Vol 1, No 1 (2004) Children of Light: Neo-Paulinism and the Cathexis of Difference (Part I)

Vol 1, No 1 (2004) Children of Light: Neo-Paulinism and the Cathexis of Difference (Part I) — Alberto Moreiras

CHILDREN OF LIGHT: NEO-PAULINISM AND THE CATHEXIS OF DIFFERENCE (PART I)

Alberto Moreiras

ABSTRACT

This essay investigates Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou’s investment in the thought of Saint Paul as part of an ongoing revision of the modern notion of the subject of the political. I call their attempt ‘neo-Paulinism’, and I find a limit in the fact that neo-Paulinism is unable to account for the ubiquitous presence, in the political, of the non-subject of the political. If all politics are theological that posit as their primary referent the search for a subject of the political, is it possible to move towards a de-theologisation of politics through thinking the non-subject? Such a thought would call for a dissolution of the presumed unity of thinking and being, of deliberation and action – but a dissolution beyond the possibility of mediation by regulative ideas.