Portents of the Real: A Primer for Post-9/11 America

by Susan Willis

The shock and horror that gripped America on September 11, 2001, has given way to a culture of pathological worry. Ignited by the terrorist attacks, anxiety has been fueled by the nation’s official response, which sanctioned a narrative good vs. evil, the suppression of intellectual debate and the political expediency of keeping the citizenry in a constant state of fear. Snipers in the capital, the government in bunkers, flag euphoria and anthrax hysteria, torture in Abu Ghraib and a stuntman who survived Niagra Falls – these are the nation’s portents, signs of the times in post-9/11 America. Portents of the Real examines culture to apprehend the foreboding political subtexts of a nation perpetually at war on terror.

Against an ever deepening climate of political repression and a journalistic landscape dominated by sensationalized controversy and historical forgetfulness, Susan Willis offers an astute analysis of the realities behind America’s cultural myths. The effect is both wry and unnerving.

146 pages, Hardcover

First published June 23, 2005

Reviews

[Benjamin Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The lesson of Mao was right: revolution is, at its most radical, a cultural revolution. It is sad that, today, we have to learn this lesson from now-con Bush-men. However, Susan Willis’s new book saves the critical credentials of cultural studies. It’s analysis of 9/11 as a cultural phenomenon does not deal with an aspect which is less important than its directly political and military side - on the contrary, it strikes at the very heart of the ongoing struggle. This book is therefore a must for everybody who simply wants to understand what the hell is going on today. To ignore it means you want to persist in your blessed ignorance - at your own risk and peril!”
Slavic Žižek

“Ours is not A culture practiced in the art of taking wondrous, inexplicable events as signs. We have no way to recognize our stuntmen as portents of the real, figures who tap the deep nerves of history to render visible what we repress. Failing to read the truth in metaphor, we fail to live historically.”

“But the globalized world is continuous and it’s horrors cycle throughout. If our stuntmen are asymmetrical clones of another’s horror, they confirm the influence of environmental factors - the privilege and wealth that enable our culture to produce stuntmen where another generates hijackers, destitute, immigrants, and political detainees. Blind to history and surfeited with entertainments, we are condemned to read portents as no more than wonders.”
Susan Willis