Unveiling the religious motives in radical social critique

Introduction

Contemporary radical social critique categorically rejects religion but, at the same time, is inspired by it. Its attitude towards religion seems to be marked by an insurmountable ambivalence. On the one hand, religion viewed as a cultural phenomenon – that is, as a marker of identity – is vehemently criticized and condemned. Yet on the other hand, main religious figures (Saint Paul) and major religious events (the Resurrection) as well as key religious concepts (grace) are carefully analysed, freed from their religious origin, and included in the toolkit of radical social critique. Why is the attitude of radical social critique towards religion so ambivalent and contradictory? How do the religious images, plots and concepts that inspire radical social critique transform it? I will try to answer those questions by referring to the texts of two of the most prominent representatives of present-day radical social critique, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek.

I Religion as a cultural particularity

We can look for the answer to the first question by proceeding from the key opposition between universality and particularity. For Badiou and Žižek this opposition is not just theoretical and speculative; it concerns the very organization of contemporary societies, their political form. Both Badiou and Žižek assume that we are living in an era of particularities and particularization of societies. In their view, this process of particularization occurs at different levels: in the sphere of politics and policies, but also in the sphere of universities and academic research. In the political sphere it is manifest in the so-called identity politics – politics based on national, ethnic, religious, gender, sexual and other differences. In the academic sphere it is manifest in what Badiou calls ‘Anglo-Saxon ideology’, that is, analytic philosophy as well as its continental equivalent, hermeneutics. This conceptual configuration of the world in the form of horizontally located, juxtaposed particularities (coexisting in conflict or in peace) conceals the fundamental dilemma, the true clash – between communism and capitalism – and hinders its recognition. However, it hinders not only its recognition but also its practical resolution. An important argument in this respect is the thesis that we cannot oppose capitalism through culture because culture is always particular and no particularity is strong enough to beat a global system. This also holds true for religion in its capacity as a particular religion. ¹ The present-day conflicts in the world are an example of this unfortunate limitation of public actions and their interpretations to the causes of cultural particularities.

Žižek’s response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre is very telling in this regard. Žižek adamantly condemns the crime, but also some of the public reactions to it. In his view, both are based on ‘cultural’ grounds. That is why he condemns both the Islamic fundamentalists and the western leftists: the former for clinging to their religion and being capable of committing such evil deeds in its name; the latter for being inclined to exculpate the Islamic fundamentalists because they feel guilty for what western civilization has caused (and is continuing to cause) to the other civilizations. For Žižek, fanaticism in the name of some religion, that is, in the name of some cultural particularity, is reprehensible. ² But tolerating religious fanaticism, let alone feeling guilty in the face of such fanaticism, is no less reprehensible.

For his part, Alain Badiou also condemns the Charlie Hebdo massacre but his analysis of the terrorist attack is somewhat different. Unlike Žižek’s, his critique is directed not only against the Islamic fundamentalists but also against the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. According to Badiou, the cartoonists provoked, to some extent, the Islamists’ attack with their openly identitarian position (which has nothing to do with universal values), and their cartoons openly flirted with the racist bias of some of the French citizens:

It’s got nothing to do with the solemn defence of ‘freedom of expression’. It is a ridiculous, provocative obscenity targeting Islam − and that’s all. And it’s nothing more than a third-rate cultural racism, a ‘joke’ to amuse the local pissed-up Front National supporter. (Badiou, 2015 [online])

Hence, both Badiou and Žižek share the same conceptual picture of the present-day world, a picture structured in two dimensions: one dimension being the globally triumphant capitalism and the abstraction of money – ‘the only recognised universal’ today – and the other dimension ‘the identities and counter-identities that ravage people’s minds and call them to their death’ (Badiou, 2015 [online]). If the war between identities is incapable of threatening the domination of global capitalism, then the question is: How can true universality – the communist idea ³ – appear in the world? It is precisely here that religion comes into play: referring to religion seems necessary in order to imagine how a radical social transformation of the world that can save it from capitalism may be realized. In religion we can find a universal experience and an experience of universality that precedes and transcends every codification of religion as a particular religion – an experience of universality, which, so to speak, is non-religion.

II Religion and the experience of universality

The key concept for Badiou, as well as for Žižek who follows Badiou in this regard, is the concept of event. Badiou defines the event in terms such as break, rupture and exception. The event is a rupture and break with regard to history understood in a double sense: history as continuity, succession, social conservatism, but also history as a particular historical and cultural context. ⁴ The event is an exception insofar as it opposes political power, social order and the established institutions. The event neutralizes their constraints, it annuls their normative power. What is more, as Badiou claims, the event is not of the order of knowledge but of the order of action: the event is a carrier of a truth that is declared univocally. This means that the event is subtracted from the sphere of the multiplicity of interpretations. It constitutes a unity of action and thought, and, more specifically, an action through which a thought that is universally transparent in its univocity is realized. That is precisely why, according to Badiou, the question of the meaning of the event is not important; the only important question is whether the event has occurred or not. In this perspective, the event seems to be a metaphysical intervention in human history, which breaks it in two and radically transforms human subjectivity.

