Alenka Zupančič

Alenka Zupančič appears as the thinker who pushes an argument about commodities and belief to a striking limit: the problem may not be only how people speak about commodities, but how commodities would speak among themselves. Her example shifts this question into a political and theological scene, where a person’s explicit disbelief does not settle whether he still fears divine judgment.

Role in the Argument

The book presents Zupančič’s example as an extension of the challenge of changing belief. Instead of treating persuasion as a matter of changing what a subject says, it asks what happens when the surrounding structure of belief is also at stake. The move from “chicken-commodities” to God makes the issue concrete: an explanation may alter what a person consciously accepts without resolving the authority he continues to reckon with.

The Prisoner and the Question of God

In the imagined setting of an enlightened society during revolutionary terror, a man is imprisoned because he believes in God. He is subjected to various measures, especially an enlightened explanation, and comes to accept that God does not exist. After his release, however, he returns in fear of being punished by God. He knows God does not exist, yet his fear persists. The example’s closing question is whether God, too, knows this. It exposes a gap between a person’s explicit knowledge and the imagined knowledge of the authority before which that person still feels answerable.