Materialist theology and anti-capitalist resistance,or,‘What would Jesus buy?

Abstract

Analysis of resistance in critical organization and management studies today tends to focus on expressions of micro resistance in the workplace. Meanwhile, much broader struggles are taking place on the global arena in response to the ongoing violence of neoliberal capitalism. Capitalism, which has always had a fraught relationship to religion, appears today in many ways as a religion in its own right. Furthermore, its ongoing expansion is explicitly secured through the support of particular theological ideas and proponents, primarily from American conservative Christianity. It should thus come as no surprise that anti-capitalist resistance today turns to theology for an effective counter-politics. This article draws on the materialist theology of Slavoj Žižek in order to analyse the resistance of anti-capitalist activist Reverend Billy. In doing so, it shows how theology is today mobilized in anti-capitalist resistance. If contemporary ideology operates on a logic of distancing, as Žižek claims, then an effective strategy of resistance may reside in the opposite, a logic of overidentification. The overidentification that we see in both Žižek’s own work and in the activism of Reverend Billy, however, takes the form of parodic overidentification, which embraces in an exaggerated form a part rather than the whole. The analysis points to the need in studies of resistance to recognize the broader social and ideational context in which resistance operates, and emphasizes in particular the importance of resistance to confront both the postmodern cynicism and the rising absolutism that are part and parcel of contemporary capitalism.

In the first of his theses on the concept of history, Walter Benjamin describes a chess-playing automaton in which a puppet that plays chess always wins. In reality, the puppet’s hands are guided by a dwarf that is hidden inside the machine, a master at chess. To this image Benjamin juxtaposes its ‘philosophic counterpart’: ‘The puppet, called “historical materialism,” is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is small and ugly and has to keep out of sight’ (2003: 389). In this allegory ‘historical materialism’, that is, resistance to capitalism benefits from the mobilization of theology.

Discussions of the relationship between theology and materialism have recently had a new lease of life, with talk of a ‘theological turn’. The question that has arisen, in particular, concerns what theology might be able to contribute to a radical politics (see Davis et al., 2005). Or, to put the question differently: ‘How can the theological and the material unite to fund resistance to capitalist nihilism?’ (Davis, 2009: 4). Thus Žižek (2003) has argued that Benjamin’s allegory needs today to be turned on its head. Today it is not theology that has to remain hidden anymore, but historical materialism, or, anti-capitalist resistance.

Different forms of resistance have been studied in detail in the critical study of organization and management, principally with a focus on resistance in the workplace (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999; Collinson, 1994; Fleming and Spicer, 2003; Jermier et al., 1994; Spicer and Fleming, 2007). Less attention has been paid to resistance that originates with actors and social movements located outside of the workplace. Spicer and Böhm, for example, call for more focus on these kinds of ‘counter-hegemonic’ (2007: 1668) forms of resistance that occur in civil society rather than directly inside the workplace. Given the increasingly blurred boundaries between work and non-work today, and the physical dispersal of work far beyond the traditional boundaries of the workplace (see Fleming and Mandarini, 2009), critical scholars of organization and management cannot afford to ignore organizational activities of resistance that take place beyond the traditional boundaries of work and the workplace.

At the same time, research on resistance in critical management studies has recently tended to focus on discursive practices, identity politics and acts of ‘micro resistance’ (see for example Sotirin and Gottfried, 1999; Symon, 2005; Thomas and Davies, 2005), rather than on more radical and disruptive forms of resistance. With such a focus, Fleming and Spicer argue, ‘there is a risk of reducing resistance to the most banal and innocuous everyday actions’ (2008: 303). Such forms of resistance serve a therapeutic rather than transformative function. Indeed, as Mumby puts it, ‘one might argue that the very movement toward the study of covert, routine forms of discursive resistance is indicative of the capitulation of critical scholars to the success of managerialism and capitalism’ (2005: 39).

Given the current global financial and ecological crises and the ongoing governmental and civic responses to them, it is important to analyse and seek to understand the strategies and efficacy of contemporary forms of anti-capitalist resistance. Žižek argues that we are living in the end times in which ‘the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point’ (2010a: x). The turn to theology in this context may speak to the seriousness of the situation.

Anti-capitalism, that is, opposition to capitalism, comes in different forms. It can involve activities intended to abolish capitalism altogether. Anti-capitalism can also refer more broadly to ideas about the transformation of certain aspects of contemporary capitalism. By anti-capitalist resistance I refer here to specific acts designed to challenge or transform capitalism.

This article presents an analysis of one specific attempt to mobilize theology for the purposes of anti-capitalist resistance. Drawing in particular on Žižek’s materialist theology I analyse the anti-capitalist resistance of ‘Reverend Billy’, a character created by New York based performance artist Bill Talen, whose ‘retail interventions’ and other stunts against the establishment have created havoc in everyday spaces of commercial exchange and public life in the United States and beyond. Through this analysis the article will attempt to show not only how theology can be used in anti-capitalist resistance, but also how this relates to the fact that theology today already inhabits an important position in relation to capitalism.

Identifying the affinities between theology and capitalism today makes it possible to analyse the resistance of Reverend Billy in terms of a strategy of parodic overidentification, in which a specific aspect of capitalism is identified (its theological affinities) and then exaggerated ad absurdum in an attempt to break the apparent natural order as it comes to expression under capitalism. I will seek to show that this kind of a strategy also lies at the heart of Žižek’s politics. I will also seek to demonstrate, drawing on Žižek’s materialist theology, how the mobilization of theology does not merely have to serve conservative forces but can also be put towards a radical purpose, that of anti-capitalist resistance. An understanding of Žižek’s materialist theology will help us understand acts of anti-capitalist resistance such as those of Reverend Billy.

Žižek’s ideas have already made some inroads into studies of organization and management. They have been taken up in particular in analyses of ideology, subjectivity and capitalism (see, for example, Böhm and De Cock, 2005; De Cock and Böhm, 2007; Fleming and Spicer, 2005; Johnsen et al., 2009). The work of Walter Benjamin has also had some impact on studies of organization and management, influencing for example ideas of time and method (see Böhm, 2001, 2006a, 2006b) and discussions of ethics (ten Bos, 2003). Furthermore, Žižek’s primary intellectual source, Jacques Lacan, is currently receiving increasing interest among scholars of organization and management. Lacan’s ideas have been particularly influential in discussions of identity and subjectivity (Driver, 2009a, 2009b; Fleming and Spicer, 2003; Hoedemaekers, 2008; Hoedemaekers and Keegan, 2010; Stavrakakis, 2008). They have, however, also been taken up in discussions of other topics, such as entrepreneurship (Jones and Spicer, 2005; for more examples see Cederström and Hoedemaekers, 2010, and the special issue of Organization, 2010). The specifically theological aspects of Žižek’s work have, however, not yet received due attention.

