Table of Contents

Introduction: A Materialist Theology?
The Approach of This Book
Hegel
Lacan
Marx

Chapter 1: Ideology Critique
Ideology in Practice
The Challenge of Cynicism
Ideology and the big Other
The Stumbling Block of the Real
Keeping Enjoyment at Bay
Liberal Democracy and Nationalism

Chapter 2: Subjectivity and Ethics
The Real as Sexual Difference
The "Vanishing Mediator"
Fantasy and the Big Other
Diagnosing Ethics
The Cure

Chapter 3: The Christian Experience
Prefiguring the Theological Turn
A Politics of Truth
The Reign of Perversion
Job and Judaism
Cross and Collective
Love Beyond the Law

Chapter 4: Dialectical Materialism, or The Philosophy of Freedom
What is Dialectical Materialism?
Self-Consciousness as Short Circuit
The Anti-Adaptive Animal
Theological Materialism
The Politics of Refusal, or, Waiting on the Holy Spirit

Chapter 5: Theological Responses
An Inventory of Theological Themes
Responses from Radical Orthodoxy
Other Theological Responses
Žižek's "Method of Correlation"
Žižek and Tradition
Religionless Christianity and the Death of God

Promotional Information

Slavoj Žižek's work on Christianity often overwhelms students due to its complexity and usual concepts. This book will assist students in getting to grips with Žižek's earlier and more recent works with an eye toward what brings him to an explicit engagement with Christianity.

About the Author

Adam Kotsko is Visiting Assistant Professorof Religions at Kalamazoo College (USA). His current research interests include 20th century European philosophy and early Christian thought.

Reviews

"a useful introduction to Žižek's theological writing - and it will be especially useful for those who've been wanting to read Žižek, but don't know where to start" Dr Benjamin Myers, Faith and Theology Blog

"this remains the best introduction to Zizek and theology currentlt available" "theologians sarching for handles by which to grapple with Zizek are indebted to Kotsko for his work" Religious studies Review, June 2009
*Myle Werntz, Baylor University*

Kotsko provides an excellent review of Zizek's writing on ideology and subjectivity... [The author] helps non-Christians appreciate how far Zizek is immersed in these other worlds, and the complexity and depth of his argument for a dialectical material standpoint...
*Subjectivity Vol. 3, 1, 122-124*