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Analyzing Zizek 's Concept Of The Passion For Real

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6. Examine Zizek’s concept of the ‘passion for the Real’ in relation to the events of September 11, 2001. BBC News reports on September 11, 2001 (9/11) there were multiple attacks by “Al Qaeda terrorists” in America (p.1). The planes crashed into the main building of the New York City (NY): World trade centre (WTC) and Pentagon. As a result about 3000 people died during this event. BBC (2015) identified it as “symbolic violence.” (p.1). The ramifications of this event were reported by media presenting drastic images/videos of building collapsing, fire, people jumping off the building, etc. The media presented the video constantly over and over when the plane crashed into the WTC (Baudains, 2013). Zizek (2002) emphasis on the imagery-symbolic reality of everyday experience as a feature of the twentieth century. Zizek (2002) applies his concept ‘Passion for real’ to critically examine the consequences of the 9/11 event. He explains ‘Passion for real’ is a desire to perceive things in a more realistic way. For him ‘Real’ is what you achieve when you peel off the subtle layers of outside world/reality. He argues that the concept of ‘Real’ is driven by hollowness and is not presentable. The ‘passion of for real’ is to search and explore for reliability destined to fail the situation, as the ‘real’ is given a symbolic form. He believes that when informed about events like 9/11 by news the only experience of 'reality ' we have is through the videos and photographs that are

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