Abstract

This article aims to study the present-day disarray of radical social critique, as represented by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, which lacks reliable mainstays in contemporary societies and therefore resorts to religion in order to justify the universality of its revolutionary project. Emphasizing the opposition between particularity and universality, both Badiou and Žižek reject religion as a cultural particularity, attempting at the same time to discover in religion the symbolic codifications of the universal experience of a radical social change. Precisely this is the task of Alain Badiou’s book on Saint Paul, which focuses on religious events such as the Resurrection and religious concepts such as grace. However, as the article tries to point out, this recourse to religion is certainly not innocuous, insofar as the desired radicality of social critique implies dogmatism, traditionalism and a hidden appeal to violence.