Žižek, Bonhoeffer and the revolutionary body: the sociological potential of critical theology

This thesis explores the potential that lies in the engagement of critical theory and theology. Rather than a mere demonstration of how theology can be used in the service of critical theory, its original contribution is in the demonstration of theological self-reflective criticality that this engagement brings about. It therefore represents an attempt to further develop the potential of this engagement, by showing how critical theory can function as a resource for theological self-reflection. This is achieved through exploration of the method, function and effect of Slavoj Žižek’s materialist appropriation of theology for political thought. The resulting struggling universality of abandonment and its ethic of indifference challenging any notion of identity is then applied in examination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s own social theology of a transcendental personalist community of saints and its ethic of universal love in Sanctorum Communio. Žižek’s community, grounded in the absence of God, draws attention to the theological character as never submitting to an identity but rather blurring the hypostasized boundaries between them irrevocably. It challenges Bonhoeffer’s community, grounded in and by God, as abstracting and suspending identities only through the creation of anew one. The thesis thus draws attention to and clarifies the full dimensionality of the necessary critical character of theology.