Slovenian Marxist-Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s parents were both atheists, and Žižek witnessed firsthand the bloody aftermath of the failed Soviet-backed Yugoslavian government. As an atheist, Žižek holds a unique place in contemporary Christian theological discourse. Instead of ignoring, downplaying, or demeaning theological strands of intellectual history, Žižek instead engages them head on with the same intellectual and philosophical rigor with which he engages continental philosophy, Marxism, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Žižek’s take on religion and theology therefore presents another way in which he challenges expectations and, more importantly, demonstrates the relevance of religious discourse in an era during which the divide between the religious and the nonreligious has only grown greater.
Beginning with his first major work, The Sublime Object of Ideology(1989), Žižek has extensively critiqued religion, specifically Christianity, leading up to the publication of...
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Mills, D. (2016). Slavoj Žižek and Religion. In: Leeming, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200121-1
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