Zizek
Tyler and I saw this philosopher at Calvin a few weeks ago and he was an interesting character at the least. Here is some information seth sent me about his ideas and I also heard about, but have not yet seen, a video recording of his speech on some website. So we could maybe find that out too. Thanks
***UPDATE***
I posted this at The Church and Postmodern Culture:
The Calvin English Dept. has streaming video of the lecture here: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engl/
The quality of the video/audio is very good.There are about 6 minutes of milling about before Zizek says anything but, in classic Zizek fashion, his first words are "...it's kind of an aggressive phallic..." in reference to the microphone.
Christinity: Tragedy or Comedy?
Geoff Holsclaw's notes from Slavoj Zizek (an atheist Protestant) “Only an Atheist Can Believe: Politics between Fear and Trembling” given at Calvin College on November, 10th, 2006.
For those of you who have never read anything by Zizek, well, his lectures are exactly the same: entertainingly full of pop-cultural references, able to keep capture the attention of the ADHD generation through frequent (if not confusing) jumps in topic; and simultaneously keeping things light, yet able to sustain a certain gravity to the issues discussed.
It would take too long to summarize all the twists and turns of Zizek’s presentation, so instead I will focus on the themes of tragedy and comedy.
As fate would have it, just before hearing Zizek’s lecture, my wife and I saw “Stranger than Fiction,” a film about a woman writing a book, but the main character is a real person who hears her narrating his life. Eventually ending up at the door of a literary professor, he is told that the main thing is to find out if his story is a tragedy or a comedy. The professor explains that comedies affirm the continuity of Life and end in a wedding, but that tragedies express the inevitability of Death, ending with the demise of the hero.
So the question before us concerns whether Christianity is a tragedy or a comedy.
Zizek began his lecture interrogating two recent films concerning the events of 9/11: Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center and also United 93.
The problem that Zizek has with these films is that they are terribly apolitical, both avoiding the context and situation of the event, and resisting the horror of their actual occurrence. Instead these seek to inspire the audience, to bring out the best in the American people. Zizek claims these films (as with most catastrophe movies) offer us an implicit “Blessing in Disguise” theology. What he means by this is that they seek to inspire us by giving these tragedies a redemptive meaning. But for Zizek this attempt at giving disaster a meaning is ultimately a pagan aspiration of inscribing everything into a unified whole.
But for Zizek, Christianity is not about giving tragedy a meaning. Zizek turns initially to the Biblical story of Job to confront the pagan political theology of “blessing in disguise.” You can always tell a story to inspire and make sense of things, and this is exactly what Job’s friend attempt to do. But Job refuses to make sense of it all. He refuses to give an understandable meaning to his circumstances. Giving meaning to everything, even the disasters, is a pagan process of bringing the universe into a unified totality, even if through the tragic perspective. It brings the excessiveness of the human situation back into an understandable frame of reference. The gesture of Job is to refuse to fall into this pagan discourse.
So for Zizek, Christianity is not a Tragedy, attempting to reinsert a minimal order and meaning, but instead, as revealed on the Cross, the God of transcendent Order, giving meaning from above to our darkest hours, dies. The Cross reveals that there is no One to give reasons beyond humanity, beyond the God working within human history and freedom.
Excursus on Fundamentalism:The problem with Fundamentalism is that it, like Tragedy, attempts of giving a clear meaning to everything. It attempts to fill in all the Gaps. But Belief is full of gaps. That is what makes it faith, not certainty. Belief is never belief concerning the facts, but rather between the facts, or rather is itself counter-factual. The problem with fundamentalism is that it obliterates all the gaps, or rather fills them all in, such that there is utter continuity between faith and facts. But this reall y ends up being the end of faith, the end of belief. Usually this loss of faith is manifest in a believers life in a moment of disaster where they realize they haven’t had faith for a long time. Fundamentalism, for Fact-amentalism destroys the gaps within which faith grows.
Fundamentalism is congruous with the films such as World Trade Center and United 93 because they are seek to give a definite meaning to all circumstances, which even in its tragic form, is a return to pagan universal holism (everything has its place). In this we can see how it is that conservative evangelical theology falls in line with Bush administration politics.
But if Christianity is not a Tragedy, then it must be a Comedy right? Well, yes, but not like you might think. According to Stranger than Fiction, a Comedy is life affirming, and doesn’t the Book of Revelation end with the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Sounds like a Comedy to me.
