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Alain Badiou considered the “passion for the real” to be a defining trait of the 20th century. This paper suggests that the “passion for semblance” is the other side of this coin and that contemporary biopolitics is the main vector for the appearance of the “passion for the real.” In the present “war on terror,” the category of homo sacer perfectly accounts for the status of the human being as the object of global biopolitics .”