The aim of this article is to provide a systematic presentation of Slavoj Žižek's reflections on belief and hereby to indicate his relevance for a philosophy of religion. The article begins with a ...brief introduction to Žižek's basic philosophical concern and a theological contextualization of his thinking from the perspective of this concern. This is followed by an exposition of his concept of belief. The starting point of this exposition is Freud's reflections on fetishism and disavowal that form the background for Žižek’s analysis of belief in modern secular society and as structural conditions of the human consciousness. Subsequently, the article presents Žižek's reflections on belief as reflective in terms ‘displaced belief’ in ‘the other who is supposed to believe’. It is demonstrated here how Žižek operates with a distinction between an ‘imaginary’ belief that is structured like the fetishistic disavowal and a ‘symbolic’ unconscious belief in belief as such. The final section of the article sheds light on Žižek's view of atheism and his introduction of a third form of ‘atheistic belief’, while considering whether this kind of belief belongs to the register of the ‘real’.
Hensigten med denne artikel er at give en systematisk fremstilling af Slavoj Žižeks overvejelser over tro for herved at tematisere hans religionsfilosofiske relevans. Der indledes med en kort introduktion til Žižeks grundlæggende filosofiske anliggende og en teologisk kontekstualisering af hans tænkning ud fra dette anliggende. Derefter udfoldes fremstillingen af trosbegrebet. Udgangspunktet tages i Freuds betragtninger over fetichisme og fornægtelse, der danner baggrunden for Žižeks analyser af tro i det moderne sekulære samfund og som strukturelt vilkår ved den menneskelige bevidsthed. Derefter præsenteres Žižeks overvejelser over refleksiv tro som ’forskudt tro’ på ’den anden, der formodes at tro’. Det demonstreres her, hvordan Žižek opererer med et skel mellem en ’imaginær’ tro, der er struktureret som den fetichistiske fornægtelse og en ’symbolsk’ forudgående, ubevidst tro på selve det at tro. Til sidst i artiklen belyses Žižeks opfattelse af ateistisme og hans introduktion af en tredje form for ’ateistisk tro’, og det overvejes om denne form for tro kan siges at høre til i det reelles register.
This article combines a reading of Pasolini's first feature film, Accattone (1961), with an investigation into what the theory of subjectivity of Zizek and Agamben might mean for a critique of ...today's liberal-democratic, late-capitalist hegemony. More precisely, my article claims that Pasolini's scandalous over-identification with the Roman sub-proletariat quaexcluded social class, in the context of Italy's modernization, should be read in conjunction with both Zizek's and Agamben's defence of the `abject subjects' of today's global order. Arguing against the de-politicizing trends of contemporary cultural studies, I suggest that it is only through the identification of (a politically rehabilitated notion of) universality with the point of exclusion of today's late-capitalist experience, that our cultural discourse can radically disturb the socio-symbolic field.
This article represents an attempt at identifying a lack (of a lack) in analytic philosophy. It claims that one of the central features common to a variety of analytic philosophies is the absence of ...an investigation of what Jacques Lacan has identified as the lack of being (manque à être). This lacking lack is investigated through what could be termed a Lacanian intervention into one of the finest (relatively) recent products of the analytic tradition, Robert Brandom's Making It Explicit. The aim of the intervention is twofold: first, to identify some of the (maybe surprising) similarities between Brandom and the Lacanian tradition; second, to identify the lacking lack within analytic philosophy by focusing on what Brandom (`explicitly') does not say — and to argue that what is thus usually passed over in silence in the analytic tradition contains a perspective of fundamental significance to understanding humans and their societies.
Recent critical theory is curiously preoccupied with the metaphors and ideas of early Christianity, especially the religion of Paul. The haunting of secular thought by the very religion it seeks to ...overcome may seem surprising at first, but Ward Blanton argues that this recent return by theorists to the resources of early Christianity has precedent in modern and ostensibly secularizing philosophy, from Kant to Heidegger. Displacing Christian Origins traces the current critical engagement of Agamben, Derrida, and Žižek, among others, back into nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century philosophers of early Christianity. By comparing these crucial moments in the modern history of philosophy with exemplars of modern biblical scholarship—David Friedrich Strauss, Adolf Deissmann, and Albert Schweitzer—Blanton offers a new way for critical theory to construe the relationship between the modern past and the biblical traditions to which we seem to be drawn once again. An innovative contribution to the intellectual history of biblical exegesis, Displacing Christian Origins will promote informed and fruitful debate between religion and philosophy.
Moral stealth Goldberg, Arnold
2007., 2008, 2007
eBook
A psychiatrist writes a letter to a journal explaining his decision to marry a former patient. Another psychiatrist confides that most of his friends are ex-patients. Both practitioners felt they had ...to defend their behavior, but psychoanalyst Arnold Goldberg couldn’t pinpoint the reason why. What was wrong about the analysts’ actions? In Moral Stealth, Goldberg explores and explains that problem of “correct behavior.” He demonstrates that the inflated and official expectations that are part of an analyst’s training—that therapists be universally curious, hopeful, kind, and purposeful, for example—are often of less help than simple empathy amid the ambiguous morality of actual patient interactions. Being a good therapist and being a good person, he argues, are not necessarily the same. Drawing on case studies from his own practice and from the experiences of others, as well as on philosophers such as John Dewey, Slavoj Žižek, and Jürgen Habermas, Goldberg breaks new ground and leads the way for therapists to understand the relationship between private morality and clinical practice.
