A Materialism for the Masses

Abstract

This book argues that genealogical interventions into the political economies of Western cultural memory do not go far enough in relation to the imagined founder of Christianity, the apostle Paul. It explains how Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud saw Christianity as metaphysical escapism, with Nietzsche calling the religion a “Platonism for the masses” and faulting Saint Paul for negating more immanent, material modes of thought and political solidarity. The book integrates this debate with the philosophies of difference espoused by Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. It then challenges the idea of Paulinism as a pop Platonic worldview or form of social control. It also unearths Pauline legacies from previously repressed sources that provide resources for new materialist spiritualities and new forms of radical political solidarity. It argues that these liberate “religion” from inherited interpretive assumptions and that they allow philosophical thought to be manifested in a new, risky, and radical freedom.