2 of 6
Zizek extends this line of thought in On Belief. He signals his concern in his introduction, "From Christ to Lenin … and Back." Where sophisticated Western Marxists reject the former and are embarrassed by the latter, Zizek boldly draws the connection between the Christian legacy and any hope for a real, true Marxism. He has no time for the banal preachments of tenured radicals, whom he describes in The Puppet and the Dwarf as "playing a game of hysterical provocation" by which they "hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position." Rather, Zizek embraces Lenin as an exemplar of the act because Lenin, like St. Paul, adopts the "unequivocal radical position from which it is only possible to intervene in such a way that our intervention changes the coordinates of the situation." In an interview following publication of On Belief he explains his efforts to revive Lenin:
What interests me about Lenin is that precisely after World War I broke out he found himself in a total deadlock. Everything went wrong… . After this, Lenin had to think about how to invent a radical, revolutionary politics in this situation of total breakdown. This is the Lenin I like… . Just as Lenin was forced to reformulate the entire socialist project, we are in a similar situation. What Lenin did, we should do today, at even more radical level… . What I like about Lenin is precisely what scares people about him—the ruthless will to discard all prejudices.6
Lenin's reformulation, his changing of the coordinates of the Marxist tradition, is the fruit of his act. As Zizek has more recently noted, this act was based on Lenin's recognition of the specific moment and the consequences of failing to act: "He understood that the opportunity was provided by a unique combination of circumstances: if the moment wasn't seized, the chance would be forfeited, perhaps for decades. Lenin was entertaining an alternative scenario: what if we don't act now? It was precisely his awareness of the catastrophic consequences of not acting that impelled him to act."7 For Zizek, religious belief is neither to be scorned (as vulgar Marxists do) nor understood as the key to self-realization (as New Agers preach); rather, religious belief provides the psycho-social grounds for a radical break with the past and a reinvention of the self, "to start one's life all over again, from the zero point—in short, to change Eternity itself." So discarding the inherited Marxist prejudice against Christianity, Zizek (in On Belief) celebrates its idea of rebirth as an "explosive" interruption into the pagan cycle of submission and surrender to the higher powers of destiny and fate: "Against the pagan notion of destiny, Christianity offered the possibility of a radical opening, that we can find a zero point and clear the table."8
share this page
RSS Feed
