At 09:48 AM 1/29/2009, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>I'm surprised, and somewhat disappointed, that no one (including Goff,
>it seems -- I searched his site) mentioned Zizek's extensive work on
>the topic of Christianity as a revolutionary force.
I was thinking of just that on the way into work in relation to this from Carrol yesterday:
>the "soft left," defined as those who might subscribe to a list such
>as lbo but who are aggressively and not merely passively opposed to
>the building of an effective left. It ought to be axiomatic that a
>legitimate left would demand the stopping of torture before it started
Carrol is talking about radical demands and subversive radicalism is what Zizek argues is the kernel of Christianity.
A history teacher of mine once described John the Baptist in the desert as "wild and wooly." He made him sound like Ginzburg's "starving, hysterical, naked" in Howl. Some might say John was detached from reality.
But Zizek isn't talking about becoming Christian. He's talking about it as showing that radical change is possible. He kind of sums it up when he says "in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank."
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11672
Dwayne wrote:
>As a person who grew up in the Christian tradition (the Protestant
>tradition in which, unlike Holy Mother Catholicism, you're obliged
>to read the Bible from cover to cover,
Besides, it was often the only book in the house.