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  • Crossing out the Crucifix
  • Marko Zlomislić (bio)

He who speaks of the twentieth century as the century of wolves still thinks too innocently.

—Peter Sloterdijk, Rage and Time

The question mark is casting doubt on overcoming. I do not doubt violence. There is really nothing to doubt about violence. To put it sharply, I do not think that violence can be overcome fully, and if it is to be overcome, I do not think that Kierkegaard’s philosophy or theology can provide us with the necessary tools. In what follows I want to follow in the trajectory of where this question mark may lead. I realize that I cannot do justice to all the complexities of this topic.1 I offer the paper as a series of fractures to disrupt the lure of the cross, with each word acting like a termite to hollow out a new space for reflection. I will argue that if violence is to be overcome, then the Christian paradigm that raises the cross as a sign of salvation must be dismantled. The violence within the Christian tradition cannot be overcome as long as the cross stands in opposition to Jesus’s message of radical love and light. I think that the conditions of violence cannot be overcome if one of the ultimate symbols of violence is offered as a salvific device. The cross fuels an infatuation with suffering while it intensifies the existential virtues of guilt, anxiety, and despair.2 [End Page 261]

I

We visit the monuments chiselled from its steps. We inhabit the spaces carved from its movements. It has provided us with the all the comforts we enjoy as it continues to amplify our desires for more.

We walk through its museums, marvel at the idols it has erected. We even pay tribute to the memories of death it has birthed in us.

It has etched us, affected us with its effects. It has become efficient in disguising the work it does. Advancing, it effaces its own traces, only to repeat more of the same.

We are caught in the snare of its economy. It manufactures its own resistance just to display the evidence that it is, of course, democratic.

It is the foundation of our world and its cultures. From its source we cultivate our values, practices, customs, and meanings. It is the edifice upon which we grow our institutions and upon whose walls we frame words and phrases such as “Love your enemy,” “Blessed are the meek,” and “Turn the other cheek.”

It has established its settlements, safeguarded its power and profits, and now are we to believe that what has been so firmly entrenched within our history and psyche can be overcome with two or three pinches of Kierkegaard and a dash of the messianic?

What new sensibility will allow us to continue to live under its legacy, while claiming that we are no longer its heirs? Do we continue to live within the home, within the oikos that Father and Mother Violence have decorated with their exploits and campaigns, thinking that playing “Give Peace a Chance” will absolve their crimes?

The word ethos can mean “dwelling place.” It is the place we are accustomed to. It is the place where our customs are repeated. To put it sharply, once again, violence is our ethos. It is where we dwell so comfortably. Not simply because we may engage in acts of violence, but because we remain unaware of how the life we lead is the fruit of an ideology that has been persistent in its impropriety. How will this lineage be overcome?

II

How does one intend to overcome violence other than through an injustice for the sake of justice? How would we be able to measure the intent, act, and desire of such a move? To overcome violence, must we not be, as Derrida argues in Archive Fever, “unjust out of a concern for justice.”3 How can this overcoming of violence guard itself against yet another instituting violence? In other words, how do you put to death the very thing you oppose without [End Page 262] becoming stained by it? What keeps the other from making itself...

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