e-flux Journal #49

<p>In 2003, Slavoj Žižek made a very prescient observation to explain how the US under George Bush used a plot twist borrowed from Alfred Hitchcock to justify the invasion of Iraq. He called it the “Iraqi MacGuffin.” Now, what is a MacGuffin? Exactly. The example Žižek gives: Two men run into each other on a train. One carries a suitcase. When asked what the suitcase contains, the carrier replies, “It is a MacGuffin.” But what is a MacGuffin? “It is a device used for killing leopards in the Scottish Highlands.” But there are no leopards in the Scottish Highlands. “Well, then that’s not a MacGuffin, is it?” Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction were never found, and somehow the fact that they did not actually exist was secondary to their enormous value as a narrative device for producing a precondition for going to war in Iraq…</p> <p><b>Editorial—“Pieces of the Planet” Issue Two</b><br /> Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle</p> <p><b>World History and Earth Art</b><br /> Sven Lütticken</p> <p><b>Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead? </b><br /> Hito Steyerl</p> <p><b>Dear Navigator, Part II </b><br /> Hu Fang</p> <p><b>Freezone: Dubai</b><br /> Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, Manal Al Dowayan, Parag Khanna, Turi Munthe</p> <p><b>Walkthrough, Part II</b><br /> Walid Raad</p> <p><b>On the Format of the Divine</b><br /> Gleb Napreenko</p> <p><b>The Insurgents, Part II: Fighting the Left by Being the Left</b><br /> Nato Thompson</p>