> Zizek wrote:
>
> > It is precisely now, when we are dealing with the
> raw Real of a
> > catastrophe, that we should bear in mind the
> ideological and
> > fantasmatic coordinates which determine its
> perception. If there is
> > any symbolism in the collapse of the WTC towers,
> it is not so much
> > the old-fashioned notion of the "center of
> financial capitalism,"
> > but, rather, the notion that the two WTC towers
> stood for the center
> > of the VIRTUAL capitalism, of financial
> speculations disconnected
> > from the sphere of material production. The
> shattering impact of the
> > bombings can only be accounted for only against
> the background of the
> > borderline which today separates the digitalized
> First World from the
> > Third World "desert of the Real." It is the
> awareness that we live in
> > an insulated artificial universe which generates
> the notion that some
> > ominous agent is threatening us all the time with
> total destruction.
>
> I gather the word "Real" is being used here with the
> meaning given to it by
> Lacan, a meaning that, if I understand it correctly,
> explicitly disconnects
> it from "reality" and identifies it instead with
> unconscious "fantasy".
I'd take the meaning of the Real in terms of its place in the triad Imaginary/Real/Symbolic. The Real, here, is the pre-symbolic, the trauma of the current catastrophe before it's been integrated into the symbolic. Attempts at integration have made an appeal to a tradition of patriotism, an appeal that hasn't always been expressly xenophobic, and has been careful most times in the mainstream to be more about American heroism, community, family love, strength in the face of crisis: all ideological and/or fantasmatic coordinates. At the same time, there still has been the urge towards understanding the disaster wholly in terms of some reified, evil, Ominous Agent, that must be terminated. Like David Horowitz blurting out last night on Politically Incorrect that OBL and Saddam Hussein need to be killed. As if that would change anything. The "ideological and fantasmatic coordinates" which determine *this* kind of perception are, as I read Zizek, generated or at least exacerbated by virtual capitalism's insulation from the very material traumas capital movement creates or contributes to elsewhere.
Alec
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