Modern audiovisual media have spawned a \'plague of fantasies\', electronically inspired phantasms that cloud the ability to reason and prevent a true understanding of a world increasingly dominated by abstractions?whether those of digital technology or the speculative market. Into this arena, enters ?i?ek: equipped with an agile wit and the skills of a prodigious scholar, he confidently ranges among a dazzling array of cultural references?explicating Robert Schumann as deftly as he does John Carpenter?to demonstrate how the modern condition blinds us to the ideological basis of our lives.