Zizek And The Colonial Model of Religion.pdf

DEBATES

Religion and the Bifurcation of the Left

Slavoj Žižek and the

Imperial/Colonial Model of Religion

William David Hart

Hegelian Prelude

T his earliest form of religion—

although one may well refuse to call it religion—is that for

whichwehavethename“magic.”(Hegel1998a,226)

Thereligionofmagicisstillfoundtodayamongwhollycrude

andbarbarouspeoplessuchastheEskimos.(229)

The Negroes have an endless multitude of “divine images”

whichtheymakeintotheirgodsortheir“fetishes.”(234–35)

[Africa] is no historical part of the World; it has no movement

ordevelopmenttoexhibit.Historicalmovementsinit—thatis

initsnorthernpart—belongtotheAsiaticorEuropeanWorld.

(Hegel1988b,92)

World history goes from East to West: as Asia is the begin-

ning of world history, so Europe is simply its end. In world

history there is an absolute East, par excellence (whereas the

Nepantla: Views from South 3.3

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geographical term “East” is in itself entirely relative); for al-

though the earth is a sphere, history makes no circle around

that sphere. On the contrary, it has a deﬁnite East which is

Asia.Itisherethattheexternalphysicalsuncomesup,tosink

in the West: and for that same reason it is in the West that

the inner Sun of self-consciousness rises, shedding a higher

brilliance.(ibid.)

This inner dialectic of civil society thus drives it—or at any

ratedrivesaspeciﬁccivilsociety—topushbeyonditsownlim-

its [colonial expansion] and seek markets, and so its necessary

means of subsistence, in other lands which are either deﬁcient

inthegoodsithasoverproduced,orelsegenerallybackwardin

industry,&c.(Hegel1967,151)

Thesameconsiderationjustiﬁescivilizednationsinregarding

and treating as barbarians those who lag behind them in in-

stitutions which are the essential moments of the state. Thus

a pastoral people may treat hunters as barbarians, and both of

these are barbarians from the point of view of agriculturists,

&c. The civilized nation is conscious that the rights of barbar-

iansareunequaltoitsownandtreatstheirautonomyasonlya

formality.(219)

Introduction

Intheireffortstodevelopageneraltheoryofreligion,scholarsoftenemploy

an evolutionary/hierarchical model. These models became evident at least

asearlyastheeighteenthcenturyandreachedtheirzenithinthenineteenth

century.Almostinvariably,theyexhibitthefollowingschemata:fromsim-

ple to complex religion, from primitive to civilized, from religions of the

South to those of the North, from religions of the East to those of the

West,fromthereligionsofAfrica,aboriginalAustralia,andnativeAmer-

ica to the religions of Europe. This evolutionary and hierarchical model

ofreligionismoreproperlycalledthe imperial/colonial model of religion . 1 I

shall argue that Slavoj Žižek’s recent book The Fragile Absolute, or, Why Is

the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (2000a) is a legacy of this model

of religion, the most systematic version of which is found in the work

of Hegel. I shall argue, further, that Žižek’s and Hegel’s models share

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Imperial/Colonial Model of Religion

Eurocentric presuppositions—historical, cultural, political, and econom-

ic—thataretroubling.WhatIwillnotargueisthatŽižek intends torecapit-

ulatetheimperial/colonialmodelofreligion.Onthecontrary,hestumbles

intothismodel.Hedoesso,precisely,becausehe does not intend to .Hedoes

notthinkabouttheethicsandpoliticsofreligionandrepresentationatall.

Instead,hespeaksthe“commonsense”ofhisculture,whichdistinguishes

invidiouslybetweenChristianityandotherreligions,viewingChristianity

alternately, if not simultaneously, as the height of religious evolution and

as a revelation whose very “absurdity” confounds and throws into utter

disarray preexisting notions of religion, ethics, and politics. Žižek holds

this common sense constant and beyond question—it does not even reach

the threshold of critique—as he queries “our” culture’s common sense on

othermatters.Whatheholdsconstant,Iputinto“play.”

The appellation imperial/colonial model of religion is apropos. For

colonialmodernitybeganwithPortugueseandSpanishvoyagesofconquest

consecrated by the Pope in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Thus conquest

provides the historical context for the emergence of a theory of religion

that models the hierarchical, sociopolitical relations with native peoples

in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the islands of the Atlantic,

Paciﬁc, and Indian Oceans (the bitter fruit of conquest) that were already

beginning to develop. This development was fed by the classiﬁcation of

national characters, the transatlantic slave trade, and the emergence of

racial theory, developments that in turn fed into and were conditioned by

ChristianEurope’slingeringanxietiestowarditsJewishinhabitantsandby

competitionandconﬂictbetweenChristianandIslamiccivilizations.When

I refer to the imperial/colonial model of religion, it is this large tableau—

with its temporal, geographical, racial, and gendered hierarchies—that I

haveinmind.

ThatisnotallthatIhaveinmind.Theimperial/colonialmodelof

religionhasantecedentsinthemedievalnotionofthe“fourfaiths”:Chris-

tianity,Judaism,Islam,andIdolatry(King1999,99). Idolatry (or paganism )

referred to non-Abrahamic religion. The singular religion rather than the

plural religions wasappropriatesince,fortheproponentsoftheAbrahamic

religions, the similarities were more important than the differences. As

polytheists and demon worshipers, the adherents of non-Abrahamic reli-

gion were ignorant of father Abraham and certainly ignorant of Jesus the

Christ. Idolatry was the dominant category under which the Portuguese

andSpanishperceivedAfricansandAmericanIndiansduringtheﬁfteenth

century. But we know that this was not the only way they (Africans at

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least) were perceived. When the Portuguese raided West African villages

in1441,theyshouted“‘St.George’and‘Santiago’(St.James),thesaintsthey

alwaysappealedtowhenraidingtheoutpostsofIslam”(Raboteau2001,4).

