Slavoj Žižek, On Belief

Kelsey Wood (University of Arkansas at Little Rock)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Cultural Studies

Dates

First circulation or publication 2001

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Commentary / criticism

Resources

In Slavoj Žižek’s On Belief, he further develops ideas which he introduced in his previous book on religion, The Fragile Absolute. Žižek begins, in his Introduction, by indicating that On Belief will show why leftists today should endorse a materialist version of Christianity. This reinscription of Christianity will displace the “original” and put it to work, fulfilling its unrealized, radical-emancipatory potential. Žižek shows how St Paul already performed such a displacement and reinscription, just as Lenin did with Marxism, and Jacques Lacan did with Freudian psychoanalysis (On Belief p. 2f.). Thus the first, most basic idea to grasp in order to understand this book, is that Žižek is …

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2239 words

Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "On Belief". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 June 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23500, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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