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The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Short Circuits)

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You're either gonna read Zizek -- because you have to or because you just love this guy -- or you are not, regardless of any review. So I'll keep it brief: Yes, the rambling style can be distracting as well as entertaining when he gets it right.

The book is not so much about Christianity as it is about what Zizek claims to be the very core of it, where there is another dimension. And in discussing the core as such, the book takes off as a reading of the symbolic structure (Lacanian) that made it possible for the transition from Judaic Law to Christian Love; and St. Paul's role in it. Jesus' "Father why hast thou forsaken me?" is one of the loci of Zizek's defense of the "ex-timate" kernel of Christianity: 'Imitatio Christi' as sharing Jesus' own doubt -- not of God's existence but rather of His Impotence. And after taking some very general swipes at Buddhism for (supposedly) aiming for that state (Nirvana) in which all differences are leveled, Zizek presents the genius of Christianity as the religion of Difference in which the very separation between God and Man is God-as-Man. Zizek argues against the idea that the Fall and Redemption are polarities but that the Fall IS Redemption, the Opening of the very space of Redemption.

The crux of Zizek's "argument" boils down to what he says in the last page: "...It is possible today to redeem this core of Christianity only in the gesture of abandoning the shell of its institutional organization (and even more so, of its specific religious experience). The gap here is irreducible: either one drops the religious form, or one maintains the form but lose the essence. This is the ultimate heroic gesture that awaits Christianity: in order to save its treasure, it has to sacrifice itself -- like Christ, who had to die so that Christianity could emerge."

The basic attitude of the book is fueled by contempt for opportunistic liberals, academics, and intellectuals, in short, the Last Man, who drinks decaf and jogs to stay fit, and make a habit of demanding the highest ethical ideals from society KNOWING full well society cannot possibly deliver. Zizek's venom is aimed at the fact that this very impossibility allows intellectuals without any real moral commitment to wallow smug their safe, cushy university jobs and still feel good about themselves for having demonstrated a nobler social conscience: A life devoted to speaking dangerously with all the possibility of danger (and caffeine) removed.

Zizek's enlistment of G.K.Chesterton -- who was, himself, perverse enough to speak (and very convincingly too!) of the "Thrilling Romance of Orthodoxy" -- to kick off his argument is a brilliant move and that alone makes this book worth reading.

Read this book like it was a clearance sale where everything is 90% off: the only thing is, some very fine finds come attached to a lot of junk you don't need. So, keep the baby and throw out the bath water -- even if you know Zizek can convince you that it's really the bath water you should keep.

Zizek is a remarkable Lacanian cultural theorist, and his work deserves to be taken seriously; unfortunately, it is beginning to appear as if Zizek doesn't even take his own project seriously. How else can one explain the poor organization and endless series of digressions that constitute this book?

Most of Zizek's earlier books (The Sublime Object of Ideology, Looking Awry, etc.) give strong accounts how how Lacanian psychoanalysis can be used to analyze contemporary culture; in these works Zizek is never at a loss to show how pop culture can illustrate difficult concepts. The end result was usually a witty, incisive demystification of conservative capitalist ideology.

Unfortunately, "The Puppet and the Dwarf" falls far short of Zizek's past accomplishments. The anecdotes are still there, but they are piled up in a heap with no coherent thread of argument. There are interesting ideas in here about critical negativity in Christianity, but it is far too difficult to discern how Zizek's scattered insights hang together. In the end the reader winds up feeling more like s/he is the object of an intellectual confidence game than anything else.

Readers who don't already know Zizek's work are advised to start with earlier texts. Readers who do know Zizek's work should wait for something worthwhile.

