In this appraisal of post-September 11, 2001 USA, Butler considers the conditions of heightened vulnerability and agression that followed from the attack, and the US government´s decision to retaliate. She critiques the use of violence that has emerged as a response to loss, and argues that the dislocation of first-world privilege offers instead a chance to imagine a world in which that violence might be minimized, and in which interdependency becomes acknowledged as the basis for a global political community.