Zizek, On Belief

[Dave Monroe]

>From Slavoj Zizek, On Belief (New York: Routledge,
2001), Ch. 1, "Against the Digital Heresy," Sec. i,
"Gnosticism? No, Thanks!," pp. 6-15 ...

"The gap that separates Gnosticism from Christianity
concerns the basic question of 'who is responsible for
the origin of death':

'If you can accept a God who coexists with death
camps, schizophrenia, and AIDS, yet remains
all-powerful and somehow benign, then you have
faith.... If you know yourself as having an affinity
with the alien, or stranger God, cut off from this
world, then you are a Gnostic.'

"These, then, are the minimal coordinates of
Gnosticism: each human being has deep in himself a
divine spark which unites him with the Supreme Good;
in our daily existence, we are unaware of this spark,
since we are kept ignorant by being caught in the
inertia of the material reality.  How does such a view
relate to Christianity proper?... 

[...]

"... the Cathars, the Christian heresy par excellence,
posited two opposed divinities: on the one hand, the
infinitely good God who, however, is strangely
impotent, unable to CREATE anything; on the other, the
Creator of our material universe who is none other
than the Devil himself (identical to the God of the
Old Testament)--the visible, tangible world in its
entirety is a diabolical phenomenon, a manifestation
of Evil.  The Devil is able to create, but is a
sterile creator [...].  Man is thus a divided
creature: as an entity
of flesh and blood, he is a creation of the Devil. 
However, the Devil was not able to create spiritual
Life, so he was supposed to have asked the good God
for help; in his bounty, God ... breath[ed] a soul
into the body of lifeless clay.  The Devil succeeded
in perverting this spiritual flame by causing the Fall
....

"Why did the Church react in such a violent way to
this Gnostic narrative?  Not because of the Cathars'
radical Otherness ... but because these 'strange'
beliefs which seemed so shocking to the Catholic
orthodoxy 'were precisely those that had the
appearance of stemming logically from orthodox
contemporary doctrine.  That was why they were
considered so dangerous.' Was the Catharist dualism
not simply a consequent devlopment of the Catholic
belief in the Devil?  Was the Catharist rejection of
fornication also the consequnce of the Catholic notion
that concupiscence is inherently 'dirty' ...?  In
short, what the Cathars offered was the inherent
transgression of the Catholic dogma, its disavowed
logical conclusion.  And, perhaps, this allows us to
propose a more general definition of what heresy is:
in order for an ideological edifice to occupy the
hegemonic place and legitimize the existing power
relations, it HAS to compromise its founding radical
message--and the ultimate 'heretic' are simply those
who reject this compromise, sticking to the original
message." (pp. 6-8)

Citing, respectively ...

Bloom, Harold.  Omens of Millenium.
   London: Fourth Estate, 1996.  p. 252

Oldenbourg, Zoe.  Massacre at Motsegur.
   London: Orion Books, 1998.  p. 39

Hm.  See also here, for a similar example of the 
logical development of orthodoxy as "heretical" ...

Ginzburg, Carlo.  The Cheese and the Worms:
   The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.
   Trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi.  
   New York: Penguin, 1980 [1976].   

Anyway, to continue from Zizek, as this was of
interest some time back here ...

"Among America's best-selling toys in the Summer of
2000 was Death Row Marv (McFarlane Toys, $24.99) .... 
Even the ultimate act of the exercise of state power
can be turned into a gadget that provides obscene
pleasure....  Therein resides the libidinal economy of
the capitalist 'consumption': in the production of
objects which do not simply meet or satisfy an already
given need, but create the need they claim to satisfy
...." (pp. 20-1)

And, from the back cover ...

"What happens to our supposedly atheistic, secular
beliefs when they meet the internet, consumerism and
New Age mysticism? ... despite postmodern warnings
that belief is groundless, we are all secretly
believers.

"From 'cyberspace reason' to the paradox of 'Western
Buddhism,' On Belief traces the contours of teh often
uncoscious beliefs that structure our daily
experience....  Zizek argues that all these
experiences are based on beliefs  much closer to the
religious than we might think.  On Belief reveals
that, far from leaving our bodies behind when we go
on-line, we are merely looking for new ones, and that
Western versions of Asiatic spirituality for sale in
shopping malls, lifestyle magazines and 'self-help'
groups are not a far cry from global capitalism but
the perfect ideological supplement to it.

"On Belief shows that underlying all these
experiences, virtual or real, is a pagan and
ultimately futile search for divine and human
perfection.... Zizek calls for a return to the
neglected Christian idea that belief is actually about
imperfection."

Preterition, anyone?  See also ...

Zizek, Slavoj.  The Fragile Absolute: or,
   Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?
   New York: Verso, 2000.

This is not your father's Slovenian Marxist Lacanian
psychoanalytic cultural criticism/theory ...

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