Okay, so what can one say about Zizek?--at times brilliant, infuriating, outrageous...yes, all of the above. If you are looking for the secrets that unfold time and space itself, then, this is not the book for you. But, if you are looking for a fantastic read of applied Lacanian theory on religion and other cultural arenas, then, by all means this book is worth the buy. It is almost getting trite to hear people complain about Zizek's style, analysis, originality, etc...After all, he is only a man. Rather, to focus on the strengths of this book: it does a good job of introducing one to some interesting Lacanian issues, such as the the super-ego, the idea that the Other does not exist, Lacan's interesting thesis that God is not dead but unconscious, just to name a few. Also, many of the jokes that Zizek loves to tell are put into footnotes instead of the body of the text which gives the text more focus. Also, if one has been keeping up with Zizek's interventions into Christianity versus Judaism, then, one may be interested in this book because he does change some of his positions. All in all, this book represents some of Zizek's best work since "Ticklish Subject."

Zizek puts forth the view that Marxists can no longer make a frontal attack on Imperialism therefore they should carry on under the cover of Christianity which has a "subversive kernel". In fact, he says "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience." I hope the Chinese get the message! Is this what happens to you when you read too much Lacan? There are more Christian sects then Trotskyist groupings and Maoists put together, which one should aspiring dialectical materialists join? Nevertheless, this is an interesting book to read as Zizek makes lots of interesting connections between Lenin, St. Paul, Hegel, Marx, Chesterton and others so give it a shot.

I have been able to use this gem once or twice. Quotes like this make me love Zizek:

"One commonplace about philosophers today is that their very analysis of the hypocrisy of the dominant system betrays their naivety: why are they still shocked to see people inconsistently violate their professed values when it suits their interests? Do they really expect people to be consistent and principled? Here one should defend authentic philosophers: what surprises them in the exact opposite - not that people do not "really believe," and act upon their professed principles, but that people who profess their cynical distance and radical pragmatic opportunism secretly believe much more than they are willing to admit, even if they transpose these beliefs onto (nonexistent) "others."" Slavoj Zizek, from The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, p 8

Zizek is fun to read, and in the this book he spikes into the red of the fun meter. Whether you like Lacan, or can even pretend to understand Lacan, Zizek is good at explaining what he thinks Lacan means to express. Besides that, this book tackles a few more topics which make it worth your time - like the victim culture in politics and academia, where the victim is given a privileged position and a sort of super-authority - he sites all kinds of problems with this practice. He also gets into Biblical stuff, walking around the same terrain as Jung did when writing about Job (old-testament story which basically states that there is no personal God), and Jesus's moment of doubt on the Cross. Extremely interesting reading. Well worth the time and money.

The puppet and the Dwarf is one of my favorite books by Zizek. Read this and the fragile absolute and you will have my two favorite books from Zizek. In this book Zizek points out why he finds importance in Christianity. It is both compelling and riveting. Waring: if you start reading a Zizek book like The pupper and Dwarf, you must keep reading until the end in order to really get his full picture.

In the face of the evangelical whoredom, Marxists are the last defenders of true religion. The Right Wing in the United States is trying to destroy the meaning of Christianity, but the Left is not going down without a fight. Jesus was not the reason for the season, but he was one of the most revolutionary thinkers of all time. This book insists that the "body of Christ" is a material phenomenon; that the community of believers can only be realized in revolution. Zizek is the best Slovenian philosopher I know, truly!

i love it. liberalism is akin to nazism in it's refusal to question it's dogma of questioning dogma. and other gems. this guy is the forefront of philosophy today.

Firstly, the book is really full of interesting quotations, comments, reasonings and critiques. Secondly, very much badly organized and scattered in terms of argumentation. It gets sometimes very hard to follow the author's points. Thirdly, the main theme is in no way can be taken as more than an intellectual exercise of an intellectual pop star. The idea that chiristianity has a hard kernel which grasps the real human condition (the split inherent in the subject) is not even a pseudo-marxist or pseudo-lacanian view. What lacan borrows from Hegel's dialectic, his concept of divided self or marxist analysis of history is not in any way in conformity with chiristian idea of fall of man or the idea of trinity as such as the book puts forward. It just seems to be the cultural prejudice of a man from post-communist Balkans who has very litle real say in postmodern era but repeats very old euro-centrist teological stuff. We must remember marxist hard kernel in what Marx happened to say in "11. Thesis on Feurbach": "the critique of religion as essence is over". So is praise of so-called religious hard kernels.