This article is divided into five sections. In the first section I briefly present historical and contemporary relationships between capitalism and religion. This is important as a background to understanding the turn to theology evident in the anti-capitalism of both Reverend Billy and Žižek. In the second section I present Žižek’s materialist theology and its accompanying politics, which serve as the theoretical basis for the arguments made here. In the third section I present the resistance of anti-capitalist activist ‘Reverend Billy’ and his ‘Church’, and in the section that follows I explain and analyse this strategy of resistance in terms of parodic overidentification. I then discuss the connections between this particular form of resistance and anti-capitalist resistance more broadly in the light of Žižek’s materialist theology.

Capitalism and religion

Capitalism and religion are historically intertwined. Money was a concern for the early Jewish and Christian traditions and there are several passages in the Bible that seek to control the relationship between people and money, in expressions such as ‘For the love of money is the root of all evil’ (I Tim. 6:10) and in the scene where Jesus drives the traders and money changers out of the temple (Mat. 21:12). Jesus was something of a rebel himself, in that he ‘opposed the power of God to the power of money’ (Goodchild, 2007: 3). The prohibitions of usury to be found both in the Bible and in the Koran have had significant consequences for how capitalism ultimately developed. Thus there are significant strands of anti-capitalist thought to be found in the religious past of humanity.

As a critic of capitalism Marx recognized the important role that religion plays in capitalism, although the precise relation between religion and capitalism found in Marx varies across his writings (Forte, 2008). He uses theological references in his discussions on commodity fetishism (Marx, 1976) and refers to religion as the ‘opium of the people’ (Marx, 1977: 131). He also argued that the bourgeois economists ‘resemble the theologians’ (Marx, 1955: 102) in that they naturalize capitalism against other politico-economic systems, such as feudalism, just as the theologians naturalize their religion against all other ‘invented’ ones. Furthermore, Marx recognized the special relationship between Christianity and capitalism in identifying the similarities in their logics of abstraction (see Toscano, 2010), and goes so far as to call Christianity ‘the special religion of capital’ (Marx, 1971: 448).

The religion most closely linked to the development of capitalism is of course Christianity, with the most influential study being Weber’s (2001) exploration of the influence of the protestant ethic of Calvinism on the rise of capitalism. If, in the Calvinist tradition, wealth was a sign of God’s grace, then the rich were certainly justified in their ownership of that wealth. Weber argued that this outlook was conducive to hard work and increased capital accumulation and was thus favourable to the development of capitalism. Despite important differences in interpretation of Weber’s view of the relationship between capitalism and religion (see Forte, 2008), it is clear that Weber not only saw Calvinism as conducive to the rise of capitalism but as one of the crucial, causal factors that brought about modern capitalism.

Walter Benjamin (1996) went one step further and argued that capitalism is in fact a cultic religion (see also Löwy, 2009). He argued that ‘The Christianity of the reformation period did not favor the growth of capitalism; instead it transformed itself into capitalism’ (1996: 290). Echoes of Benjamin’s intuition of capitalism as religion can today be heard widely in, for example, ideas of the ‘religion of the market’, in which global free-market capitalism is perceived as an ‘aggressively-proselytizing faith system’ (Foltz, 2007: 137), or in arguments that ‘capitalism might be best understood as a perverse regime of the sacred’ (McCarraher, 2005: 430).

Today, however, we have in capitalism ‘the sacred in a double register’ (Milbank, 2008: 126). On the one hand capitalism acts, as already identified by Benjamin, as a religion with its own rituals and sacraments. On the other, we see a close affinity between capitalism and religion, and in particular some forms of Protestant Christianity. Today capitalism seems, as Milbank puts it, ‘to need to buttress itself with the approval and connivance of actual religion’ (2008: 125). This is arguably most evident in the politics of the conservative Christian right in the United States.

What we see in the United States today is an increasing entanglement of capitalism, conservative Christianity, neoliberalism and politics. This development took off in the late 1970s with the strategic alliance between the Republicans and the Christian right (see Taylor, 2007). This ‘new religious political right’ emerged primarily from the context of Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestantism in response to the rise of secular humanism and a ‘fear of moral and spiritual deterioration of life’ (Hill and Owen, 1982: 15).

Recently, the entanglement of religion and politics in relation to neoliberal capitalism was most conspicuous in the policies and actions of the Bush administration. As Northcott shows, the Bush administration explicitly used the idea of America and American military power as ‘servants of God’s purposes’ (Northcott, 2004: 138), thus placing America in the hands of the will of a higher power. Bush ‘present[ed] America’s past as a sacred story in which freedom and democracy are seen as divine gifts which America is privileged first to discover and then to bequeath to the world at large’ (Northcott, 2004: 139). The form this bequeathing has taken is economic globalization and new imperialistic missions under the guise of a war on terror (for a detailed exploration of the relationship between capitalism and Christianity in America today, see Connolly, 2008). In such a context, anti-capitalist resistance can notoriously be identified in non-Christian responses to the violent United States-led expansion of capitalism globally, such as in those of some fundamentalist Islamic movements.

The historical relationship between capitalism and religion, and between capitalism and Christianity, is fraught with contradiction. Despite the complicity of certain religious groups and ideas with the violence of global capitalism, there are of course also many elements to be found in different forms of Christianity and other religions that are explicitly anti-capitalist, in particular in their emphasis on the spiritual over the material. Yet it is important today to pay close attention to the role of religion in capitalism. As Taylor argues,

Religion has never been more powerful or more dangerous than it is today. It is absolutely essential not to regard the recent resurgence of religion as a reversion to premodern forms of belief and practice. To the contrary, the rise of conservative forms of religion is a global phenomenon that is distinctively postmodern. (Taylor, 2008: np)

By calling the return to religion here postmodern Taylor is specifically referring to the rise of relativism since the 1960s and the responses to it by George W. Bush and others entailing instead a return to absolutism, which Taylor argues is dangerous (see Taylor, 2008). In order to understand these recent developments it is important to turn to theology, a theoretical framework that has instruments for understanding them. I will do so here with the aid of Žižek.

Žižek’s materialist theology

Žižek’s work is founded in a search for instruments for ‘short-circuiting’ dominant ideologies in order to enable a radical break with them and thus a possibility for the emergence of alternative forms of social life. Kotsko argues that for Žižek ‘the ultimate goal of his theoretical development is to discover the possibility of a new politics’ (Kotsko, 2008: 45). This politics is directly related to capitalism in that, as Kotsko argues, for Žižek ‘the core of the ideological fantasy in modern society is capitalism’ (Kotsko, 2008: 82). In this search for a new politics Žižek has in the last decade repeatedly turned to theology, and Christian theology in particular. There is much to Žižek’s materialism, theology and politics, but I will here focus on what I see as most important in his materialist theology and politics for the question of anti-capitalist resistance. Here it is important to note that his materialist theology is inseparable from his politics. I will therefore begin by sketching out his broader political project before turning to his theological endeavours.

