Slavoj Zizek

If you don’t know the name, then get thee to Amazon. If you do know the name, then forgive for not spelling it correctly. I bring Slavoj up, not just because of the brilliance and originality of his scholarship, but because Andrew Jones have been blogging about Zizek’s comments on the Christology of Star Wars.

Zizek first appeared on my intellectual radar when I was teaching Philosophy of Religion in 1997 and researching Jacques Lacanand he became a big figure in my postgraduate research in London. He seems to get a mention in every paper I wrote during that time, was a 2002 subject of study in the Coffee, Theology and Culture reading group and his “The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s ‘Lost Highway'” remains for me the benchmark in philosphical reflection on film-culture. So, it is not surprising that when I looked back on previous version of this site, I found myself making the following comments (Feb4, 2002).

“I resonated strongly with David Rodowick’s suggestion that the 20th Century is the century of Film, and that the study of Film is central and essential to the understanding of the changes in culture today. For some time know I have been thinking that a theology of film that is film theory aware is the essential place to start a theology of culture and that is what I have attempted to move towards with my two recent papers on theology and film, where I draw upon the Lacanian film theory developed by Slavoj Zizek.”

At the risk of sounding overly passionate, I honestly find it quite hard to take seriously anyone who wants to write at an academic level on theology and culture, or theology and film, or ethics, or almost anything to do with how people live in this era of glocalisation if they do not reference and reflect upon Zizek’s work.

[tags] Zizek [/tags]