was, as in the New Testament, not distinct from a direct faithful experience of the Divine.

This just to say-- your selective appropriation of Zizek also runs against his intentions (as you state in your opening, viz. Zizek's complaints on the neglect of his theology). Erroneously or not, I learned a great deal about Paul through Zizek's description of the relationship of love and the Law, and I hold on to that in my thinking and writing and reading. Which makes me as inappropriate an appropriator as anyone.

[Anthony Paul Smith]

Umm... yeah.

[Adam Kotsko]

Um, I'm confused -- do you think I'm the author of the main post here? I never said anything about "new faithfulness," for example. If you're assuming that me and the author of the blog post itself are the same guy, that might explain some of the problems in our conversation. I also daresay that Zizek has absolutely never copied anything at all, ever, from Milbank, in any respect.

[Chad]

What? You mean you’re not the original author of the main post here? I figured “David Fitch” was a pseudonymous writer whose seemingly initial post above was actually a little comment in anticipation to your upcoming posts.

[Bert Stabler]

Yep, that explains a lot. Pseudonymous indeed. I will just shut up and read the "um, yeah" article and come back later if I have anything to add.

[David Fitch]

frankly, no offense, but I was helped by Kotsko's questions to my post, and I do think Kotsko was trying to clarify some of what I also see as Bert's miscues on Zizek.

[Bert Stabler]

Absolutely, drawing a line in the sand at "no big Other" makes sense, as I said above. Of course Adam's point is important.

Hopefully my misrecognition issues are resolved for the moment. I appreciate the civility, David.

And perhaps, actually, your "new faithfulness" is a worthy big-picture goal. Going from acknowledging the lack to affirming some kind of fullness is not a ridiculous thing to attempt. Look at the empty cave of the resurrection. It seems like those of us who want to "feel reassured" (as Adam said) about being both religiously committed and intellectually rigorous should in fact find a way to reorient the dialogue (imitating Jesus in the Temple).

If Zizek writes off divinity as irrelevant in the advanced historical/denominational stage associated by Hegel with the Notion (a la Milbank), then what will banish the "perverse core," the injunction to enjoy, that Adam points out as Zizek's beef with post-Christian secularized ethics in The Puppet and The Dwarf? If it's our own Ayn Rand-like freedom from the superego (and we want to avoid "middle-of-the-road" Aristotelian/neoliberal solutions), how do we find universal love, kinship with people unlike ourselves?

It seems that, in Adam's Paul article, he affirms Zizek's reading of Paul's concept of Law as simultaneously pagan (subversively hedonistic) and Jewish (impossibly legalistic), a classic (selective?) "slippage" in which a statement has impact through a metaphor that defies a single fundamentalist interpretation.

[Daniel]

"It seems that, in Adam's Paul article, he affirms Zizek's reading of Paul's concept of Law as simultaneously pagan (subversively hedonistic) and Jewish (impossibly legalistic)"

I thought Kotsko's article made it pretty clear that the idea that Paul was talking about the Jewish "law" in Romans 7 is untenable, and that it was something Zizek would give up if pushed. The reading of Paul that Kotsko approves of (and finds in Zizek) is that Romans 7 is about the pagan law and a pagan subject.

I don't think you're reading the final paragraphs right. The pagan law is "impossibly legalistic", and the Jewish stance towards the law is the good one. The "traditional" reading that Zizek and Kotsko both reject says that Romans 7 is about an "impossibly legalistic" Jewish law making demands on a Jewish subject. Kotsko/Zizek has a nice interplay between the Pagan Error (obscene superego supplement) and the Jewish Error ("ingroup" particularism)that Paul is supposed to provide a via media for, but it's not the one you mention, and I don't see that any "slippage" takes place.

[Daniel]

That should say "the pagan stance towards the law is 'impossibly legalistic'". It doesn't make much sense to say that a law is legalistic.

[Adam Kotsko]

Bert, You keep trying to move too fast.

[Bert Stabler]

My sense of Zizek's position (or of Adam's characterization thereof) is that Jewish law deflects its own tendency to inspire perversion by, in a sense, beating perverts to the punch, by virtue of the Law's sheer volume and arbitrariness of proscriptions, creating a skeptical distance between the commandments and the community. At the same time, the arcane nature of this system preserves the integrity and the insularity of the Chosen People.

In this context it makes perfect sense to refer to a system of laws, or a "legal culture," as "legalistic," although I could substitute the term "pedantic."

Pagan law, on the other hand, defines a more absolute and universal life-and-death limit, and therefore contains within itself the "injunction to enjoy," to constantly bait and evade, which Paul refers to in Romans 7 when he says "when the Law came, sin revived, and I died."

So, is Zizek not saying that Paul is secretly selling the Jewish legal culture to the Gentiles, while seeming to denounce the Jewish Law, in order to universalize the bonds that guarantee its insularity? The same way Paul subversively discusses the Kingdom of God in the same Greek used for Roman imperial proclamations?

If I've got that right, in part, we could go from there to discuss whether that insight has any theological implications, in line with or counter to Zizek's intentions. If everyone would like to go on to other topics, I certainly understand.

[Adam Kotsko]

Where on earth are you getting these claims about what Zizek thinks about the Jewish law? I don't recall anything even remotely suggestive of what you're saying in The Puppet and the Dwarf or in any other book of his, nor in my article. You are consistently jumping to amazingly wrong conclusions. Like I say, slow down -- take stock of the points being made before extrapolating. If you prefer to use texts as a basis for free association, then that's your business -- but it's not a recognized technique of interpretation.

[Adam Kotsko]

You know what would really help the mood here? If someone named Ernie joined the conversation.

[Ernie]

Adam, shut the fuck up for once. Your predictable bitching gets tiresome after a while. Time and time again it seems like the same old "ressentiment". It would be nice to hear some other voices.

[Hill]

Shenanigans.

[Ernie]

Oops, sorry Adam for the failed attempt at a joke. I just realized that the irony and playfulness of my last comment did not come out quite like it should have. Shenanigans indeed.

[Hill]

I'm pretty sure Adam got it. Now if your apology is an attempt at the sort of "meta," personal apologetic tone that sets Adam off... brilliant!

[Adam Kotsko]

I think this comment thread has now been fully achieved.

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