[PT 11.

1 (2010) 158-160]
doi:10.1558/poth.v11i1.158

Political Theology (print) ISSN 1462-317X

Political Theology (online) ISSN 1473-1719

Adrian Johnstons Reply to

Clayton Crocketts Review of his Book
Adrian Johnston, Wilson College, Chambersburg, PA, USA
aojohns@unm.edu
To begin with, I would like to thank Clayton Crockett for his thoughtful assessment of my work. Before providing responses to certain of his
points at the level of theoretical argumentation, I should say a few things
about the history of the manuscript that became the published version of
ieks Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity. Originally,
the manuscript contained a fourth section on the iekian Marx as well as
an appendix on ieks critical relation to Badiou. Due to the understandable concerns of Northwestern University Press about the length of this
text, I decided to cut both the fourth section and the appendix. Some of
this excised material went on to become, in modified form, part of what is
now my new book entitled Badiou, Zizek, and Political Transformations: The
Cadence of Change (published by Northwestern University Press in 2009).
My hope is that this new book succeeds at satisfactorily addressing many
of the questions and concerns articulated so well by Crockett. Moreover,
whereas ieks Ontology was written before Badious sequel to Being and
Event, Logiques des mondes, appeared, Badiou, iek, and Political Transformations contains extended engagements with this 2006 tome.
However, in mentioning the above, I do not intend either to make
excuses for what ieks Ontology doesnt discuss at length (in particular,
Badiou, politics, and theology) by appealing to nothing more than the
practical constraints of its publication process or to avoid responding
here-and-now to Crocketts review merely by signing a promissory note
to the effect that a sequel book will respond subsequently instead. So as
not to be guilty of these two evasions, I must, first, justify my decision to
excise from the original manuscript of ieks Ontology the fourth section
on Marx and the appendix on Badiou, and, second, indicate with some
specificity how my new material speaks to the issues raised by Crockett.
As Crockett notes, the three sections of the published version of
ieks Ontology are devoted to ieks Lacan-inspired appropriations
of Kant, Schelling and Hegel, respectively. And, as his review indicates
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Johnston Response

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he appreciates, this is grounded on the wager that, in reading iek, its

worth taking seriously his repeated vehement insistence that the very core
of his overall project consists in a Lacanian re-deployment of an interlinked ontology and theory of the subject deeply indebted to Kant and
the post-Kantian German idealists. Rather than ignore this insistence by
interpretively obsessing over his references to popular culture and current
events, as many of those constituting his audience so often do, I chose to
take iek at his word. Insofar as Badiou, politics and theology are not
mentioned in ieks recurrent confessions of what lies at the heart of his
endeavors, I opted to publish a book focused solely on his combination of
Lacanianism and German idealism (additionally, apropos some of Crocketts remarks, iek doesnt start offering readers detailed treatments of
Badiouian thought and Judeo-Christian theology until the late 1990s,
something to be contrasted with the fact that Lacan and the German
idealists remain constant points of reference throughout his corpus from
start to present). I leave it up to readers of ieks Ontology to judge the
consequent productivity of my decision.
Following from this, my thesis is that iek positions himself vis--vis
Badiou, politics and theology on the foundational basis of the theoretical system delineated in ieks Ontology. More than anything else, what
makes for the crucial differences between Badiou and iek is the latters
reliance on the German idealists for his ontology and conception of subjectivity. Once one fully comprehends these aspects of the iekian philosophical apparatus, a properly thorough understanding of his perspectives
on Badious body of work becomes truly possible. As for political theory
(especially in the Marxist tradition), again, ieks models of subjectification, universality, and historical temporalities, models absolutely central
to his reflections on politics, are forged by him first and foremost within
the context of Lacanian examinations of Kant, Schelling and Hegel. I am
tempted to go so far as to suggest that one simply cannot appreciate his
politics without having a firm handle on his philosophy (to employ tactically an admittedly crude distinction between politics and philosophy).
Last but not least, there is the matter of theology. Although Badiou,
iek, and Political Transformations discusses the Badiou-iek rapport
through immanently critiquing their overlapping theories of subjectivities,
acts and events, it deliberately pays relatively little attention to the role of
religion in either of these thinkers oeuvres. In a series of other texts (some
of which will go toward composing a book-in-progress tentatively entitled
A Weak Nature Alone: Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism), I indicate why.1
1. Adrian Johnston, Conflicted Matter: Jacques Lacan and the Challenge of Secularizing Materialism, Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 19 (Spring 2008): 16688; Adrian
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In this context, I can utter only a few blunt assertions. First of all, despite
their flirtations with religious and theological notions, Badiou and iek
are, on several levels, radically atheistic philosophers. Secondly, ieks
interests in Christianity in particular ultimately are determined by political pursuits based upon an irreligious Marxism. Finally, I am presently in
the midst of struggling to elaborate, on the basis of the transcendental
materialism referred to in the subtitle of ieks Ontology, a materialist
ontology and theory of the subjectmore precisely, a materialism (of a
weak nature) profoundly influenced by the natural sciences in which
those phenomena and structures seeming to require theology for their
expression are explained in a non-reductive-yet-non-religious fashion. At
the intersection of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, the life sciences, and
select philosophies, I seek to assemble a naturalist-materialist account of
those denaturalized, more-than-material temporalities and subjectivities
supposedly falling under the jurisdiction of theologies. In my view, one
can remain completely committed to the secular legacy of the Enlightenment without thereby sooner or later resignedly condemning oneself to
the lukewarm ethical-aesthetic nihilism of todays biopolitical, pseudoscientific materialisms justly denounced by Badiou and iek.

Johnston, What Matter(s) in Ontology: Alain Badiou, the Hebb-Event, and Materialism
Split from Within, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 13.1 (April 2008): 2749;
Adrian Johnston, Phantom of Consistency: Alain Badiou and Kantian Transcendental
Idealism, Continental Philosophy Review 41.3 (September 2008): 34566; Adrian Johnston,
The Weakness of Nature: Hegel, Freud, Lacan, and Negativity Materialized, in Hegel and
the Infinite: Religion, Politic and the Dialectic, ed. Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis and Slavoj
iek (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010 [forthcoming]).
Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

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