An Ideological Conception of Politics—Critique of Zizek on Political Theology

Abstract

For some time now, Slavoj Zizek has provocatively maintained that the radical left needs a ‘politics of universal Truth’ whose model is Pauline theology’s transformation of the Hellenistic world. Furthermore, in light of the worldwide resurgence of religious militancy after 9/11, Zizek also contends that political theology provides the conceptual resources for thinking historical materialism today. Zizek here represents the leading wing of a ‘theological turn’ amongst radical intellectuals, for whom religion is a last resource of hope following the collapse of historical communism. In this article, I show that this rather desperate position leads to an ideological conception of politics, one that introduces mystified representations of social antagonism and class struggle into the heart of progressive theory. Through an imminent critique of Zizek’s work that draws upon its Althusserian foundations, I demonstrate that, although Zizek makes some important contributions to the critique of ideology, his theoretical position contains a significant problem. The idea that ideology and politics are structurally the same, which is what allows him to discuss problems of socialist strategy in the medium of political theology, is seriously flawed. It leads Zizek inevitably towards metaphysical notions of the subject of history, and away from theoretical engagement with rethinking the concept of class struggle for the new century.