The Tyranny of Choice

ISBN-13: 9781846681868 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 192 str.

Renata Salecl

Opis

Today we are encouraged to view our lives as being full of choice. Like products on a supermarket shelf, our identities seem to be there for the choosing. But paradoxically this freedom can create anxiety, and feelings of guilt and inadequacy. In The Tyranny of Choice, acclaimed philosopher and sociologist Renata Salecl explores how late capitalism's shrill exhortations to 'be yourself' are leading to ever-greater disquiet - and how its insistence on choice being a purely individual matter can prevent social change.

Drawing on diverse examples from popular culture - spanning dating sites and self-help books, to our obsession with celebrities' lifestyles - and fusing sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy, Salecl shows that choice is rarely based on a simple rational decision with a predictable outcome.

Recenzje

In this elegant, thoughtful essay, Renata Salecl shows us how today's abundance of choice makes us more anxious than ever before and less free than we might like to think. Beautifully crafted and concise, it will make readers question the hidden logic of their everyday lives. Darian Leader, psychoanalyst and author of The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression

O autorze

Renata Salecl is a philosopher and sociologist. She is visiting professor at BIOS centre at the London School of Economics. Her previous books include On Anxiety and have been translated into ten languages.