Nevermind Howie, Luke
True Detective and Philosophy,
10/2017
Book Chapter
Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek explains with joke violence make a link between obvious violence and hidden violence. Subjective violence confronts on the television news with ...its often graphic coverage of wars, murders, assaults, and terrorism. When violence is objective it is less visible, operating under the surface, and is rarely, if ever, featured on the news. The city of Vinci is a place where corruption, immorality, and violence are so commonplace that they are not only tolerated also considered essential parts of life in this forgotten slice of humanity's seedy underbelly. Gangsters, prostitutes, drugs, crooked cops. Frank Semyon is a gangster. Frank is betrayed by the gangsters he trusts, and the city administrator who was responsible for facilitating the land investment goes missing. Through these characters, True Detective taps into the whole system of violence that characterizes the United States—the violence and criminality of international wars.
An influential strand in the study of ideology has been the psychoanalytic approach represented in the work of Slavoj Zizek. I argue, however, that his work is limited by a fundamentally ahistorical ...mode of analysis arising from his reliance on Lacan's idea of the symbolic formation of subjectivity. In particular, Zizek's deployment of Lacan's idea of language as an abstract system of signification results in an inadequate account of agency and change in social relations. I outline an alternative notion of language as a situated medium. Language is understood as situated in a two-fold sense; it is a mode of social interaction and, therefore, a type of agency, and it is system of symbolic power that interacts, in a variable fashion, with other distinct systems of power. I illustrate my points with reference to contemporary gender relations.
Drawing from literary history, social theory, and political critique, this far-reaching study explores the utopian narrative as a medium for understanding the social space of the modern nation-state. ...Considering the narrative utopia from its earliest manifestation in Thomas More's sixteenth-century workUtopiato some of the most influential utopias of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this book is an astute study of a literary genre as well as a nuanced dialectical meditation on the history of utopian thinking as a quintessential history of modernity. As he unravels the dialectics at work in the utopian narrative, Wegner gives an ambitious synthetic discussion of theories of modernity, considering and evaluating the ideas of writers such as Ernst Bloch, Louis Marin, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Henri Lefebvre, Paul de Man, Karl Mannheim, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Zizek, and Homi Bhabha.
The Veil Between Davidson, John E
A Companion to Werner Herzog,
04/2012
Book Chapter
This chapter contains sections titled:
Forethoughts
The Measures Taken Again and Again
Bells from the American Deep
Bodies at Auction‐How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck?
The Situating of American‐ ...Huie's Sermon
The Whiteness of the Whale‐ God's Angry Man
Afterthought
Notes
Works Cited
Artiklen præsenterer perspektiver fra en ph.d. afhandling om elevsubjektivering i et historisk perspektiv. Det gennemgående fokus er, hvor- dan skolen virker gennem skoling af lyst i levet skoleliv. ...Afhandlingens empiri er produceret gennem fokusgruppeinterviews med tidligere skolelever om deres skoleerindringer. Med baggrund i kvalitativ analyse af tre elevge- nerationers skoleerindringer fra 1950 – 2000 udfolder artiklen tre optikker. Først begrebs- liggøres skolen som erindringsrum med hen- blik på at indfange de skiftende tidsligheder og sanseligheder indeholdt i det empiriske materiale Dernæst begrebssættes skolen som ideologisk rum – en analytisk optik baseret på Slavoj Zizeks ideologikritik med henblik på at introducere begreber om ideologisk fantasi og begær i empiriske analyser af lærer-elev- forhold og lærerautoritet over tid. Den sidste optik skolen som affektivt rum anvender be- grebsliggørelser af affekt og intensitet udviklet af Brian Massumi i analyser af skolingen af lyst til læring og kultiveringen af elev-selver i historisk forskellige pædagogiske praktikker. Artiklen kan læses som et bidrag til udvikling af teoretiske begrebsliggørelser og empiriske analysestrategier, som sigter på at integrere analyser af følelser og fantasier, fornemmelser og følsomheder i forståelsen af, hvordan skolen virker på og gennem eleverne.
The article presents perspectives from a PhD- dissertation on pupil subjectification in a his- torical perspective. The overall focus is how school works through the schooling of desire in the lived life of school. Three distinct theo- retical frameworks are developed aiming at the qualitative analysis of school memories of three generations of pupils in Danish compul- sory school from 1950 – 2000. Firstly school as a space of memory is conceptualised in order to grasp the shifting temporalities and the rich sensitivities displayed in empirical material produced through focus group interviews on school memories. The analytical framework of school as an ideological space builds on the ideology critique of Slavoj Zizek in order to introduce the analysis of ideological fantasy and desire into the analysis of pupil-teacher relationships and teacher authority over time. School as an affective space uses the conceptu- alisation of affect and intensity by Brian Mas- sumi in order to analyze the schooling of the desire to learn and the cultivation of the pupil self in historically different pedagogical prac- tices. The article may be read as a contribution to the development of theoretical conceptuali- sations and analytical strategies aiming at the integration of feelings and fantasies, sensations and sensibilities into the analysis of how school works on and through the pupils.
