Spirit of Terrorism

"We have seen many world events, and recent years have been filled with any number of violent ones, from wars to genocides. But until September 11 we had no symbolic event on a world scale that marked a setback for globalization itself. With the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we are confronted, says Baudrillard, with the pure event which concentrates in itself all the events which have never taken place. And we had all dreamt of this event because it was impossible not to dream of the destruction of American monopolistic power." "Continuing an analysis developed over many years, Baudrillard sees the power of the terrorist as lying in the symbolism of this slaughter. Not merely the reality of death, but a sacrificial death which challenges the whole system. Where the past revolutionary sought to conduct a struggle of real forces in the context of ideology and politics, the new terrorist mounts a powerful symbolic challenge, which, when combined with high-tech resources, constitutes an unprecedented assault on an over-sophisticated, vulnerable West."--Jacket.