Difference between revisions of "The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For"

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Source

Žižek, S. (2000) The Fragile Absolute, or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For, London and New York: Verso.

Review by Tony Myers

As Žižek himself confesses, it might seem strange for a Marxist to defend the legacy of Christianity in an age which has seen the re-emer- gence of obscurantist religious thought. However, part of the broad remit of this compact book is an attempt to resuscitate the subversive core of Christianity, the act of 'shooting at oneself' (or of radical nega- tivity) which forms the centrepiece of Žižek's analysis of Schelling in The Abyss of Freedom and of Descartes in Cogito and the Unconscious. Proposing that the only way to liberate oneself from the grip of existing social reality is to renounce the fantasmatic supplement that attaches us to it, he cites any number of examples from Sethe's act of infanti- cide in Toni Morrison's Beloved, through Keyser Soeze's massacre of his own family in The Usual Suspects, up to the supreme instance of such a gesture in the Crucifixion. This is an accessible work which underscores the utopian aspect of his discussion of the 'night of the world' in previous books.

Template:Footer Books Slavoj Žižek