The
Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core
of Christianity
by Slavoj Zizek
MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2003
190 pp. Paper, $16.95
ISBN: 0-262-74025-7.
Reviewed by Rick Mitchell, Associate
Professor
Department of English, California State
University-Northridge
18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA
91330-8248, USA
rick.mitchell@csun.edu
Slavoj Zizek's The Puppet and the Dwarf:
The Perverse Core of Christianity
borrows part of its title from the first
of Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy
of History," the one in which an automaton,
or puppet (historical materialism), "wins
all the time" in chess (or historiography)
with the crucial assistance of a hidden
dwarf (theology). According to Zizek,
we must now "reverse" Benjamin's thesis
so that theology always wins by enlisting
"the service of historical materialism,
which today, as we know, is wizened and
has to keep out of sight" (3). Theology,
particularly Christianity, has moved center
stage, and the cultural theorist must
read it dialecticallythrough the
material conditions of both past and presentwhile
harnessing the revolutionary, "perverse
core" of Christianity which will lead,
paradoxically, to Christianity's end.
As his wide-ranging argument zigzags back
and forth from the Bible, to critical
theories, to today's consumerist, globalized
societies, Zizek continually returns to
Christianity's founding gestures and principles
as seen through the writings of St. Paul,
which he implies are increasingly relevant
in an always-catastrophic world whose
current manifestations include the War
on Terror, pleasures without substance,
and the "weird," fetishistic trend of
victims (and/or their heirs) seeking monetary
reparations for such post-Enlightenment
catastrophes as American slavery, the
Holocaust, or a steady diet of unhealthy
meals from McDonalds.
Central to Zizek's thesis is that the
Christianity so prevalent in everyday
machinations of modernity maintains a
"hidden perverse core" (15) that is particularly
evident within two founding "Events":
Adam and Eve's Fall and Christ's sacrifice.
Zizek asks, for example, "if it is prohibited
to eat from the Tree of Knowledge in Paradise,
why did God put it there in the first
place" if not as "a part of His perverse
strategy first to seduce Adam and Eve
into the Fall, in order to save them?"
(15). Similarly, God creates Judas, "the
ultimate hero of the New Testament, the
one ready to lose his soul and accept
eternal damnation so that the divine plan
could be accomplished" (16). Although
Zizek implies that God is a perverse opportunist
who introduces the world to misery so
that He can later save the world, God's
power is by no means absolute. While suffering
on the cross, for example, Christ calls
out, "Father, why hast thou forsaken me?",
thereby committing "what is, for a Christian,
the ultimate sin: he wavers in his Faith"
(15), suggesting that: 1) God is not divine,
for He (in the form of his son) doesn't
understand why He had been hung up to
die in the desert; or 2) (and more importantly)
that God is unable to help his son because
God is impotent, and, ultimately, absent,
a reading which seems to be in agreement
with "Lacan's thesis that the big Other
no longer exists" (53).
Zizek's often devastating critique of
conventional Christianity and the contemporary
world, neither of which we can view in
isolation, hinges upon Pauline Christianity's
radicalness which, when followed to its
logical conclusion, results in Christianity's
death (and subsequent radical rebirth
as something else). And Zizek's emphasis
on Christianity's "perverse core" enables
him to embrace "Christianity as the religion
of atheism . . .[which] attacks the religious
hardcore that survives even in humanism,
even up to Stalinism [and the War on Terror],
with its belief in History as the 'big
Other' that decides the 'objective meaning'
of our deeds" (171). Following Judas'
example, the world's next "hero" of Christianity
will participate in a major (self) sacrifice,
"the ultimate heroic gesture that awaits
Christianity: In order to save its treasure
[the obscene fact that there is no big
Other], it has to sacrifice itselflike
Christ, who had to die so that Christianity
could emerge" (171). Since the "big Other"
remains so central to oppression and alienation
within a variety of (interrelated) cultural
formsincluding religion, democracy,
totalitarianism, the family, and everyday
lifeawareness that the (absent)
"big Other" no longer exists, the central
objective of Lacanian psychoanalysis,
must become, according to Zizek, the major
goal of a radical theological/materialist
social praxis that can renew the world
not through a messianic reintroduction
of the big "big Other," but through its
wholesale liquidation.
The Puppet and the Dwarf, frequently
punctuated with jokes that exemplify abstract
concepts, provides the reader with a witty,
informative trip through Paul's subversive
Christianity, related philosophies and
critical theories, popular culture, and
pressing problems of the early twenty-first
century. This volume, both erudite and
accessible, will be a welcome addition
to research and large public libraries,
and it should prove valuable to students
of cultural studies, philosophy, Lacanian
psychoanalysis, and theological excess.