Badiou's truth and the office of the critic : neither gods nor monsters -- Figures of the void : on the subject of truth and the fundamentalist imagination -- "The cry of its occasion" : the subject of truth, or the terror in global terrorism -- Global America and the logics of vision -- America, the symptom : on the post-9/11 allegory in American studies -- Our worldly apocalypse : literature and everyday life -- "Monstrous levity" : between realism and vision in Henry James -- Toward a global democracy : James Baldwin and the stoic vision of amor fati -- Bringing out the terror : James Purdy and the culture of vision