Žižek and the Death of God: Hegel or Lacan?

This dissertation engages the figure of Slovenian cultural theorist and leftist provocateur Slavoj Žižek, who represents perhaps the most radical theoretical constellation of any such contemporary thinker with his trademark configuration of German Idealist Romantic philosophy, theoretical psychoanalysis, and ardent revolutionary Marxism. While such a triangulation is maximally provocative in its own right, what sets Žižek apart is his deep engagement with and constructive use of Christian theology. More specifically, the dissertation will focus on Žižek’s theory of the death of God, as well as the ways in which he negotiates and surpasses the various philosophical strains of the death of God he inherits—Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and so on—together with the theoretical fields in which he operates—psychoanalysis, cultural and emancipatory political theory, and so on.

For Žižek, such ideological commitments (or the atheism they seem to imply) are neither necessary nor sufficient to discount the importance of the theological, and moreover, should not disqualify even the most militant of “fighting atheists”[1] from self-identifying as Christians, whatever the requisite caveats. In fact, Žižek argues that such commitments best provide both the grounds and the impetus for Christian identity, while also regulating Christianity as such with respect to its ontological and gnoseological claims. Thus, the agenda of the dissertation is set by the dynamism of this interplay between Christian theological identity (or identification) and content, on the one hand, and ideological regulation, on the other, and seeks ultimately to present an account of Slavoj Žižek, not only as a constitutively theological thinker, but also as representing a certain kind of religious type in and through reconstructing his version of the death of God.

Thus, the dissertation proceeds along conceptual (theoretical, philosophical, theological) and typological (classificatory, characteristic) lines. With respect to the former, a conceptual analysis, though incredibly broad and complex, is relatively straightforward, at least procedurally insofar as Žižek’s ideas and influences are presented, catalogued, and assessed. The typological approach, however, is perhaps less procedurally straightforward insofar as it attempts to contour Žižek as a particular type of religiosity, one constitutively theological while remaining atheistic, demonstrating the possibility of being religious in the quagmire of post-secularism. To approach the status quaestionis of Žižek’s theological orientation and religious typology, considerable preliminary work must be done to situate Žižek within milieux of the broad ideological movements in which he operates, namely, Marxism, German Romantic Idealist philosophy, and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. That is, the antecedent character of each school of thought before Žižek’s involvement with and contribution to them must be considered in their own right.

Such preamble is especially critical with respect to Žižek, who exercises incredibly transformative effects on the discourses he utilizes, and not without a fair amount of controversy in doing so. Christian theology, on the other hand, functions differently in Žižek, not as an ideological position in the same way that Hegel, Marx, and Lacan do, but rather as a common thread between these discourses, in fact very often providing both the means to integrate and ambiguate them, as well as a putative horizon against which such discourses are directed and tested. In other words, the fundamental problematic of the dissertation concerns the intersection between Žižek’s attitudes toward and conceptualization of religion, Christianity in particular, and his use of it within the framework of his otherwise ideological commitments. The former constitutes the conceptual approach of the dissertation; the latter roughly denotes the typological.

[1] Doug Henwood, “I’m a Fighting Atheist. Interview with Slavoj Žižek,” Bad Subjects 59 (2002), available at http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2002/59/Zizek.html.