In order to understand Žižek’s materialist theology and the turn to theology for purposes of anti-capitalist resistance more broadly, they need to be anchored to two historical developments (see Davis, 2009). First, they must be understood in light of the disenchantments of modernity, with the focus on pure reason and rationality, and second, in light of the depoliticizing pluralism of postmodernity. Žižek’s unorthodox theology is both a descendant of, and a response to, both of these developments.

The grounding of Žižek’s politics can be seen in his presentation of his book The Ticklish Subject, which represents one of Žižek’s early, serious engagements with theology. This book is ‘first and foremost an engaged political intervention, addressing the burning question of how we are to reformulate a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of global capitalism and its ideological supplement, liberal-democratic multi-culturalism’ (Žižek, 1999: 4). This ‘ideological supplement’ is a remnant of postmodernity, a discourse of mutual tolerance which has become translated into mutual disregard and relativism inhibiting serious social engagement. Žižek’s critique of this development is based on its depoliticizing tendency, which leads to an inability to reason about and question social and historical developments. This effectively leads to an embrace of global capitalism, as a system where everyone is free to pick and choose according to their personal preferences and abilities. In this ‘postpolitical’ situation, any basis for political debate, for decisions on whether some arguments might be better than others, has been erased. This, in part, explains the recent materialist turn to theology, a sphere where truth and foundations still matter.

This postpolitical situation also sheds light on Žižek’s emphasis on a need for a profound interruption of the present state of affairs. This interruption, which Žižek conceives in terms of a Lacanian ‘act’, seeks ‘the radical transformation of the very universal structuring “principle” of the existing symbolic order’ (Žižek, 2000: 220). As Dean argues, ‘For Žižek, the possibility of acts that disrupt the socio-symbolic order, ruptures of the Real, can break through the stultifying deadlock of postpolitics’ (Dean, 2006: 125).

Both Žižek’s theology and his politics are in part indebted to Walter Benjamin. Like Benjamin (2003), Žižek is trying to fuse materialism and theology, and he tries to use theology for revolutionary purposes. Furthermore, like Benjamin, his strategy consists in a method of constructing constellations of often seemingly incompatible elements in the hope that such a clash will bring about a rupture in the symbolic order and thus a rupture in the smooth flow of history, as written by the victors (see Benjamin, 2003). Žižek is, on the one hand, the archetypical postmodern actor who freely mixes and mashes theory and popular culture without any scruples. On the other, he also uses that precisely in order to try to break through the deadlock of the current postmodern, postpolitical situation.

At the heart of Žižek’s ideology critique lies that fact that ideology today functions through cynical distancing, or what is called ‘enlightened false consciousness’ (Žižek, 1989: 26; see also Sloterdijk, 1987). If ideology critique used to entail an ‘unmasking’, a revealing of the truth behind the veil, today this is a useless exercise if, as Žižek argues, ‘in contemporary societies, democratic or totalitarian, that cynical distance, laughter, irony, are, so to speak, part of the game. The ruling ideology is not meant to be taken seriously or literally’ (1989: 24). The ‘cynical subject’ already knows—say, of the brutalities taking place behind the scenes of global capitalism—yet in material terms acts as if they did not know it. They prefer the mask of ignorance in order to be able to continue with their everyday life. This poses serious challenges for anti-capitalist resistance trying to elicit radical change.

It is in this context that we must read Žižek’s turn to theology. His strategy of engagement with theology consists of a close reading and transformative interpretation of specific moments in Christian theology. There are three moments that he identifies in particular, which he uses for the purposes of trying to draw out their subversive potential: the crucifixion of Christ, the book of Job and the establishment of the church by St Paul (see, in particular, Žižek, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2009; see also Badiou, 2003; Milbank, 2008, 2009). For Žižek these examples include elements that might be instructive for anti-capitalist resistance today.

In Žižek’s interpretation of the crucifixion, the truly subversive element is in the moment when Christ cries out ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ (Žižek, 2009a: 57). For Žižek this entails the realization that God is not the be all and end all of life, is not omnipotent, and is not the guarantor of meaning in life. This is the moment when it becomes clear that there is no father, no authority figure, no overarching principle of organization that would put things in their right place and thus give meaning to our lives. Instead, ‘we, humans, are left with no higher Power watching over us, just with the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility for the fate of divine creation’ (Žižek, 2009a: 25). This, for Žižek, is the radical moment spelling human freedom: freedom from the ‘big Other’, from the symbolic order, from teleology and external determination. He argues that ‘the only true belief is belief without any support in the authority of some presupposed figure of the “big Other”’ (Žižek, 2009a: 101).

The primary objective of Žižek’s materialist theology is the liberation of the human collective from the ‘big Other’, the overarching order of signification that acts as authority and provides us with meaning from the outside. The goal is not to do away with systems of signification as such, which would anyway be impossible, but rather to embrace what Žižek (2007) refers to as the ontological incompleteness of the world, the fact that meaning resides within us, as a community, rather than being bestowed upon us from outside. In some ways, then, Žižek’s project is a continuation of Kant’s Enlightenment project of humanity’s coming of age. As Žižek interprets Kant ‘a truly enlightened “mature” human being is a subject who no longer needs a master, who can fully assume the heavy burden of defining his own limitations’ (Žižek, 2006: 90, emphasis in original).

For Žižek, Job is the first critic of ideology, in his disavowal of the causal explanations of his suffering, thus ‘laying bare the discursive strategies of legitimizing suffering’ (Žižek, 2003: 125). Acknowledging the meaninglessness of this suffering and refusing any apologetic explanations of its necessity opens up to the possibility of radical change. As Pound explains, ‘By confronting life in its arbitrariness, one suspends the symbolic and is free to act’ (2008: 36).

Žižek sees in St Paul a moment of radical change in the symbolic order and in the ‘big Other’, the conditions of emergence of which he himself is seeking to understand. He sees St Paul as the ‘“vanishing mediator” between Judaism and Christianity’ (Žižek, 2003: 10) and argues that ‘what we need today is the gesture that would undermine capitalist globalization from the standpoint of universal Truth, just as Pauline Christianity did to the Roman global Empire’ (Žižek, 1999: 211). Žižek translates St Paul’s emancipatory struggle (Ephesians, 6:12) into today’s terms as ‘Our struggle is not against concrete, corrupted individuals, but against those in power in general, against their authority, against the global order and the ideological mystification that sustains it’ (Žižek, 2010b: 34). Thus, perhaps revealing his own strategy of resistance, Žižek states: ‘St Paul had it right—using religion to rock the foundations of authority’ (2010b: 34).

