Is torture part of your social network?

Abstract

In Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Slavoj Žižek draws on concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis to discuss the bombing of the World Trade Center. He writes, It was when we watched the two WTC towers collapsing on the TV screen, that it became possible to experience the falsity of "reality TV shows": even if these shows are "for real," people still act in them-they are simply playing themselves.1