Welcome to the desert of the real

This volume argues that, in the months after September 11, titles like The End of the Age of Irony abounded in the media, pressing down the notion that the age of postmodern ambiguities was over. Liberals and conservatives proclaimed the end of the American holiday from history. Now the easy games were over, one should take sides. Zizek argues that this is precisely the temptation to be resisted. Precisely in such moments of apparently clear choices, the real alternatives are most hidden. His work steps back, complicating the choices imposed upon 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 predominant Leftist response to the events.