But for Zizek, Comedy is not merely life affirming. While Tradegy pretends to stare straight into the horror of death, ultimately it turns away from the meaninglessness of Death, replacing it with a reason, a “blessing is disguise.” But for Zizek, Comedy is an indirect means of looking into the meaningless of death, and the horrors of life. He draws our attention to movies of the holocaust. A movie, a tragedy, which brought us right into the life and death of the concentration camp would be profane. How could a movie really attempt to portray the “blessing in disguise” of the death camps. Impossible! But a Comedy could depict this meaninglessness, even if indirectly, where we laugh to keep us from crying.
Now there was quite a bit more that Zizek discussed, but I will finish here with Zizek’s suggestion that Christianity offers a political theology, not of the pagan variety bringing meaning into the disaster, but rather a political theology of Christian Comedy, able to look at the horrors of life, not demeaning them by giving them meaning, and thereby offering a particularly powerful position for bringing about change in all areas of life.
Asides (from Q/A session):
1) The prohibition not to make idols in OT is not meant to lead to mysticism (lacking conceptual/aesthetic form), but rather to point us always back to the truth that God is found within humanity in the face of the neighbor. The image of God is found in the redeemed community, it is not a denial of cognative or aesthetic representations.
2) Zizek the Protestant: Zizek is against Eastern Orthodox view of theosis and its attempt at union with God. How could an atheist ever buy into that? But he is also against Catholicism because of it “symbolic exchange”. That’s what he said and I have no idea what he means by this. He says that Protestantism expresses what Christianity always was. It is the true rendering of Christianity.
Geoff's Thoughts: I’m not sure what to make of it that an atheist could feel so secure with Protestantism. Does that means we are already so fall off the path that an atheist finds it so inviting, or just that it picture of redemption is so compelling an atheist can’t resist it?
3) Predestination is Right On!: Asked by an astute, and very Reformed student, how Zizek’s account of freedom might relate to predestination, Zizek responded, “Yes, salvation is not about good deeds. It is predestination!” The predestinational paradox that our salvation is already decided, we just don’t know it, that it is a type of retroactive constitution of necessity, is very appealing to Zizek. Or as he says, “True Freedom is about choosing your necessity. True Freed is not a choice between deserts (cake or brownies), but a compulsion of destinies (to join the freedom fighter, the civil rights movement, acting justly).”
And finally I also don't know what to say about Chevrolet. Oh well.
Love,
Lander
***UPDATE***
I posted this at The Church and Postmodern Culture:
The Calvin English Dept. has streaming video of the lecture here: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engl/
The quality of the video/audio is very good.There are about 6 minutes of milling about before Zizek says anything but, in classic Zizek fashion, his first words are "...it's kind of an aggressive phallic..." in reference to the microphone.
Christinity: Tragedy or Comedy?
Geoff Holsclaw's notes from Slavoj Zizek (an atheist Protestant) “Only an Atheist Can Believe: Politics between Fear and Trembling” given at Calvin College on November, 10th, 2006.
For those of you who have never read anything by Zizek, well, his lectures are exactly the same: entertainingly full of pop-cultural references, able to keep capture the attention of the ADHD generation through frequent (if not confusing) jumps in topic; and simultaneously keeping things light, yet able to sustain a certain gravity to the issues discussed.
It would take too long to summarize all the twists and turns of Zizek’s presentation, so instead I will focus on the themes of tragedy and comedy.
As fate would have it, just before hearing Zizek’s lecture, my wife and I saw “Stranger than Fiction,” a film about a woman writing a book, but the main character is a real person who hears her narrating his life. Eventually ending up at the door of a literary professor, he is told that the main thing is to find out if his story is a tragedy or a comedy. The professor explains that comedies affirm the continuity of Life and end in a wedding, but that tragedies express the inevitability of Death, ending with the demise of the hero.
So the question before us concerns whether Christianity is a tragedy or a comedy.
Zizek began his lecture interrogating two recent films concerning the events of 9/11: Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center and also United 93.
The problem that Zizek has with these films is that they are terribly apolitical, both avoiding the context and situation of the event, and resisting the horror of their actual occurrence. Instead these seek to inspire the audience, to bring out the best in the American people. Zizek claims these films (as with most catastrophe movies) offer us an implicit “Blessing in Disguise” theology. What he means by this is that they seek to inspire us by giving these tragedies a redemptive meaning. But for Zizek this attempt at giving disaster a meaning is ultimately a pagan aspiration of inscribing everything into a unified whole.
