They did it, but we wished for it?

In today’s lecture we discussed Baudrillard’s controversial view on terrorism and I particularly enjoyed how interactive the lecture became with different thoughts and opinions being exchanged amongst William and the class. At the beginning of the lecture I felt rather annoyed at Baudrillard’s view that ‘we’; ‘the masses’, enjoy the consumer aspect of terrorism and that we are blindly walking towards our demise in the lack of passion we have to die for a cause. However, at the end of the lecture the thought-provoking statement from Baudrillard about the 9/11 attacks, “…they did it, but we wished for it” made me stop and re-consider Baudrillard’s views. That, coupled with William’s eloquent summary of Baudrillard’s idealistic future of radical Otherness, left me feeling open to this possibility and decidedly more receptive to Baudrillard.

Emma Johnson.