Topic 2: Oblique Memories of 9/11
Masaryk University, Brno
27—30 April, 2015

Slavoj Zizek ‘Welcome to the Desert of the Real’
•For the great majority of the public, the WTC explosions were events on the TV screen, and when we
watched the oft-repeated shot of frightened people running towards the camera ahead of the giant
cloud of dust from the collapsing tower, was not the framing of the shot itself reminiscent of
spectacular shots in catastrophe movies, a special effect which outdid all others, since – as
Jeremy Bentham knew – reality is the best appearance of itself?’ (11)

11’9”01: Ken Loach section



President Allende’s final address to the people of Chile, 11.9.73
•‘They have the power. They can enslave us. But social progress cannot be halted, not by crimes and
not by force. History is ours. It is made by the people. Long live Chile! Long live the people!
Long live the workers!’.

Judith Butler Precarious Life, 2004
•‘[the United States] was missing an opportunity to redefine itself as part of a global community
when, instead, it heightened nationalist discourse, extended surveillance mechanisms, suspended
constitutional rights and developed forms of explicit and implicit censorship’ (xi).

Judith Butler Precarious Life, 2004
•‘In order to condemn these acts as inexcusable, absolutely wrong, in order to sustain the
affective structure in which we are, on the one hand, victimized and, on the other, engaged in a
righteous cause of rooting out terror, we have to begin the story with the experience of violence
we suffered’ (6).
•

Man on Wire



Mad Men: titles
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Mad Men: titles
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Mad Men Season 5 (poster)



Richard Drew’s ‘Falling Man’, 11.9.01



Mad Men: JFK episode



United 93