In his book Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Badiou (2003) analyses a paradigm event, the Resurrection of Christ. He has chosen to focus his analysis on the figure of Saint Paul because ‘for Paul, it is a matter of investigating which law is capable of structuring a subject devoid of all identity and suspended to an event whose only “proof” lies precisely in its having been declared by a subject’ (2003: 5). In this sentence we find two important moments: first, the event declares a law that frees humans from their identity, or, in other words, the event transcends every particularity; second, the event constitutes a new human subject, but the only ‘proof’ of the event is the declaration attesting to this subjective constitution. As regards the first moment, Badiou (ibid.) notes that ‘Paul’s unprecedented gesture consists in subtracting truth from the communitarian grasp, be it that of a people, a city, an empire, a territory, or a social class’. The event has a universal address, which means that all differences – by nation, race, gender, status – have been transcended. Saint Paul claims: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female’ (Galatians: 3.28; see Badiou, 2003: 9). In this way universality and particularity are not just distinguished, they are also categorically opposed to one another.

As for the second moment, the declaration of the event − ‘Jesus is resurrected’ − announces the appearing of truth. What is paradoxical is that truth is at once subjective and universal. What does this mean? First, truth is not objective because it cannot be verified by empirical or conceptual knowledge:

[T]he truth of a declaration and its consequences, which, being without proof or visibility, emerges at the point where knowledge, be it empirical or conceptual, breaks down. In characterizing Christian discourse from the point of salvation, Paul does not hesitate to say: Knowledge [gnōsis] ‘shall vanish away’. (I Corinthians 13.8; see Badiou, 2003: 45)

Badiou expressly underlines the novelty of the evental declaration, the Christ-event, which can be found at two levels. On the one hand, Christian discourse is a new type of discourse that is not merely a product of the synthesis of Greek discourse and Jewish discourse. According to Badiou, it is a universalistic discourse, while the two discourses preceding it are particularistic discourses, at least insofar as they presuppose each other. Moreover, what is important is that Christian discourse is not the discourse of the father, which presupposes subordination to a pre-existing order, to an already given law; it is a discourse of the sons that lays down a pure beginning:

For Paul, the Christ-event is heterogeneous to the law, pure excess over every prescription, grace without concept or appropriate rite…The pure event can be reconciled neither with the natural Whole, nor with the imperative of the letter. (2003: 57)

This analysis of Resurrection, which shifts the focus from the resurrected onto the very act of resurrection and from God onto humanity which is actually resurrected, seeks to free the Christ-event from its reduction to the religious in the narrow sense, from the theological framework and connotations, in order to turn it into a paradigm of all those events which − similarly to the French Revolution, the October Revolution, or the future advent of the communist idea – signify ‘the invention of a new life by man’.

Resurrection is an event that concerns only the subject: the subject is resurrected, reborn to a new life. Badiou’s approach is provocatively ahistorical, anti-sociological: history, social institutions, opinions, knowledge − all these agents of particularity, of particularization – are rejected. The new subject is constituted through their negation. Resurrection means above all a new structure of the subject that is correlative to the universal address: ‘for you are not under law, but under grace’. What does a structuring of the subject that can be defined as ‘not…but’ mean? According to Badiou (2003 63):

For the ‘not being under law’ negatively indicates the path of the flesh as suspension of the subject’s destiny, while ‘being under grace’ indicates the path of the spirit as fidelity to the event. The subject of the new epoch is a ‘not…but.’ The event is at once the suspension of the path of the flesh through a problematic ‘not,’ and the affirmation of the path of the spirit through a ‘but’ of exception.

How is a Resurrection possible if we cannot rely on God? How is a community of destiny (or a collective of believers) possible if humanity cannot rely on anything other than its own resources? The solution proposed by Badiou comes from psychoanalysis. Having rejected the human and social sciences as ideological (Žižek) or particularistic (Badiou), ⁶ the philosophical speculation of Badiou and Žižek moves simultaneously above and below the level at which they operate: it resorts to significant religious events (Resurrection) as well as to significant religious concepts (grace), but their source is not the divine transcendence – it is the immanent unconscious energies of humanity. From this point, we can now return to the question of the possibility of Resurrection.

