Killing the Big Other

The first book in his "Short Circuits" series from MIT Press, Slavoj Zizek's The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity strives to radicalize belief and action by revaluing the solid, divine foundation usually thought to underpin religious faith. Benjamin's formulation implicates theology as the hidden motor of historical materialism, and the thesis aphoristically argues that "materialist" accounts of history are ultimately guided by theological narratives of salvation, of a progressively inclined "invisible hand," or of the divine coming of class consciousness.