The paradoxes of Lucien Goldmann -- The dialectic of grace -- The elect and the damned -- Wagering it all -- In the world and yet not -- Theory : the tight fit of homology -- Homology -- Dialectics? -- Is Pascal among the Marxists? -- By way of conclusion : Marxism as a secular and anti-secular project -- The stumbling block of Fredric Jameson -- Supersession versus a dialectic of ideology and utopia -- Sidestepping religion -- Magic and fantasy -- Feuerbach versus Marx -- The politics of fantasy -- Apocalyptic -- By way of conclusion : towards a dialectic of religion -- The Christian communism of Rosa Luxemburg -- Tactics -- A reformer's zeal -- Betraying the spirit -- A little church history -- Anti-clericalism -- Christian communism -- Consumption versus production -- Completing Cristian communism -- Freedom of conscience -- The enticements of Karl Kautsky -- Text, history, context -- The slipperiness of sacred texts -- The Bible as a cultural product -- Reconstructing economic history -- Differentiation and slaves -- Slaves and other modes of production -- The sacred economy : prolegomena to a reconstruction -- Transitions -- Christian communism -- The forgetfulness of Julia Kristeva -- Flushing out Marx -- Monocausality, or, the taboo of the mother -- The apostle, both ways -- Other-than-human love -- Crucifying the pathologies -- Collectives -- The fables of Alain Badiou -- Banishing the one -- Theology and the event -- A generic procedure of religion? -- Pascal's miracle -- Kierkegaard's encounter -- Paul's fable -- Conclusion : necessary fables -- The conundrums of Giorgio Agamben -- The search for Paul -- Christology, or the problem of Jesus Messiah -- Faith, law and grace as placeholder of the void -- Pre-law, or trying to make sense of Paul -- Conclusion : relativising theology -- The self-exorcism of Georg Lukács -- A world abandoned by God -- Leap-frogging Christianity -- Autobiographical exorcism -- The Bible and the beekeeper's manual -- An apparent absence? -- Warm Marxism -- Autobiography -- Welshness -- The working class -- Conclusion : the vanishing mediator of the Baptist chapel.
Summary
Criticism of Religion asks why and how some of the leading Marxist critics deal with the question of religion and theology. It offers a spirited critical commentary on the work of Lucien Goldmann, Fredric Jameson, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, Julia Kristeva, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, Georg LukAcs, and Raymond Williams.
