God in Pain: Inversion of Apocalypse

Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać

In God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse, pyrotechnic Marxist theorist Slavoj Žižek and radical theologian Boris Gunjević offer us not a religious text but a critical inquiry, a work of faith not in God but in the human intellect. With his contagious zeal and his genius for unlikely connections, Žižek calls the bluff on the West's alleged atheism and contemplates the bewildering idea of an Almighty that both suffers and prays. Taking on Žižek's gambits and proposing his own, Gunjević issues a revolutionary clarion call for theology that can break the back of capitalism's cunning "enslavement of desire." With gripping examples and razor-sharp logic, Žižek and Gunjević invoke thinkers from Augustine to Lacan and topics ranging from Christian versus "pagan" ethics to the "class struggle" implied in reading the Qur'an and the role of gender in Islam. Together, they confirm and dissect faith in the twenty-first century, shaking the foundations of the Abrahamic traditions.

Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist SLAVOJ ZIZEK is among the most distinguished intellectuals of the twenty-first century. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Columbia, and NYU and continues to teach worldwide. BORIS GUNJÉVIC serves as a lecturer in ethics at the Biblijski Institut in Zagreb, Croatia. He is the author of Crucified Subject: Without the Grail. ELLEN ELIAS-BURSAC's translations have appeared in Best European Fiction 2010, Harpers, and Granta. She is the winner of the 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship (The Goldsmith's Gold) and the 2006 National Translation Award (Götz and Meyer).