Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute, Or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For

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One of Slavoj Žižek’s most sustained engagements with religion is

The Fragile Absolute

. In this book, Žižek uses the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan in order to reactualize – for leftists today – the subversive, radical-emancipatory kernel of Christianity. As usual, Žižek’s approach is anything but “as usual”. This becomes clear after the first paragraph, which is addressed to Marxist materialists. In the second paragraph, in an apparent reversal, Žižek asserts that there is a direct lineage from Christianity to Marxism, and further, “the authentic Christian legacy is much too precious to be left to the fundamentalist freaks” (

Fragile

, p. 2). Moreover, Christians and Marxists should now be fighting on the same side against New Age spiritualisms. And for…

2381 words

Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "The Fragile Absolute, Or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 June 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23502, accessed 19 March 2024.]

23502 The Fragile Absolute, Or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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