Žižek, Bonhoeffer and the revolutionary body: the sociological potential of critical theology

Abstract

This thesis explores the potential that lies in the engagement of critical theory and
theology. Rather than a mere demonstration of how theology can be used in the service
of critical theory, its original contribution is in the demonstration of theological self-reflective criticality that this engagement brings about. It therefore represents an attempt
to further develop the potential of this engagement, by showing how critical theory can
function as a resource for theological self-reflection. This is achieved through
exploration of the method, function and effect of Slavoj Žižek’s materialist
appropriation of theology for political thought. The resulting struggling universality of
abandonment and its ethic of indifference challenging any notion of identity is then
applied in examination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s own social theology of a transcendental
personalist community of saints and its ethic of universal love in Sanctorum Communio.
Žižek’s community, grounded in the absence of God, draws attention to the theological
character as never submitting to an identity but rather blurring the hypostasized
boundaries between them irrevocably. It challenges Bonhoeffer’s community, grounded
in and by God, as abstracting and suspending identities only through the creation of a
new one. The thesis thus draws attention to and clarifies the full dimensionality of the
necessary critical character of theology.

Date of Award	2016
Original language	English