The resistance of Reverend Billy

Reverend Billy is a character created by the New York based performance artist and anti-consumerist activist Bill Talen in the late 1990s. The character emerged in response to the increasing takeover of Times Square by multinational chain stores and was inspired by the apocalyptic sidewalk preachers standing at its street corners. Talen’s past reveals a religious upbringing in a Dutch Calvinist tradition, which he later denounced (Kalb, 2001). Talen’s one-man act has grown since its inception to become a movement in its own right. Reverend Billy’s ‘Church of Stop Shopping’ developed into the ‘Church of Life After Shopping’, and gradually grew to include a ‘Life After Shopping Gospel Choir’ consisting of 35 singers and a seven person ‘Not Buying It’ band (Reverend Billy, 2010). In 2009 Reverend Billy ran for Mayor of New York as the candidate for the Green Party. Recently, the activities of the group expanded further to include a broad range of ecological issues. Accordingly the name of this ‘radical performance community’ (Reverend Billy, 2011a) was changed into the ‘Church of Earthalujah’.

Reverend Billy’s main concern is consumerism and he is best known for his ‘retail interventions’. Although public space provides the backbone to many of the activities, private retail environments are often the targets. Disney, Starbucks and Wal-Mart are among the corporations that have felt the fury of the Reverend on a mission to stop the ‘shopocalypse’ through acts such as exorcism of the cash register; mass-wanderings around Wal-Mart with empty shopping carts; loud mobile-phone conversations in retail spaces regarding the origins of the products on display; and the planting of tape recorders behind products on display in stores that then play testimonies of the sweatshop workers that were involved in manufacturing the products. The main act, however, takes the form of Reverend Billy preaching to consumers in malls and chain stores to ‘stop shopping’, generally with the backing of the singing gospel choir. He has also performed this act once on the Main Street of Disneyland on Christmas day. Needless to say, Talen has been jailed dozens of times for his unsolicited acts on what is legally considered private property. He has been banned from every Starbucks store in California and store managers have been distributed a memo entitled ‘What Should I do if Reverend Billy is in My Store?’ (So, 2004).

Beyond these direct anti-consumerist actions, Reverend Billy and his group also perform public stunts in the name of other causes. One act involves megaphone-aided group recitals of the first amendment of the US constitution, which guarantees the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the free exercise of religion. Talen has also been arrested for engaging in this kind of activity in a disruptive way. Other campaigns and stunts that Reverend Billy and his group have engaged in concern gay rights, the defence of public space, support of local economies, housing rights and other issues of social justice, and various issues concerning sustainability, such as mountaintop removal and forest clearing. The group has, for example, ‘deposited’ piles of mud in the lobbies of investment banks involved in the financing of mountain top removal. The activism is clearly aimed at the entire capitalist economic process from extraction to production and consumption. Thus, for example, Reverend Billy preached in a sermon to the occupiers of Wall Street on 9 October 2011 that ‘we don’t want our children to grow up in chain stores buying sweatshop products made by other children’ (Reverend Billy, 2011c). At the time of writing, Reverend Billy and his Church give a performance at Theatre 80 in the East Village in New York every Sunday night.

Reverend Billy’s act is saturated with theological references. He evokes ‘good’ versus ‘evil’; refers to the mall, the big box, the chain retail store and multinational corporations as the ‘Devil’; and his language is full of ‘hallelujahs’, ‘praise the lord’ and ‘amens’, as befitting an evangelical preacher. He is explicitly concerned with what he identifies as the fundamentalist character of consumerism (Reverend Billy, 2006), although it quickly becomes clear that his own act is anything but fundamentalist.

The activism of Reverend Billy and his Church builds on the conscious mobilization of a variety of religious motifs, primarily drawn from evangelical Christianity. Examples include the ideas of conversion and revivalism (from consumerism), the dissemination of the gospel (of ‘stop shopping’) and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ (transformed onto commodities, a relationship which needs to be overcome). Televangelism also appears in the group’s conscious use of media to ‘spread the word’—in the staging of disruptive events that attract media attention, in the use of video and YouTube, blogging, and their own website, which also sells their CDs and DVDs, and provides free information and other downloads. It is also especially conspicuous in the slick, commodified appearance of Reverend Billy himself. But there are also elements drawn from other denominations, such as Catholicism, in the use of ‘confessionals’ available to ‘shopping sinners’ and the practice of ‘the sainting of activists and provocateurs’ (Reverend Billy, 2011d) at the Sunday night performances. Reverend Billy is then something of a postmodern heretic.

There is something profoundly troubling about Reverend Billy. Drawing on so many different ideas and influences it becomes difficult to categorize him. With his smooth appearance in white suit and gelled hair and ruthless conflation of religious tropes, consumerism and other anti-capitalist messages, he is certainly a controversial character. All these elements come together to create an entertaining but also somewhat annoying and certainly highly ambivalent act.

Reverend Billy adopts quite a peculiar strategy of resistance. What sets him apart from other anti-capitalist activists are his unorthodox methods. He resorts to a peculiar mixture of performance art, parody, religious evangelism and serious social protest in an attempt to get heard in a media-saturated world. In the play between the ‘real’ world of hyperconsumption and impending environmental catastrophe and the ‘fictional’ world of evangelical preacher Reverend Billy, he strategically deploys the ambiguity between what is real and what is semblance to create a rupture in the flow of everyday life.

In his book What Would Jesus Buy? Reverend Billy declares: ‘I am from the Church of Necessary Interruption’ (2006: 203). This expression embodies the core of his strategy, that is, one of interruption. The retail interventions that he performs with his group are directly targeted at disturbing the shopping experiences that corporations try to create and the other stunts are designed to disrupt the everyday flow of capitalist business. Part of the act is performed specifically ‘for visual effect’ (2006: 25) and the act is explicitly supposed to be a ‘shocking bit of theater’ (2006: 25) whereby bystanders and even the intervening police become part of the overall performance. The task of the group is to produce an ‘Art Attack’ (2006: 27). Inappropriateness is key, with disturbance of everyday business being a crucial part of the intervention. This strategy of interruption is intricately linked to the strategy of overidentification, which I will discuss in more detail in the next section.

The performances strike bystanders and activists alike, in particular in that initial moment of the performed interruption when it is not quite clear exactly what is going on. There is a revivalist element to the personal experience of being part of the interruption. For example, Reverend Billy refers to the break from consumerism and the embracement of unpredictable life in its stead as the ‘the jolt of being born’ (2006: 61). According to Reverend Billy, not knowing what is going on is the moment of freedom. When asked about the underlying thought that informs the movement and whether it is Christian in character, Reverend Billy responds: ‘We believe in something called the Fabulous Unknown, which is the absence of fundamentalism and the presence of life on Earth. And the Fabulous Unknown could be Jesus. But right now its my daughter Lena singing on the floor’ (Reverend Billy, 2011e).

