Welcome to the desert of the real!
Subtitle: five essays on 11 September and related dates
By: Slavoj Žižek.
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2002
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 154
Subjects: Globalization -- Political aspects; September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001; War on Terrorism, 2001-; Mass media -- Political aspects -- United States; Popular culture -- Political aspects -- United States; Mass media -- Social aspects -- United States; Popular culture -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 2001-; United States -- Foreign relations -- 2001-; United States -- Social conditions -- 1980-
Description: "In the months after September 11, titles like "The End of the Age of Irony" abound in our media. Liberals and conservatives proclaim the end of the American holiday from history. Now the easy games are over; one should take sides." "Zizek argues that this is precisely the temptation to be resisted. In such moments of apparently clear choices, the real alternatives are most hidden. Welcome to the Desert of the Real steps back, complicating the choices imposed on us. It proposes that global capitalism is fundamentalist and that America was complicit in the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. It points to our dreaming about the catastrophe in numerous disaster movies before it happened, and explores the irony that the tragedy has been used to legitimize torture. Last but not least it analyses the fiasco of the predominant leftist response to the events."--Jacket.