Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates [Paperback]

Slavoj Zizek (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2002 | ISBN-10: 1859844219 | ISBN-13: 978-1859844212 | Edition: First Edition

Probing beneath the level of TV punditry, Zizek offers a highly original and readable account that serves as a fascinating and insightful comprehension of the events of September 11.

Liberals and conservatives proclaim the end of the American holiday from history. Now the easy games are over; one should take sides. Zizek argues 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 analyzes the fiasco of the predominant leftist response to the events.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a Professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.

Product Details

• Paperback: 154 pages
• Publisher: Verso; First Edition edition (October 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859844219
• ISBN-13: 978-1859844212
• Product Dimensions: 3.5 x 0.6 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #516,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"The most dangerous philosopher in the West," (says Adam Kirsch of The New Republic) Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce;" "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle;" "In Defense of Lost Causes;" "Living in the End Times;" and many more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 126 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Reality as illusion October 1, 2002

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

To people who come to this book looking for an analysis of the attacks on the World Trade Center this book will appear to be peculiar and eccentric, and therefore in questionable taste. Slavoj Zisek is a Marxist philosopher from the formerly Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. (At the same time he is quite caustic against those who think that Milosevic's horrors could have been avoided by an appeal to the cosmopolitan virtues of Titoism. Not within the party framework, at any rate.) He has a special interest in the French psychoanalyst Lacan, which does not stop him from discussing other imposing figures such as Hegel, Adorno, Foucault and, suprisingly in this book, G.K. Chesterton. At the same time he discusses popular movies from "Unbreakable" to "Shrek." Like Terry Eagleton he has a fondness, and a weakness, for paradox and contradiction. A person examining this book will note that the five essays are not as concise and straightforward as they may appear. (They will also note that this book has six chapters.) The unsympathetic reader may wonder how we get from the events of September 11th to sado-masochism and "The Piano Teacher," to Judith Butler and Antigone. Given the bottomless malice of Al Qaidya towards any concept of freedom, surely, one might state, it is irresponsible to say that freedom of thought is the surest way of ensuring submission and control (as Zisek suggests in his introduction)?

In fact, Zisek is a stimulating and important writer and the reader should take the effort to appreciate him. To the extent that this book has a thesis it is expressed on the cover. Instead of the attacks forcing the United States to rethink its attitude towards the rest of the world, it has allowed itself to view itself solely as a victim. By contrast "That is the true lesson of the attacks: the only way to ensure that it will not happen here again is to prevent it happening anywhere else." At the same time Zisek is vehement against those who showed a certain schaudenfreude at American suffering, or those tempted to euphemize Palestianian suicide bombers. On the Islamists themselves, Zisek makes an interesting point against those who wish for a "Protestant" reformation for Islam. There already has been one. Like Protestantism, the Wahabbi sect that rules Saudi Arabia rejects the accretions and growths of Islam over the previous centuries as so much quasi-pagan superstition. Like Protestantism it emphasizes holy scripture and even offers suggestions for a more practical bible interpretation. Clearly, this is not enough. Elsewhere Zisek points out that in a way political Islam is Islamic fascism, in the sense that it seeks a capitalism without capitalism, or a capitalism with its destabilizing effects.

Elsewhere Zisek has stimulating things to say about "The Matrix" from which he extracts his title, and about the way that movie and others like "The Truman Show," reflect a nervous anxiety that "our" suburban life is something unreal. At the same time, one cannot unproblematically search for the real, a la Orwell, a certain harmony with fantasy is crucial to Lacanian good health. There are interesting comments on suicide as the expression not of certainty, but of doubt, not as sacrifice, but as evasion. His comments on "Shrek" will be of great comfort to all those who think that film over-rated: it is a movie which overturns all conventions yet at the same time only reaffirms them. Zisek cautions against the use of "proto-fascist": not all criticisms of decadence or invocations of discipline are fascist--consider the example of Schoenberg. He also notes that the private sphere is becoming a commodified space. The only way, he suggests, for true love to exist is not for the lovers to stare into each others eyes but at some sort of collectivity outside them. He is especially angry at Jonathan Alter and Alan Dershowitz for suggesting the torture of terrorists. As he quite properly points out, if torturing terrorists could save lives, then the torturing of prisoners of wars would saveeven more. Although at one point he argues that anti-Americanism is most common in countries that have lost their influence, like France and Germany, he argues that it is vitally necessary for a European response to provide an alternative to American diplomacy. On this point, I fully agree.

30 of 37 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Psychoanalysis meets 9/11 December 7, 2002

By Tron Honto

Format:Paperback

In my opinion,Zizek is the most profound cultural analyst writing today, and this short collection of several contemplative essays on 9/11 succeeds in truly saying something new and important about the scope of the events that transpired. Zizek's writing style is famous for achieving a mixture between abstruse, Lacanian psycho-analysis and popular culture. This makes him perhaps one of the most difficult but most enjoyable reads out there in the cultural criticism market. Certainly, this stands out from the the sentimental fluff and proganda rubbish that flies off the shelves. Zizek challenges us to think outside the canard of 'fundamentalism' vs. American hegemony and capitalism.

34 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a great book January 18, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

~~~I truly enjoyed this book, which provides great insight while analyzing the current situation of the States. Not "with us or against us," as Bush constantly stated,but we are against them, since both military leaders in the US and Bin Laden's terrorists are following the same logic. What happend in September 11 had happened in third world countries everywhere, but we Americans watched them as virtual reality until this has become real in our territory. Nothing can justify what happened in~~ September 11, just as nothing could~~ justify what happened in third world countries, which had appeared as spectatles until that point. It's stupid to exchange one terror against another, because this will entail endless circle of violence. What one must do is to be awake from this rosy dream, to realize the existence of the desert of the real, and resist "them", who have been making such terrible spectacles happen everywhere,Mid-East, Africa, Asia, but not simly in the US, which has~~ become part of the desert of reel.~