Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and i ek

Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and Žižek is an engagingly written account of the turn (or return) to theology in the works of two of today's preeminent public intellectuals, Slavoj Žižek and Terry Eagleton. Thorough, mostly accurate and discerning (as far as this author is qualified to say), and animated everywhere by the author's stylistic clarity and ethical engagement, the book will serve as a good introduction for readers new to Žižek's and Eagleton's voluminous, ever-expanding oeuvres. It will stand as well as a helpful compendium and source book for scholars more senior in this field. The book begins by situating Žižek's growing interest in theological topics after 1996 (an interest Sigurdson notes is anticipated in earlier works) and Eagleton's open avowal of a Christian position after the turn of the millennium in terms of the wider “return to theology” on the Left since 1989. Sigurdson comments that the discrediting of Marxism after the fall of the European Eastern bloc surely provides a primary cause for this trend. As he cites Eagleton, “it is also that radicals might discover there [in theology] some valuable insights into human emancipation, in an era where the political left stands in dire need of good ideas” (p. 17). As his subtitle suggests, Sigurdson also addresses the dire need of the radical Left to cultivate hope, as distinct from mere optimism. He stresses that hope begins from a clear-sighted confrontation of human alienation and suffering and the difficulties of imagining any radical transformation of the present neoliberal order. “A certain kind” of Christian theology, Sigurdson wants to argue—and he remains always pleasingly undogmatic about which kind—can provide thinkers such as Žižek and Eagleton with understandings of the intransigence of the obstacles to redemptive political reform, as well as the theoretical bases for a new sense of radical hope.

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