But for Zizek, Christianity is not about giving tragedy a meaning. Zizek turns initially to the Biblical story of Job to confront the pagan political theology of “blessing in disguise.” You can always tell a story to inspire and make sense of things, and this is exactly what Job’s friend attempt to do. But Job refuses to make sense of it all. He refuses to give an understandable meaning to his circumstances. Giving meaning to everything, even the disasters, is a pagan process of bringing the universe into a unified totality, even if through the tragic perspective. It brings the excessiveness of the human situation back into an understandable frame of reference. The gesture of Job is to refuse to fall into this pagan discourse.
So for Zizek, Christianity is not a Tragedy, attempting to reinsert a minimal order and meaning, but instead, as revealed on the Cross, the God of transcendent Order, giving meaning from above to our darkest hours, dies. The Cross reveals that there is no One to give reasons beyond humanity, beyond the God working within human history and freedom.
Excursus on Fundamentalism:The problem with Fundamentalism is that it, like Tragedy, attempts of giving a clear meaning to everything. It attempts to fill in all the Gaps. But Belief is full of gaps. That is what makes it faith, not certainty. Belief is never belief concerning the facts, but rather between the facts, or rather is itself counter-factual. The problem with fundamentalism is that it obliterates all the gaps, or rather fills them all in, such that there is utter continuity between faith and facts. But this reall y ends up being the end of faith, the end of belief. Usually this loss of faith is manifest in a believers life in a moment of disaster where they realize they haven’t had faith for a long time. Fundamentalism, for Fact-amentalism destroys the gaps within which faith grows.
Fundamentalism is congruous with the films such as World Trade Center and United 93 because they are seek to give a definite meaning to all circumstances, which even in its tragic form, is a return to pagan universal holism (everything has its place). In this we can see how it is that conservative evangelical theology falls in line with Bush administration politics.
But if Christianity is not a Tragedy, then it must be a Comedy right? Well, yes, but not like you might think. According to Stranger than Fiction, a Comedy is life affirming, and doesn’t the Book of Revelation end with the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Sounds like a Comedy to me.
But for Zizek, Comedy is not merely life affirming. While Tradegy pretends to stare straight into the horror of death, ultimately it turns away from the meaninglessness of Death, replacing it with a reason, a “blessing is disguise.” But for Zizek, Comedy is an indirect means of looking into the meaningless of death, and the horrors of life. He draws our attention to movies of the holocaust. A movie, a tragedy, which brought us right into the life and death of the concentration camp would be profane. How could a movie really attempt to portray the “blessing in disguise” of the death camps. Impossible! But a Comedy could depict this meaninglessness, even if indirectly, where we laugh to keep us from crying.
Now there was quite a bit more that Zizek discussed, but I will finish here with Zizek’s suggestion that Christianity offers a political theology, not of the pagan variety bringing meaning into the disaster, but rather a political theology of Christian Comedy, able to look at the horrors of life, not demeaning them by giving them meaning, and thereby offering a particularly powerful position for bringing about change in all areas of life.
Asides (from Q/A session):
1) The prohibition not to make idols in OT is not meant to lead to mysticism (lacking conceptual/aesthetic form), but rather to point us always back to the truth that God is found within humanity in the face of the neighbor. The image of God is found in the redeemed community, it is not a denial of cognative or aesthetic representations.
2) Zizek the Protestant: Zizek is against Eastern Orthodox view of theosis and its attempt at union with God. How could an atheist ever buy into that? But he is also against Catholicism because of it “symbolic exchange”. That’s what he said and I have no idea what he means by this. He says that Protestantism expresses what Christianity always was. It is the true rendering of Christianity.
Geoff's Thoughts: I’m not sure what to make of it that an atheist could feel so secure with Protestantism. Does that means we are already so fall off the path that an atheist finds it so inviting, or just that it picture of redemption is so compelling an atheist can’t resist it?
3) Predestination is Right On!: Asked by an astute, and very Reformed student, how Zizek’s account of freedom might relate to predestination, Zizek responded, “Yes, salvation is not about good deeds. It is predestination!” The predestinational paradox that our salvation is already decided, we just don’t know it, that it is a type of retroactive constitution of necessity, is very appealing to Zizek. Or as he says, “True Freedom is about choosing your necessity. True Freed is not a choice between deserts (cake or brownies), but a compulsion of destinies (to join the freedom fighter, the civil rights movement, acting justly).”
And finally I also don't know what to say about Chevrolet. Oh well.
Love,
Lander
posted by coemergentco at 11/26/2006 09:14:00 PM
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