Slavoj Žižek
Slovene Marxist writing on psychoanalysis, philosophy and popular culture.
The depraved heroes of 24 are the Himmlers of Hollywood - Slavoj Žižek
In this short article Žižek shows how the popular TV series is essentially a reflection of newly acceptable fascistic behaviour - torture, expendability of subordinates - in the 'war on terror', concluding that "24's real problem [is] not the content itself but the fact that we are being told openly about it."
On Sunday, the fifth season of the phenomenally successful television drama 24 will start in the US. Each season is composed of 24 one-hour episodes and the whole season covers the events of a single day.
Biopolitics: Between Terri Schiavo and Guantanamo - Slavoj Žižek
Žižek draws on Giorgio Agamben's notion of Homo sacer - someone who is biologically alive but deproved of all rights - in order to understand the rationales and causes of the 'war on terror'.
Welcome to the desert of the Real - Slavoj Žižek
The philosopher-psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek’s take on the aftermath of the September 11<sup>th</sup> attacks, including his trademark references to popular culture to explain his Lacanian psychoanalysis. He presents a choice: “there are two fundamental ways to react to such traumatic events which cause unbearable anxiety: the way of superego and the way of the act”, and it is in ‘the act’ in which he sees the possibility to escape “the reassertion of the barbaric violence” (note: this is not the longer book of the same name).
[i]America's "holiday from history" was a fake: America's peace was bought by the catastrophes going on elsewhere.
