Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>Zizek apparently thinks that he can fight obscurantism with more
>obscurantism....
Just so happened that I met up with Zizek, and had a chance to ask
him about the book. He vigorously denied that it's an apology for
obscurantism. He characterizes it as his "most Leninist book yet."
What he finds valuable in Christianity is its break from other
religions - those that emphasize fate, one's rightful position in a
great hierarchical chain - and its emphasis on rebirth, which to
secularists, means the possibility of revolution.
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I think religion in this abstract way is only attractive to those who, because they have never worked with Christians politically, are under the illusion that to do so you have to relate to their religion. This is bullshit. Christians who have anti-imperialist or pro-working class politics are perfectly willing to work with atheists -- and those who don't won't work with other Christians who do have such politics. Zizek is merely wasting ink. These ideas are quite worthless, but also quite harmless. Unless, of course, if they are a route away from politics and towards pietism for the person writing. But then they are probably still harmless, in that they are merely an effect, not a cause, of the flight from politics.
Revolutionaries and progressives *must* be able and willing to work with Xtians. But that is not difficult to do -- I've been doing it for 35 years. Revolutoinaries and progressives have *no* reason whatever to dabble with Xtian thought.
Carrol