{"product_id":"9780262261302","title":"The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity","description":"Slavoj Žižek has been called \"an academic rock star\" and \"the wild man of theory\"; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties. In \u003ci\u003eThe Puppet and the Dwarf\u003c\/i\u003e he offers a close reading of today's religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today's spirituality -- New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaism -- and then tries to redeem the \"materialist\" kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jurgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a \"postsecular\" age, this book -- with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy -- is certain to stir controversy.","brand":"MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47113615442160,"sku":"9780262261302","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780262261302_p0.jpg?v=1763681402","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780262261302","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}