At a time when the crusading spirit of Christendom was experiencing its

last revival, the Portuguese clearly saw Africans (at least some of them) as

their Muslim enemies. Ironically, their African adventures were partially

inspired by “a legendary Christian king called Prester John,” who resided

somewhere in Africa and whom they hoped to persuade “to join them in

theircrusadeagainstthefollowersofIslam”(ibid.).

BythetimeoftheEuropeanEnlightenment,andcertainlybythe

nineteenth century, the medieval quartet of Christianity, Judaism, Islam,

and Idolatry had developed into the precursor of the “world religions”

model. On one side of an epistemic and normative dividing line were the

worldreligions,ontheothersidewere“naturereligions.”Worldreligions

were deﬁned in large part by the presence of literacy, if not a high textual

tradition. Nature religions were nonliterate. World religions were Euro-

pean and Asian. Nature religions were African, Native American, and

Aboriginal. Thus the category of Idolatry as an all-purpose description of

non-Abrahamic religion had all but disappeared as Asian religions were

distinguished from African, Native American, and Aboriginal religions

and became constitutive members of the world religions club, while the

religionsofthe“peoplewithouthistory,”asHegelwouldputit,wererele-

gatedtothecategoryofnature,tribal,primitive,orprimalreligion.Bythe

mid-nineteenthcentury,theimperial/colonialmodelofreligionwasﬁrmly

inplace,constitutingthe“commonsense”throughwhichreligionwasun-

derstood. Indeed, the imperial/colonial “model with its Christian center,

‘oriental’ periphery, and ‘primitive’ outer-periphery is still the dominant

wayoforganizingreligiousstudiesdepartments”(Hart2002,9).

In this essay, I trace the reemergence of the imperial/colonial

model of religion in the work of Žižek. To show that his recent work

presupposesthismodel—despitehisstatusasaprogressiveMarxist—ismy

task.Toshowthatthismodelisconstitutiveofhispolitics,thathispolitics

areEurocentric,andthatEurocentrismcolorshisviewofChristianityand

Marxism is also my burden. Before I attempt to shoulder so heavy a load,

allow me to make a remark about the pleasures and the perils of reading

Žižek.

ReadingŽižekisastimulatingexperience.Oneissimultaneously

informed,ediﬁed,andentertained.Hiscourage,hiswillingnesstocriticize

leftistconventionsandcommonsense,isattractive,evenwhenheiswrong,

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Imperial/Colonial Model of Religion

even when his political judgment is questionable, even when his taste is

“bad.” My analysis is often little more than a writing between his lines,

an effort to understand Žižek’s deﬁciencies in light of his own critique. If

StuartHall’s“ReligiousIdeologyandSocialMovementsinJamaica”(1985)

has greater depth than Marx’s account of religion, then Žižek swims even

deeper,inthemiddleregionsbetweenasuperﬁcialanalysisandthekindof

depth analysis that one ﬁnds, for example, in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “The

Time of History and the Times of the Gods” (1997). Žižek’s most explicit

efforttotheorizereligioninrelationtoMarxismis The Fragile Absolute .As

usual,oneisstunnedbyŽižek’ssheerintelligence,byhisendlesscreativity

in reading both the philosophical tradition and popular culture through

Lacanianlenses.HisappropriationofJacquesLacanallowshimtocapture

somethingimportantaboutreligionthatHallmisses,thatis,thepowerful,

contradictory, and paradoxical ways in which religion works ideologically

on the level of fantasy and affect, on the level of the viscera, the stomach,

and the amygdala. Thus he gives a better account of subject formation in

religious ideology, of the sensible and infrasensible “domains in which we

think,withinwhichintensitiesofculturalappraisalarestored,andthrough

whichwevalueanddisvalue”(Connolly1999,177).

Take the case, which Žižek recounts, of a woman who needs a

lifesavingbloodtransfusion.Herreligiousbeliefs(let’sassumethatsheisa

Christian Scientist) hold that transfusions are sinful. A liberal judge has a

difﬁcultdecisiontomake:Howdoeshegetthewomantoconsenttoablood

transfusion without forcing her to violate her religious beliefs? The judge

attempts to resolve this problem by forcing the woman to have a blood

transfusion against her will . Since sin is an act of will and the transfusion

violated her will, then she could not be held responsible for the act, and

would not be condemned to hell and damnation. Her life could be saved

withoutviolating her religiousconvictionthattransfusionsaresinfulorthe

liberalbeliefthatcoercingconfessionsiswrong.

Despite its noble intentions, which might lead him behave simi-

larly were he facing a similar case, Žižek despises this solution as a lie. It

doesnotforcethewoman,psychoanalyticallyspeaking,toconfrontherde-

sire. For in regard to the judge’s question (of whether she would be guilty

of sin were the court to forcibly transfuse her), the woman in question

“ knew perfectly well that if she answered ‘No,’ the judge would order enforced

transfusion ” (Žižek 2000a, 138). Thus she was in the enviable position of

saying yes by saying no. Answering no would allow her to satisfy her true

asopposedtoherlyingdesire.Hereisaformalcoincidencebetweentelling

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