Žižek in the Service of Critical Theology

Canterbury Christ Church University’s repository of research outputs http://create.canterbury.ac.uk Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. Zoltaj, B. (2016) Zizek, Bonhoeffer and the revolutionary body: the sociological potential of critical theology. Ph.D. thesis, Canterbury Christ Church University. Contact: create.library@canterbury.ac.uk ŽIŽEK, BONHOEFFER AND THE REVOLUTIONARY BODY: The Sociological Potential of Critical Theology by Bojan Koltaj Canterbury Christ Church University Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Acknowledgments I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the Graduate School for their award of the University Research Scholarship, which has enabled me to carry out this research. I also wish to thank my supervisory panel, Dr Ralph Norman, Professor Bee Scherer and Professor Robert Beckford, for allowing me the space and freedom I needed and for their continued support and guidance from day one. Abstract This thesis explores the potential that lies in the engagement of critical theory and theology. Rather than a mere demonstration of how theology can be used in the service of critical theory, its original contribution is in the demonstration of theological self- reflective criticality that this engagement brings about. It therefore represents an attempt to further develop the potential of this engagement, by showing how critical theory can function as a resource for theological self-reflection. This is achieved through exploration of the method, function and effect of Slavoj Žižek’s materialist appropriation of theology for political thought. The resulting struggling universality of abandonment and its ethic of indifference challenging any notion of identity is then applied in examination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s own social theology of a transcendental personalist community of saints and its ethic of universal love in Sanctorum Communio. Žižek’s community, grounded in the absence of God, draws attention to the theological character as never submitting to an identity but rather blurring the hypostasized boundaries between them irrevocably. It challenges Bonhoeffer’s community, grounded in and by God, as abstracting and suspending identities only through the creation of a new one. The thesis thus draws attention to and clarifies the full dimensionality of the necessary critical character of theology. Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Aim ................................................................................................................................... 1 The Object of Analysis: The Social Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer ............................ 1 Religionless Christianity and the Death of God? ...................................................... 3 The Analyst: The Theological Materialism of Slavoj Žižek .......................................... 11 Theological Engagement with Žižek (Literature Survey) ....................................... 13 Further Engagement?............................................................................................... 17 Potential for Further Engagement ........................................................................... 22 Demonstrating the Sociological Import of Theology .............................................. 22 Critical Theory in the Service of Theology ............................................................. 25 Theoretical Framework: Critical Theory and Critical Theology .................................... 27 Critical Theory......................................................................................................... 27 Critical Theology ..................................................................................................... 29 Outline ............................................................................................................................ 34 Works Consulted, Referencing and Translation ............................................................. 37 Chapter 1: Žižek’s Intellectual Background .............................................................. 40 1.1 Žižek’s Intellectual Biography .................................................................................. 40 1.1.1 The beginning ................................................................................................. 40 1.1.2 International acclaim ...................................................................................... 45 1.2 Žižek’s Conceptual Framework ................................................................................ 48 1.2.1 Hegel according to Žižek and vice versa ........................................................ 48 1.2.2 Marx, Marxism and Žižek .............................................................................. 56 1.2.3 Žižek and Lacan ............................................................................................. 62 1.2.4 Concluding thought ........................................................................................ 74 1.3 The Context of Žižek’s Theological Engagement: post-Marxist critical theory ...... 76 1.3.1 Setting the scene ............................................................................................. 76 1.3.2 Marxism and theology as sociopolitical sojourners ....................................... 86 1.3.3 Western Marxism, theology and political critique ......................................... 89 1.3.4 Concluding thought ........................................................................................ 94 Chapter 2: Žižek’s Political Theology ......................................................................... 95 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 95 2.2 Badiou and Paul’s truth-event ................................................................................... 98 2.3 Christianity’s Perverse Core ................................................................................... 103 2.4 The Jewish Context of Christianity ........................................................................ 107 2.5 Christianity’s Subversive Element .......................................................................... 111 2.6 Dialectical Materialism ........................................................................................... 117 2.7 A theological overcoming of the constitutive exception ........................................ 120 2.7.1 Militant politics of external and contingent Grace ....................................... 122 2.7.2 Žižek’s Atonement: An act of madness that suspends the law .................... 124 2.8 The True Community .............................................................................................. 129 2.κ.1 Žižek’s Kierkegaardian suspension of the ethical ........................................ 132 2.8.2 The Other of the Neighbour ......................................................................... 135 Chapter 3: Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Background ................................................... 141 3.1 Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Biography ...................................................................... 141 3.1.1 From Berlin to Tübingen and back again ..................................................... 141 3.1.2 Postdoctoral academic and pastoral activities .............................................. 144 3.1.3 Union theological seminary .......................................................................... 145 3.1.4 The socio-political dimension of his theology ............................................. 148 3.1.5 Work in the Confessing Church and the letters from Tegel ......................... 150 3.2 The context of Bonhoeffer’s thought: modern theology ........................................ 157 3.2.1 Concluding thought ...................................................................................... 163 3.3 Bonhoeffer’s intellectual formation ........................................................................ 164 3.3.1 The philosophical influence of the theological faculty at the University of Berlin ..................................................................................................................... 165 3.3.2 Conclusion for the Berlin section ................................................................. 179 3.3.3 Supplementary note on the influence of Hegel ............................................ 180 3.3.4 Addendum: the influence of Karl Barth ....................................................... 183 Chapter 4: Žižek in the Service of Critical Theology .............................................. 191 4.1. A Žižekian reading of Sanctorum Communio ....................................................... 192 4.1.1 Introduction .................................................................................................

Load more