Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Chris Hedges, Thursday, January 21, 2010

4:30pm, Porter Hall 100 (Gregg Hall)

The more we sever ourselves from a literate, print-based world- a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas- for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans, and a celebration of violence, the more we implode. We ask, like the wrestling fans or those who confuse love with pornography, to be fed lies. We demand lies. The skillfully manufactured images and slogans that flood the airwaves and infect our political discourse mask reality. And we do not protest. The lonely Cassandras who speak the truth about our misguided imperial wars, the global economic meltdown, and the imminent danger of multiple pollutions that are destroying the ecosystem that sustains the human species, are drowned out by arenas full of fans chanting “Slut! Slut! Slut!” or television audiences chanting “Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!” The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip, and trivia. These are the debauched revels of a dying culture.

Chris Hedges is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009).

Hedges is also known as the best-selling author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. A quote from the book was used as the opening title quotation in the critically-acclaimed 2009 film, The Hurt Locker. The quote reads: "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug."

Chris Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, where he was a reporter for nearly two decades.

In 2002, Hedges received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He currently writes a column for truthdig.com and is married to actress, Eunice Wong. They have one son together and Hedges has two children from a previous marriage.

Co-sponsored by the Activities Board, Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon, Graduate Student Assembly, and Graduate Programs Office

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