Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

277hieroglyphics, the scarlet letter, all represent fantasies to return to the Real. This is what Žižekmeans by “virtual reality” which “simply generalizes this procedure of offering a productdeprived of its substance: it provides reality itself deprived of its substance, of the hard resistantkernel of the Realjust as decaffeinated coffee smells and tastes like coffee without being realcoffee, Virtual reality is experienced as reality without being so” (Welcome to the Desert of theReal 11). This means that reality becomes virtual. Žižek goes on to argue that the destruction ofthe World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 constituted primarily “events on the TV screen”(11). This is explained by his provocative statement:When, days after September 11 2001, our gaze was transfixed by the images of the planehitting one of the WTC towers, we were all forced to experience what the ‘compulsion torepeat’ and jouissance beyond the pleasure principle are: we wanted to see it again andagain; the same shots were repeated ad nauseam, and the uncanny satisfaction we gotfrom it was jouissance at its purest. (12)What happened? This is a Deleuzian 78 question that everyone has tried to answer and for whichwe have many answersor rather, hypotheses. In fact, there was a desire to meet with the Real, adesire manifested in the disbelief that the Real could become real. Since this desire is invested inthe Lacanian automaton (the insistence of images in print and on the screen), it becomesimpossible to distinguish between the Real and reality. The moment reality is hit by the affect ofthe Realthe void that has been over-representedis the moment at which reality is mistakenfor the Real. This is elegantly expressed by Žižek in Welcome to the Desert of the Real: “is thisnot yet further proof of how, even in the tragic moment, the distance which separates Us fromThem, from their reality, is maintained: the real horror happens there, not here?”(13). September