The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity
by
by
Creative Betrayal
If confirmation of the merits of good philosophical thought were needed, this book is more than adequate to make the point conclusively. I find much of Zizek’s work somewhat tedious; but his arguments in The Puppet and the Dwarf are the equivalent of rapid-fire body blows to inane conservative pundits like Jordan Peterson (he of 12 Rules of Life fame. See https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and equally inane social theorists like Thomas Sowell (Intellectuals and Society.See:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) who make a living by peddling non-thought to non-thinkers, ideology for idiots.
Zizek calls his method ‘short-circuiting’, that is, bringing areas of thought which are usually insulated from one another into contact and watching the sparks fly. His stated intention is not to rubbish anyone’s point of view but to reveal a more inclusive picture of the world in which various points of view create something new, something bigger not just in the sense of explanation, but also in the sense of promoting human understanding and solidarity. He makes this operational by allowing people to become “aware of another - disturbing - side of something he or she knew all the time.” This is not tendentious indoctrination. I think it is as close as one can get to supervised self-education.
So for example Zizek self-identifies as an atheistic materialist. But he also has a profoundly poetic appreciation of religion, particularly Christianity, that rivals most theologians. By allowing these two currents of thought to touch, he transforms both. His central thesis captures the result: “My claim here is not merely that I am a materialist through and through, and that the subversive kernel of Christianity is accessible also to a materialist approach; my thesis is much stronger: this kernel is accessible only to a materialist approach—and vice versa: to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience.”
His intention is not to relativise Christianity but to make it real. For Zizek ‘going through’ the Christian experience doesn’t imply abandoning it as obsolete, but appreciating it for what it is. How else is one to understand his explanation of Christian love, for example, as an exception to any universal ethic, even the ethic of Christian love: “The underlying paradox is that love, precisely as the Absolute, should not be posited as a direct goal—it should retain the status of a byproduct, of something we get as an undeserved grace.” Love, or for that matter salvation, is not a reward; it is a consequence of things like respect, and care, and dedication. And not necessarily a consequence elicited from the direct object of our respect, care and dedication. Karl Barth, arguably the most important theologian of the 20th century, would agree wholeheartedly.
So Zizek can cite G.K. Chesterton approvingly at length and conclude that “true love is precisely... forsaking the promise of Eternity itself for an imperfect individual.” The object of love cannot be an abstraction, even a divine abstraction; it must be a concrete person and it must include flaws, deficiencies, and irritations. Perfection cannot be loved. The God of Chesterton knew this. It is why even Christ loses his faith hanging on the cross. And as Carl Jung noticed in his book on Job, Yahweh had to have an audience, an imperfect human audience, to complete himself. Many theologians, as well as evangelical Christians could benefit immensely by contemplating this insight.
Having recently read Reza Aslan’s Zealot(https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I am struck by its coincidence with Zizek’s identification of the central message of Christianity which he captures succinctly in his subtitle: “... the hidden perverse core of Christianity: if it is prohibited to eat from the Tree of Knowledge in Paradise, why did God put it there in the first place? Is it not that this was a part of His perverse strategy first to seduce Adam and Eve into the Fall, in order then to save them? That is to say: should one not apply Paul’s insight into how the prohibitive law creates sin to this very first prohibition also? ... Is Judas not therefore the ultimate hero of the New Testament, the one who was ready to lose his soul and accept eternal damnation so that the divine plan could be accomplished?... In all other religions, God demands that His followers remain faithful to Him - only Christ asked his followers to betray him in order to fulfill his mission.”
Zizek and Aslan agree. This paradoxical undermining of itself, an almost Stalinist compulsion to destroy conventional culture, the things, that is, which we believe but don’t take seriously, is the permanent messianism of Christianity. It makes Christianity dangerous. It created modernity by separating religion from politics. Perhaps it is also implicitly creating post-modernity by revealing the untenable consequences of that separation.
The critic Harold Bloom has made his reputation on the idea of creative misinterpretation as not just the motive for literary but also for political development. Isn’t this how Christianity (and Judaism and Islam for that matter) was created? As Zizek claims “Paul also ‘betrayed’ Christ by not caring about his idiosyncrasies, by ruthlessly reducing him to the fundamentals, with no patience for his wisdom, miracles, and similar paraphernalia.” I think Zizek is following the same tradition of creative misinterpretation. If he’s not right, at least he’s interesting.
