Thursday, August 26, 2004

Slavoj Zizek in Welcome to the Desert of the Real writes on page 35: "However, whom do we strike? Whatever the response, it will never hit the right target, bringing us full satisfaction. The ridicule of America attacking Afghanistan is a case in point: if the greatest power in the world bombards one of the poorest countries, in which peasants barely survive in barren hills, is this not the ultimate case of impotent acting out? Afghanistan is otherwise an ideal target: a country that is already reduced to rubble, with no infrastructure, repeatedly destroyed by war for the last two decades ...We cannot avoid the surmise that the choice of Afghanistan was also determined by economic considerations: is it not the best procedure to act out one's anger at a country for which no one cares and where there is nothing to destroy? Unfortunately, the choice of Afghanistan cannot fail to recall the anecdote about the madman who searches for a lost key beneath a streetlamp; asked why there, when he lost the key in a dark corner, he answers: "But it's easier to search under a strong light!" Is not the ultimate irony that prior to the US bombing, the whole of Kabul already looked like dowtown Manhattan after September 11? The 'war on terrorism' thus functions as an act whose true aim is to lull us into the falsely secure conviction that nothing has really changed." The title comes from Matrix when "The resistance leader Morpheus, utters the ironic greeting (to the hero): "Welcome to the desert of the real." 9:50:10 AM    comment []