At the heart of this uniting of the real and the fictional, serious social criticism and theatrical performance, the ostensibly religious activities performed by a secular group and the different kind of spiritual ethos that informs it, is the presence of laughter. Humour plays a crucial role in the activities of Reverend Billy. He refers to the interventions as ‘comedies with a social conscience’ (2006: 28) and stresses that ‘comedy is very close to anger’ (2006: 28). With respect to their interruptions he recognizes ‘The comedy of it, and the sneaky seriousness, too’ (2006: 185–186).

The interventions that the group performs are explicitly referred to as ‘Body theater’ (2006: 33). The embarrassment involved in the performed interruptions makes for an embodied experience. The laughter involved in these experiences, silly as they may seem, is however not a detached laughter. Instead it is quite the opposite, a very embodied laughter. As Reverend Billy explains the experience with regards to their retail interventions: ‘In fact, we are belly laughing profoundly. We are watching the amazed wandering away of our hands. Our consumerized gestures have had some kind of century storm blown through them. We’re just NOT BUYING’ (2006: 203). This embodied laughter stands at the very nexus of the anti-capitalist activities of Reverend Billy, crucial to the radical change that he calls for.

Despite the humour and laughter, there is something of a more serious, spiritual element to the activities of Reverend Billy and his Church. As he claims, ‘We are a post religious church’ (Reverend Billy, 2011a). There is clearly a collective joy to be discerned among the group, visible in the performance itself but surely also due to the knowledge of contributing to a common cause. This is a community of people come together for a cause, which goes beyond the performance itself. It is in this nexus of ambiguity between the humour and the seriousness, the parody and the belief, that the resistance of Reverend Billy and his group must be interpreted.

How to laugh at capitalism

What is to be made of Reverend Billy’s resistance? Previous studies of Reverend Billy and his movement have tended to emphasize their strategy as carnivalesque, as a form of culture jamming and have identified it as being in line with the broader tradition of détournement (see Littler, 2005, 2009; McClish, 2009; Sandlin and Callahan, 2009; Sandlin and Milam, 2008). What is lacking, however, in such analyses is a more detailed scrutiny of how his resistance works, and what this can show us about other possibilities of anti-capitalist resistance. It appears as a form of disruptive performance art (see Perucci, 2008, 2009), but there is more to it. Here both humour and theology play a role. In this section I will elaborate on the role of humour in resistance, and argue that Reverend Billy’s strategy of resistance can be described as parodic overidentification, before turning to Žižek and theology in more detail in the next. Reverend Billy’s strategy gives us more general clues, I will argue, about how to laugh at capitalism.

Humour can play different social functions. Billig (2005) makes a distinction between disciplinary and rebellious uses of humour and notes that whereas disciplinary humour focuses on ridiculing the powerless in order to point out their inappropriate social behaviour and thus police them back into conformity with social conventions, rebellious humour involves the powerless ridiculing the powerful. The former type of humour seeks to enforce social rules, whereas the latter seeks to undermine them. The outcome of the use of humour in each case is, however, uncertain. Acts of rebellious humour may, as Billig points out, end up reinforcing the power structures they aim to criticize, despite the best of intentions. This is particularly pertinent today, when rebellious humour sells: ‘Far from subverting the serious world of power, humour can strengthen it. In the world of late capitalism, the enjoyment of mass-marketed rebellious humour directly aids the economic structures that have produced such enjoyment’ (Billig, 2005: 212).

Billig also notes that rebellious humour played a disciplinary function in premodern times, where travelling performers ‘would parody religious services and beliefs’ where they ‘held up a looking-glass to the world of normality’ (2005: 213). Their task was not, however, as Billig points out, to influence social change, but rather merely to entertain. A similar dynamic where the powerless can take on the powerful is the carnival, in which the normal order of society is turned on its head and fools can be kings for a day. As has been noted, however, such inversion can equally function as a ‘safety valve’ for frustrations, with the instigation of normal social order the following day (see, for example, St John, 2008). As Eagleton puts it, ‘Carnival laughter is incorporative as well as liberating, the lifting of inhibitions politically enervating as well as disruptive’ (1981: 149). Thus the act of rebellion, especially in the case of carnival where the rights to such an inversion have been granted for a limited period of time by the forces in power, can serve to strengthen dominant power relations rather than undermine them.

Although Benjamin is more famous for his melancholia than for his humour, also he recognized the potential power of laughter: ‘there is no better trigger for thinking than laughter. In particular, convulsion of the diaphragm usually provides better opportunities for thought than convulsion of the soul’ (Benjamin, 1999: 779). This is the laughter that Sloterdijk (1987) identifies as the laughter of the kynic as opposed to that of the cynic. Sloterdijk argues that ‘The more a modern society appears to be without alternatives, the more it will allow itself to be cynical’ (1987: 112). Cynicism is a response to what appears to be a more or less hopeless situation. It is a strategy of adaptation in which the subject can communicate an awareness of and individual detachment from what is acknowledged as a sorry state of affairs. This produces a split in the subject, in which the subject intellectually (or linguistically) detaches itself from the situation, all the while continuing with their everyday activities as required, acting bodily as if they were not aware of the situation. The cynic ‘act[s] against better knowledge’ (1987: 6). The kynic, on the other hand, refuses to adapt to an unacceptable situation. The kynical response is a thoroughly embodied experience. It is provocative and cheeky, and can be quite crude. It ‘gives a new twist to the question of how to say the truth’ (1987: 104). According to Sloterdijk, kynicism involves ‘self-embodiment in resistance’, whereas cynicism entails its opposite: ‘self-splitting in repression’ (1987: 218). Kynical laughter carries a transformative potential. It is a particular kind of laughter, embodied laughter that aims to be disruptive rather than accommodating.

Parody has a long history as critique. It is a practice of duplication, in which an assumed original is reproduced through a process of imitation that holds on to some of the perceived essentials of the original but simultaneously modifies other parts of it. Parody involves a juxtaposition of two images that seem to be the same, but involve a difference. With respect to their political consequences, however, the images brought together are not equal. As Judith Butler stresses, in parody one of the images functions as the original to which the parodic copy is then juxtaposed (Butler, 2006; see also Hariman, 2008). This copy is a twisted reproduction that brings certain specific aspects of the original to the fore. In this movement the position of the original changes. As Butler puts it, ‘there is a subversive laughter in the pastiche-effect of parodic practices in which the original, the authentic, and the real are themselves constituted as effects’ (2006: 200). By this method parodic juxtaposition has the power to destabilize the often taken-for-granted position of the original.

