Titanic and the novel Titan, catastrophe in the air
example · film: Titanic ·
retold in 3 talks
Before the Titanic sank there was a novel about a mega-ship named 'Titan' hitting an iceberg; this near-coincidence illustrates Žižek's limited sense in which 9/11 'had it coming', not moral deserving, but that the event was structurally anticipated.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“it is as if it was in the air. only in this sense they had it coming”
“it is as if it was in the air”
“It was such a shock not because it was unexpected but precisely because it was expected.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Before the Titanic sank there was a novel about a mega-ship named 'Titan' hitting an iceberg; this near-coincidence illustrates Žižek's limited sense in which 9/11 'had it coming', not moral deserving, but that the event was structurally anticipated., illustrating retroactive temporality,symbolic anticipation of catastrophe
35:47 Žižek and Dupuy: Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging - Nov. 1, 2014 Interview2014-11-01 · 1:05:43
A novel published years before the movie featured a ship named 'Titan' hitting an iceberg, suggesting that catastrophic events are 'in the air' as expectations, though Žižek rejects the 'they had it coming' fatalism., illustrating catastrophe
Two or three years before the Titanic sank, a novel was published about a giant transatlantic ship called 'Titan' that drowns on its first voyage, the catastrophe was already present in the collective imaginary, which is why the real event was so shocking: not because it was unexpected but because it was expected., illustrating fantasy and reality,collective imaginary,the Real