“Welcome to the Desert of the Real” is the text from which Slavoj Zizek read from on November 14, 2001 in his lecture, “Passions of the Real: Violence In The XXth Century” at Jack Tilton Gallery in NYC. It is, in general, Zizek’s reflections on the destruction of the WTC and his perception of the reactions from both the Right and the Left, from his Leftist perspective. From this vantage, he attempts to find the source of these Western “First World” reactions, while probing the initial US reaction within the psychological framework of American film, television and journalistic media.