Some argue that although parody might serve a critical function, it is not a revolutionary strategy (Rhodes and Pullen, 2007) and that parody, along with other forms of small-scale resistance, only work to strengthen the position of the dominant by channelling dissent into an accepted form of momentary relief (see Contu, 2008; Fleming and Sewell, 2002). While this is the case with some attempts at parody, at the same time parody certainly holds a powerful subversive potential. Kenny argues that ‘by allowing the temporary suspension of normality, parody can reinvigorate discussions that have been numbed by repetition’ (2009: 230). It is this ability to momentarily destabilize the everyday assumed order of things that constitutes the subversive potential of parody.

The key political function of parody is to enable the imagination of alternatives or, rather, to remind us of the fact that the given state of affairs is not inevitable. Parody can help shake taken-for-granted constellations and thus denaturalize existing social structures. At the same time, however, it is important to remember that parody is not inevitably subversive. As Butler (2006) stresses, parody is context-specific and can, as any form of critique, be incorporated into dominant power structures. Consider for example Che Guevara, whose face can now be found on innumerable consumer products for sale. Yet, as Butler also argues, ‘no political revolution is possible without a radical shift in one’s notion of the possible and the real’ (2006: xxiv) and it is in this shift of what is perceived possible and real that parody intervenes.

As Žižek and others have noted, we live today in a culture of cynicism, a culture where the use of humour, parody and other mechanisms of distancing are not only accepted but seem to be part of how the system can operate smoothly. Today, gestural transgressions of the set order are expected. Fleming and Spicer (2003), for example, show how employees attempt to resist impositions of conformity through a strategy of disidentification, whereby employees use cynicism as a mechanism of distancing themselves from the ascribed values of an organization. The crucial point, however, is that employees—despite disgruntlement and petty gestures of resistance—continue performing their tasks. As Sloterdijk (1987) puts it, they know what they are doing, yet they continue to do it. The lesson here is that employees need not necessarily internalize imposed cultural values in order to continue performing their tasks as if they did. Thus one might argue that they continue to perform their tasks and act as good employees, while simultaneously resisting the imposed values through their gestures. Contu (2008) describes this kind of activity as ‘decaf resistance’ in that it does not enact any visible challenge to power. As Fleming and Spicer point out following Žižek, although an employee might internally disbelieve an organization’s values, they may still externally believe, as evident in their everyday social practices. Thus they conclude that ‘what counts as disruptive resistance must be re-evaluated’ (Fleming and Spicer, 2003: 157; see also Karfakis and Kokkinidis, 2011).

Rather than using disidentification as a strategy of resistance, Reverend Billy resorts to a strategy of overidentification. Overidentification has its roots in psychoanalysis and was developed as a strategy of resistance by a group of cultural activists of the Neue Slowenische Kunst both against ‘Tito-Stalinism’ and neoliberalism (see Parker, 2007). In this context overidentification meant the ‘refusal of any distance, the taking of dominant symbolic forms at face value and, through repetition and reflexive considerations of their tactical impact, taking the response of the state to breaking point’ (Parker, 2004: 32). Overidentification thus refers to taking the espoused values of a dominant system seriously, more seriously than is actually expected, and then inflating these traits to the point of rupture.

Fleming and Sewell’s (2002) analysis of the practice of ‘flannelling’ in the workplace, in which an employee pursues the expressed demands of an organization with such excessive fervour that the act ends up expressing contempt for these demands and values of an organization, is one example of such a strategy of overidentification. It is the exaggeration of this act of ‘playing by the rules’ that turns it into a strategy of overidentification. This may, Fleming and Spicer argue, ‘disrupt relations of domination in contemporary organization’ (2003: 172). If disidentification is about a therapeutic, subjective distancing from the dominant ideology, while perhaps externally continuing to perform required tasks, overidentification involves an excessive ‘believing too much’ (Fleming and Spicer, 2003: 172).

Overidentification is also a key concept for Žižek. As he articulates it, today

in so far as power relies on its ‘inherent transgression’, then—sometimes, at least—overidentifying with the explicit power discourse—ignoring this inherent obscene underside and simply taking the power discourse at its (public) word, acting as if it means what it explicitly says (and promises)—can be the most effective way of disturbing its smooth functioning. (Žižek, 2000: 220, emphasis in original)

Žižek gives numerous examples of this in politics and culture. He uses the German band Rammstein as one example of a strategy of overidentification and argues that ‘Rammstein undermine totalitarian ideology not with an ironic distance towards the rituals they imitate, but by directly confronting us with its obscene materiality and thereby suspending its efficacy’ (Žižek, 2010a: 387). Overidentification is also part of Žižek’s method. It is, as Parker argues, ‘a crucial part of Žižek’s rhetorical strategy’ (2007: 154).

Although overidentification in itself can be a strategy of resistance, the addition of parody gives it a slightly different twist. Whereas overidentification refers to close mimesis and exaggeration of the dominant as it is, parodic overidentification holds on to this close mimesis for the most part but changes some detail of the original which, in the end, reveals the true character of the act. The overidentification that Žižek evokes is, in fact, parodic overidentification.

To give an example of parodic overidentification, Boyer and Yurchak (2010) draw on a particular strategy of overidentification that they refer to as stiob in order to analyse the discursive and ideological similarities between late socialism and late liberalism. Stiob originates in eastern European socialism and is a form of resistance based on a strategy of overidentification ‘with the dominant form of discourse and its performances’ (2010: 213). They give the example of the oppositional strategy of performative reproduction of the already over-formalized authoritative discourse of late socialism. Stiob entails ‘such precise mimicry of the object of one’s irony that it is often impossible to tell whether this is a form of sincere support or subtle ridicule, or both’ (Boyer and Yurchak, 2010: 185). This is how it differs from other forms of subversive humour. In history, stiob ‘usually did not signal its own ironic purpose’ (Boyer and Yurchak, 2010: 181). Thus Boyer and Yurchak argue that this form of parodic overidentification was much more difficult to discipline, as it so closely resembled the accepted, dominant discourse.

This form of parodic overidentification is, as Boyer and Yurchak show, increasingly used by Western political activists. They give examples of what they refer to as ‘American stiob’ in The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Ali G, South Park and the Yes Men. With regards to the Colbert Report, for example, they argue that the show’s parodic strategy ‘operates through overidentification with the visual imagery, language, and performative style of populist news commentary’ (2010: 195). Because of the difficulty of categorizing Stephen Colbert, Boyer and Yurchak argue that his act ‘ultimately exposes the self-caricaturing hypernormalization of authoritative discourse’ (2010: 198). They argue that Colbert responds to a particular ‘hegemony of form’, in which ‘the semiotic packaging of news content seem[s] to have become more significant than the veracity and plurality of the news content itself’ (Boyer and Yurchak, 2010: 198). Thus stiob is very much focused on the form of delivery. Likewise, they argue, the act of the Yes Men works because they imitate their target (the WTO) to the minutest detail: ‘the language they used, the look, the tone of voice, the design of the Web sites, the stylistics of texts and documents’ (2010: 202). What matters here, again, is not so much what is being said, but rather how it is being said (Boyer and Yurchak, 2010).

