Marginal Christianity

By Slavoj Zizek    September 3, 2014 2:45 pm September 3, 2014 2:45 pm 502 Comments   campaign: nyt2015_sharetools_mkt_opinion_47K78 -- 271975, creative: nyt2014_sharetools_mktg_opinion_47K78 -- 375123, page: blog.nytimes.com/opinionator/post, targetedPage: blog.nytimes.com/opinionator, position: MiddleLeft It has become a commonplace in recent months to observe that the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is the latest chapter in the long story of the anticolonial awakening — the arbitrary borders drawn after World War I by the great powers being redrawn — and simultaneously a chapter in the struggle against the way global capital undermines the power of nation states. But what causes such fear and consternation is another feature of the ISIS regime: The public statements of the ISIS authorities make it clear that the principal task of state power is not the regulation of the welfare of the state’s population (health, the fight a...

Slavoj Zizek   http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/088ee78e-7597-11e4-a1a9-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3QarbPV2B Economic models have proved more portable than political ideas, writes Slavoj Zizek   T o whom will monuments be built a century from now? Among them, perhaps, will be Lee Kuan Yew. He will be remembered not only as the first prime minister of Singapore, but also as the creator of authoritarian capitalism, an ideology set to shape the next century much as democracy shaped the last.   It was, after all, to Singapore that Deng Xiaoping came before enacting his far-reaching economic reforms in China. Until then, capitalism and democracy had seemed inextricably linked. Now the link is broken. It is often said that the west has failed in its attempt to export its civilisation to the rest of the world. That is only part right. No one dreams any longer of a global liberal democracy that marks the end of history. But economic models ha...

                      How fragile the belief of an Islamist must be if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a weekly satirical newspaper, says the Slovenian philosopher. by Slavoj Zizek Published 10 January, 2015 - 21:31   French police at the Jewish supermarket in Paris where several people were taken hostage. Now, when we are all in a state of shock after the killing spree in the Charlie Hebdo offices, it is the right moment to gather the courage to think . We should, of course, unambiguously condemn the killings as an attack on the very substance our freedoms, and condemn them without any hidden caveats (in the style of " Charlie Hebdo was nonetheless provoking and humiliating the Muslims too much"). But such pathos of universal solidarity is not enough – we should think further. Such thinking has nothing whatsoever to do with the...

Zizek writes: “The will to revolutionary change emerges as an urge, as an "I cannot do it otherwise," or it is worthless. With regard to Bernard Williams's distinction between Ought and Must, an authentic revolution is by definition performed as a Must - it is not something we "ought to do" as an ideal we are striving for, but something we cannot but to, since we cannot do it otherwise. Which is why today's worry of the Leftists that revolution will not occur, that global capitalism will just go on indefinitely, is false insofar as it turns revolution into a moral obligation, into something we ought to do while we fight the inertia of the capitalist present.” We might translate Zizek’s insight here into “calling” and “necessity.”   In terms of searching for a new way to be and do church in our culture, such a venture must spring from a compelling sense of call - one simply cannot not be passionately engaged (Zizek’s “must”) in restlessly, rele...