The Puppet and the Dwarf

»Slavoj Žižek has been called »an academic rock star« and »the wild man of theory«; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties.

In The Puppet and the Dwarf he offers a close reading of today's religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today's spirituality – New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaism – and then tries to redeem the »materialist« kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jürgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a »postsecular« age, this book – with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy – is certain to stir controversy.« (book description from the English edition by MIT Press)