Reverend Billy is an act of parodic overidentification, but operates in a slightly different manner. The religious motifs manifest in the activism of Reverend Billy are mobilized in a consciously parodic sense. The parodic element in parodic overidentification brings the ambiguity of the tactics to the fore. The overidentification is not complete but only partial. The discursive forms and gestures of religion are overidentified with, but a part remains outside of the process of overidentification. Reverend Billy overidentifies with the religious form that is part and parcel of capitalism today but the content of the actual message is not compromised. It is the closeness of resemblance that is crucial here. Despite Reverend Billy’s actual anti-capitalist message, the rest of the act is so closely in line with dominant tropes that it is not immediately easy for onlookers to decipher the ‘real core’ from the ‘act’.

Reverend Billy thus appropriates the gestures of a dominant ideology—the religious elements in contemporary capitalism—and by using them in unexpected and subversive ways attempts to turn them against the same ideology, in order to destabilize taken-for-granted ways of thinking and behaving. He uses what de Certeau (2002) refers to as tactical resistance in that he acts precisely in a way that, as Spicer and Fleming explain the concept, ‘makes use of a dominated space by occupying it in unanticipated and often subversive ways’ (2007: 521). The subversive element is most conspicuous in the suspension of the normal running of a business that his interventions entail. This type of tactical resistance, which I have here identified as parodic overidentification, might provide a rupture, a moment of ‘destabilization’ to the stability of the routine functioning of capitalism, both on a practical and on an ideological level.

Laughter is a guiding principle of Reverend Billy’s work and he uses humour specifically in an attempt to instigate change. Importantly, though, the parodic aspect of his performance invites us to laugh at capitalism in quite a particular way. This is not just light-hearted humour, but precisely the opposite: embodied laughter, belly laughter that shakes the whole body and is powerful enough to change one’s being. It is not merely about the therapeutic laughter of the cynic, but the transformative laughter of the kynic (Sloterdijk, 1987). It is a laughter, a form of resistance that, at least momentarily, is hoped to break the flow of capital.

Discussion

What, then, is the role of the theological in Reverend Billy’s parodic overidentification and, to return to the broader question, what might theology contribute to a radical politics of anti-capitalist resistance? These questions turn on the contradiction between the postmodern predicament of contemporary capitalism and its simultaneous theological affinities. If capitalism today operates, on one level, on the basis of cynical distancing while on another as a religion or at least drawing on theological resources, then how can it be resisted? This is where Žižek’s materialist theology becomes useful. Žižek’s elaboration of Sloterdijk’s idea of enlightened false consciousness, that is, of the gap between disbelief in thought but belief in practice, is crucial not only for the analysis of contemporary capitalist ideology but also for practical acts of resistance to it. It is this gap that enables contemporary ideology to hold its place.

As I have argued, Žižek does not merely advocate overidentification as a strategy of resistance but practices it himself. To be more precise, his strategy is predicated on parodic overidentification. In his materialist theology, he takes Christianity at its word, he overidentifies with it, but not with the whole. He overidentifies with what he takes to be its radical kernel and then extends it to the extreme in order to try to draw out its radical potential. In his reading of Christian theology Žižek explicitly looks for moments of subversion, of rupture in the symbolic order that could function as models for a contemporary radical politics. In short, his loyalties do not lie with Christianity but elsewhere, and this is the heresy of his materialist theology.

The activism of Reverend Billy is on a practical level very similar in the way that it identifies the revolutionary potential in the current role of theology in contemporary capitalist ideology. Reverend Billy overidentifies with this particular element of contemporary capitalism and thus tries to extend it to the extreme, in order to draw out its radical potential. He thus strategically appropriates theology in his resistance. But his choice of theology is not arbitrary. The strategy of parodic overidentification here is meaningful because it can be recognized by his audience. They might be aware of the affinity between conservative Christianity and contemporary capitalism or recognize the affinities between religious and contemporary capitalist practices, such as consumerism. They can recognize some of the absurdity of the situation that Reverend Billy mirrors.

Acknowledgment of the place of religion in contemporary capitalism, which I sketched early on in the article, makes it possible to understand Reverend Billy’s mobilization of theological motifs as an act of ideology critique. Reverend Billy challenges not only current capitalist practice but even more so the way that its ideology functions. His actions can be understood as an attempt to challenge ‘the very coordinates of the system rather than coordinates within the system’ (Pound, 2008: 20). Like Žižek, then, he is involved in a radical questioning of the ‘big Other’ that currently dominates and organizes reality. His interruptions constitute an attempt to short-circuit contemporary capitalist ideology by feeding one end of it back on itself. Reverend Billy, if anyone, is using his theological knowledge and ‘religion to rock the foundations of authority’ (Žižek, 2010b: 34).

Still, Reverend Billy might not be quite the ‘vanishing mediator’ that Žižek has in mind who would bring about a radical rupture in the symbolic order, given that the examples that Žižek gives are significant historical figures (Christ, Job, St Paul). Reverend Billy seems far too insignificant, ambiguous and frivolous for such a heroic task. There is also undoubtedly an element to his act that seems more therapeutic than transformative in character. Instead of producing a rupture, the act might end up performing the carnivalesque function, in which participants can momentarily let off steam, while returning to their routine life as part of capitalism straight afterwards.

Nevertheless, there is something more radical to Reverend Billy’s act when understood in terms of Žižek’s materialist theology, not least in his attempt to interrupt the smooth flow of everyday life as guided by contemporary capitalist ideology. His acts are more than mere entertainment and his strategy is consciously disruptive, be it of consumption in a retail space, of traffic in a busy intersection, or of activities in the lobbies of investment banks. He is not always merely performing for a crowd of supporters. He is preaching in spaces of political significance, whether or not there is a welcoming audience awaiting. His activism may be less sophisticated than the philosophical route that Žižek takes, but lack of philosophical refinement is surely a feature of any action.

If Žižek, through his unorthodox engagements with theology, is set on releasing humanity from the idea of an external ‘big Other’ who imbues our actions with meaning, in favour of a search for a community of believers not governed by any such external force, then this is not so far off from what Reverend Billy seeks. In his blog, in the context of a discussion of global capitalism and the American politics of freedom, Reverend Billy writes:

we recall actual freedom, that risky, original feeling. We don’t have to Google it. As we grow up, we don’t need a corporate force making our choices. We are alone with the mystery of life and we are members of a human community experiencing the same amazing journey. We have the DNA of freedom in our souls. (Reverend Billy, 2011b)

As in Žižek’s transformative reading of the crucifixion, Reverend Billy thus acknowledges the absence of the big Other, and as in Žižek’s reading of Job, he refuses any ideological attempts to cover up the truth of the arbitrariness of life and the fact that the responsibility of confronting this arbitrary order lies with the human community, not with an external authority figure. Furthermore, like Žižek, Reverend Billy has turned to theology in search of a ‘gesture that would undermine capitalist globalization from the standpoint of universal Truth’ (Žižek, 1999: 211). The truth he seeks is, however, different from the traditional truths proclaimed by Christian churches.

