The puppet and the dwarf: the perverse core of christianity

Resumen

One of our most daring intellectuals offers a Lacanian interpretation of religion, finding that early Christianity was the first revolutionary collective.

In this volume Slavoj Zizek 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 Paulinian community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of enlightenment like Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a "post-secular" age, this book - with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy - may well stir controversy.