Pandemic!. Slavoj Žižek
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Pandemic! - Slavoj Žižek страница 3

Название: Pandemic!

Автор: Slavoj Žižek

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Социология

Серия:

isbn: 9781509546121

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ

      124  138

      COVID-19

      Shakes the World

      SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

      polity

      All royalties from sales of this book will be

      donated to Médecins Sans Frontières.

      This edition published by Polity Press, 2020

      First published in the United States by OR Books LLC, New York, 2020

      © Slavoj Žižek, 2020

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes.

      978-1-5095-4612-1

      For Michael Sorkin—I know he is no longer with us, but I refuse to believe it.

      “Touch me not,” according to John 20:17, is what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene when she recognized him after his resurrection. How do I, an avowed Christian atheist, understand these words? First, I take them together with Christ’s answer to his disciple’s question as to how we will know that he is returned, resurrected. Christ says he will be there whenever there is love between his believers. He will be there not as a person to touch, but as the bond of love and solidarity between people—so, “do not touch me, touch and deal with other people in the spirit of love.”

      The beloved is not opposed to us, he is one with our own being; we see us only in him, but then again he is not a we anymore—a riddle, a miracle [ein Wunder], one that we cannot grasp.

      It is crucial not to read these two claims as opposed, as if the beloved is partially a “we,” part of myself, and partially a riddle. Is not the miracle of love that you are part of my identity precisely insofar as you remain a miracle that I cannot grasp, a riddle not only for me but also for yourself? To quote another well-known passage from young Hegel:

      The human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything in its simplicity—an unending wealth of many representations, images, of which none belongs to him—or which are not present. One catches sight of this night when one looks human beings in the eye.

      I can already hear a cynic’s laughter at this point: OK, maybe we will get such moments of spiritual proximity, but how will this help us to deal with the ongoing catastrophe? Will we learn anything from it?

СКАЧАТЬ