So although Reverend Billy might not be the revolutionary agent that Žižek has in mind, maybe this is where Žižek is barking up the wrong tree. Žižek still seems to have something of a Messiah in mind—not as a source of all meaning of life, but as a radical agent that will open up a moment to revolutionary change. The point with Reverend Billy, however, is that perhaps radical agency resides not in any one particular identifiable Messiah, but rather in anonymous and disconnected groups of agents of change who simultaneously tug at the edges of capitalism, disruptively questioning the authority of the big Other and the symbolic order over which it presides. In such a context the acts of Reverend Billy and his group of activists play their part. This might also give us hope that we all can do something in order to try to instigate positive change.

What theology might contribute to an understanding of contemporary anti-capitalist resistance is a particular way of conceiving of resistance as not only based in cynical distancing, or merely in the form of ‘micro’ resistance. What Žižek finds in theology is the opposite, the taking of something seriously. Religion has historically been a source of hope for many. It has involved hope for a better life and hope for a better world. These are equally the goals of anti-capitalist resistance and thus it should hardly be surprising that theology offers resources for those who struggle for a similar cause. Theology and anti-capitalist resistance are united in the idea that ‘another world is possible’. If some forms of theology, however, imagine this other world as existing elsewhere, a materialist theology specifically sets changing the existing world as its objective.

It is important also to avoid falling back onto some form of absolutism or fundamentalism, hence the importance of the use of humour that accompanies the use of theology in Reverend Billy’s strategy of resistance. The analysis of Reverend Billy’s resistance shows the importance of taking contemporary capitalist ideology seriously, acknowledging both the cynicism on which it operates and the return to religion which has emerged in response to cynical, postmodern relativism. It points to the need to confront both. An analysis of Reverend Billy’s anti-capitalist resistance through Žižek’s materialist theology clearly shows an attempt to tackle both postmodern cynicism, visible in the turn to theology, and capitalist fundamentalism, visible in how the theology is applied in practice, that is, through parodic overidentification. In other words, Reverend Billy refuses both postmodern cynicism, or, capitalist nihilism, in the embrace of the freedom and potential of human community, and refuses the absolutism of traditional religion and its big Other, as a structure transposed onto contemporary capitalism.

Conclusion

In this article I have shown how theology today plays a role both in capitalism and in anti-capitalist resistance. I have shown two contemporary instances where anti-capitalism is shrouded in theology in different ways: in Žižek’s materialist theology and politics and in the activism of Reverend Billy. I have used the theoretical insights of Žižek in order to analyse the activism of Reverend Billy, as well as using the example of Reverend Billy in order to shed some light on the anti-capitalist politics of Žižek.

At the heart of the politics of both, I have argued, lies a strategy of parodic overidentification, whereby a part of a larger whole is overidentified with. I have shown how this strategy here seeks to undermine the everyday flow of capital through an interruption in the dominant ideology that governs it as well as, in the case of Reverend Billy, in its practical everyday functioning. I have shown how this strategy is intimately connected to both the cynicism and the absolutism in contemporary capitalism.

In the introduction to this article I raised concerns about the restricted focus of studies of resistance in organization and management. Studies are often focused on the workplace and work organizations, and emphasize discursive practices, identity politics and forms of ‘micro resistance’. Instead, I have argued here for the need to broaden the scope of research on resistance to include resistance that takes place outside of the direct employment relationship and in society at large, and to pay increased attention to more disruptive forms of resistance than mere grumbling in the background. In order to be able to understand how different forms of resistance can operate, it is important to understand the broader social and ideational structures within which and against which resistance takes place.

Both Žižek and Reverend Billy could be criticized for their anti-capitalist strategies. Whereas Žižek could potentially be accused of theoretical elitism and his work thus of being of limited utility in actual, material everyday struggles, the actions of Reverend Billy and his Church could be charged with frivolity or banality, that is, with not being disruptive enough. Although the activism of Reverend Billy to some extent plays a therapeutic role it is, nevertheless, also transformative in its direct engagements with and disruption of the flow of capital in various public and private spaces. Furthermore, as I have indicated, perhaps the possibility of radical change lies not so much merely with a specific ‘vanishing mediator’ but rather with critical mass. At the same time, theoretical work on the prospects for resistance, such as we find in Žižek, is also essential for anti-capitalist struggles.

I have argued that it is important to analyse the anti-capitalist resistance of Reverend Billy in a complex intersection between seriousness and laughter, belief and parody, overidentification and distancing. The same applies to Žižek’s work. If contemporary capitalist ideology operates in a space where both frivolous, postmodern playfulness and serious theological forces come together, then critique of this ideology also needs to acknowledge both. This is where parodic overidentification is an important concept in that it embodies both sides. It draws on both the playfulness of parody and the seriousness of the overidentification in order to intervene in the theological tenets and the cynicism of contemporary capitalist ideology. Parodic overidentification, paradoxically perhaps, involves a simultaneous overidentification with one part of a whole and a determinate distancing from another. This is why it is a useful concept in trying to understand contemporary capitalist ideology and anti-capitalist resistance.

In a context today, in which both a cynical distancing and a theological seriousness drive capitalism, I have argued that it is important to distinguish between therapeutic and transformative forms of resistance, and thus between cynical and kynical forms of laughter. With the risk of becoming nothing more than pure entertainment, the theological influence here might contribute to a form of parodic overidentification which takes itself seriously. Yet, as I have also argued, it is important not to fall into absolutism. Hence there is also an important role for humour to play in anti-capitalist resistance.

I have sought to show through the mundane example of Reverend Billy what a materialist theology might look like in practice. Guided by theological knowledge and a certain idea of spirituality among the community engaging in resistance, Reverend Billy puts theology in the practical service of materialism, although this time hiding the dwarf of anti-capitalism in the puppet of theology. I have also shown that perhaps, with the rising interest in theology in different contexts today, we are witnessing a gradual disillusionment with the political impotence of postmodern relativism and a search for new and alternative sources for radical political intervention. One such realm is clearly that of theology. In the contemporary turn to theology an old source is drawn on anew in the struggle against the injustices and destruction emanating from the workings of contemporary neoliberal capitalism. Yet the way that theology has been mobilized in the example considered here is unorthodox, to say the least, and importantly so. Whereas some search for truth in an external ‘big Other’, both Žižek and Reverend Billy clearly try to locate it within the human collective itself rather than outside of it.