If confirmation of the merits of good philosophical thought were needed, this book is more than adequate to make the point conclusively. I find much of Zizek’s work somewhat tedious; but his arguments in The Puppet and the Dwarf are the equivalent of rapid-fire body blows to inane conservative pundits like Jordan Peterson (he of 12 Rules of Life fame. See https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and equally inane social theorists like Thomas Sowell (Intellectuals and Society.See:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) who make a living by peddling non-thought to non-thinkers, ideology for idiots.
Zizek calls his method ‘short-circuiting’, that is, bringing areas of thought which are usually insulated from one another into contact and watching the sparks fly. His stated intention is not to rubbish anyone’s point of view but to reveal a more inclusive picture of the world in which various points of view create something new, something bigger not just in the sense of explanation, but also in the sense of promoting human understanding and solidarity. He makes this operational by allowing people to become “aware of another - disturbing - side of something he or she knew all the time.” This is not tendentious indoctrination. I think it is as close as one can get to supervised self-education.
So for example Zizek self-identifies as an atheistic materialist. But he also has a profoundly poetic appreciation of religion, particularly Christianity, that rivals most theologians. By allowing these two currents of thought to touch, he transforms both. His central thesis captures the result: “My claim here is not merely that I am a materialist through and through, and that the subversive kernel of Christianity is accessible also to a materialist approach; my thesis is much stronger: this kernel is accessible only to a materialist approach—and vice versa: to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience.”
His intention is not to relativise Christianity but to make it real. For Zizek ‘going through’ the Christian experience doesn’t imply abandoning it as obsolete, but appreciating it for what it is. How else is one to understand his explanation of Christian love, for example, as an exception to any universal ethic, even the ethic of Christian love: “The underlying paradox is that love, precisely as the Absolute, should not be posited as a direct goal—it should retain the status of a byproduct, of something we get as an undeserved grace.” Love, or for that matter salvation, is not a reward; it is a consequence of things like respect, and care, and dedication. And not necessarily a consequence elicited from the direct object of our respect, care and dedication. Karl Barth, arguably the most important theologian of the 20th century, would agree wholeheartedly.
So Zizek can cite G.K. Chesterton approvingly at length and conclude that “true love is precisely... forsaking the promise of Eternity itself for an imperfect individual.” The object of love cannot be an abstraction, even a divine abstraction; it must be a concrete person and it must include flaws, deficiencies, and irritations. Perfection cannot be loved. The God of Chesterton knew this. It is why even Christ loses his faith hanging on the cross. And as Carl Jung noticed in his book on Job, Yahweh had to have an audience, an imperfect human audience, to complete himself. Many theologians, as well as evangelical Christians could benefit immensely by contemplating this insight.
Having recently read Reza Aslan’s Zealot(https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I am struck by its coincidence with Zizek’s identification of the central message of Christianity which he captures succinctly in his subtitle: “... the hidden perverse core of Christianity: if it is prohibited to eat from the Tree of Knowledge in Paradise, why did God put it there in the first place? Is it not that this was a part of His perverse strategy first to seduce Adam and Eve into the Fall, in order then to save them? That is to say: should one not apply Paul’s insight into how the prohibitive law creates sin to this very first prohibition also? ... Is Judas not therefore the ultimate hero of the New Testament, the one who was ready to lose his soul and accept eternal damnation so that the divine plan could be accomplished?... In all other religions, God demands that His followers remain faithful to Him - only Christ asked his followers to betray him in order to fulfill his mission.”
Zizek and Aslan agree. This paradoxical undermining of itself, an almost Stalinist compulsion to destroy conventional culture, the things, that is, which we believe but don’t take seriously, is the permanent messianism of Christianity. It makes Christianity dangerous. It created modernity by separating religion from politics. Perhaps it is also implicitly creating post-modernity by revealing the untenable consequences of that separation.
The critic Harold Bloom has made his reputation on the idea of creative misinterpretation as not just the motive for literary but also for political development. Isn’t this how Christianity (and Judaism and Islam for that matter) was created? As Zizek claims “Paul also ‘betrayed’ Christ by not caring about his idiosyncrasies, by ruthlessly reducing him to the fundamentals, with no patience for his wisdom, miracles, and similar paraphernalia.” I think Zizek is following the same tradition of creative misinterpretation. If he’s not right, at least he’s interesting.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ June 16, 2018
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