According to Badiou, we need to be resurrected because as subjects, as thought-subjects, we are not on the side of life but on the side of death. This follows from the law whose principle is prohibition and which, by suppressing our desires, has expelled life from the subject and, in this way, has separated thinking from doing:

The law’s prohibition is that through which the desire of the object can realize itself ‘involuntarily,’ unconsciously − which is to say, as life of sin. As a result of which the subject, de-centered from this desire, crosses over to the side of death. (2003: 80)

Still, the question is: How could the subject overcome the division of thought and desire? Following Saint Paul, Badiou claims that this can be done by breaking with the law. But who or what is capable of breaking with the law? It is hardly thought, because:

Under the effect of the law, thought disintegrates into powerlessness and endless cogitation, because the subject (the dead Self) is disconnected from a limitless power: that of desire’s living automation. (2003: 83)

We have to liberate the suppressed energy of desires – Badiou calls this liberation ‘lawless eruption’ − because it is precisely its ‘limitless power’, which is capable of breaking with the law, while eliminating also our situation of alienation. But this liberation cannot be achieved under the guidance of thought not just because desires are powerful and thought is powerless, but also because thought, structured and confined within the framework of the law, is incapable of liberating – conversely, thought itself needs to be liberated through something that precedes and exceeds it. This, precisely, is grace:

‘Grace’ means that thought cannot wholly account for the brutal starting over on the path of life in the subject, which is to say, for the rediscovered conjunction between thinking and doing. Thought can be raised up from its powerlessness only through something that exceeds the order of thought. ‘Grace’ names the event as condition for an active thought. The condition is itself inevitably in excess of what it conditions, which is to say that grace is partly subtracted from the thought that it gives life to. (2003: 84–5)

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to try to answer the question: Why does radical social critique, as represented by Badiou and Žižek, need to resort to religious plots and concepts? The most obvious answer is that the project for radical social change does not have any reliable mainstays – institutional, organizational, imaginary – in the present-day historical context. This project cannot find its collective subject that will be its agent and that will realize it. The place of the proletariat is vacant, and Badiou and Žižek think that we should not hurry to determine its substitute. In this regard, Badiou claims: ‘the collective subject must be able to take on a number of possible forms’ (Badiou and Gauchet, 2016: 52). On the other hand, the communist parties are either on the decline or, as in the case of China, coexisting successfully with capitalism. Besides this, it seems that Badiou does not trust communist parties on principle, since a large number of them tend to turn into highly centralized authoritarian organizations (ibid.: 53). Last but not least, the idea of a better future society is still fuzzy and indeterminate. For his part, Žižek thinks that the communist idea cannot rely for its realization on the ‘Really Existing Socialism’ in eastern Europe, because the latter has obviously failed. Nor can it rely on some historical necessity, which turns out to be on the side of global capitalism (Žižek, 2009: 154). Thus, if today the communist idea has been expelled from history, the only way we can speak about it is in the mode of religion: it is an ‘eternal’ metaphysical Idea and, at the same time, it is ‘deep within us’, it is something ‘we knew all the time to be the truth’ (ibid.: 157).

In the final analysis, what are the consequences for radical social critique from its reference to religion? First, this means a return to metaphysics and, at the same time, a return to dogmatism. More specifically, this means a return to the dogmatic opposition between universality and particularity, as well as the conception of the communist idea as a metaphysical idea that is independent from its historical incarnations and is not marked by them in any way. Second, this means a return to traditionalism and, at the same time, to aristocratism. By this I mean the fact that knowledge and science, reason and communication, have been rejected and the only possible access to the politically most important problem – the realization of the communist idea – has been entrusted to faith. The community presupposed by this approach is a ‘community of destiny’ or a ‘collective of believers’ in which people fuse with each other in their common faith beyond their particular identifications. Such an idea does not only sound politically archaic; it can also be practically extremely dangerous. Furthermore, the very centrality of the concept of event means that social change is not thought of as the result of conscious, deliberate efforts, but as ‘grace’ – that is, as something that is given to us, that simply happens to us ‘without an assignable reason’ (Badiou, 2003: 77). Third, the reference to religion implicitly justifies the recourse to violence. The definition of the event through religious concepts such as grace and salvation, as well as the psychoanalytic interpretation of Resurrection, presuppose the idea that the destruction of the present society is a conditio sine qua non not just for the appearance of a new and better society, but also for the very possibility of imagining such a society.

Here I would like to make a brief final digression. The problem of transcending particularity (our confinement within culture) and moving towards universality is important to all philosophers who appeal to the tradition of the Enlightenment. It seems to be as important to Badiou and Žižek as it is to Habermas. In Habermas, particularity is reflexively illuminated and reworked through the procedures of communicative rationality in the direction of growing universalization of the normative assumptions of our claims and actions (Habermas, 1979, 1993). Particularity is critically transcended, but not eliminated. Conversely, in Badiou, for example, particularity is dogmatically negated and eliminated through grace and Resurrection which, in his account, have replaced Habermas’ communicative rationality, in the name of a universality that is just as dogmatically postulated (the communist idea). ⁷ But this means that the conceptual construction of Badiou and Žižek is self-refuting. They criticize our particularistic identifications, but they in fact propose that we treat universality – the communist idea – in the same way as we treat what they categorically negate: embracing it uncritically. If that is so, their universality is nothing but a manifestation of the successive religious particularity, among all others.