Research Seminar: Violence as a response to the ideology of choice

Presenter: Professor Renata Salecl

Abstract: Identification with the ideology of choice has, on the one hand, contributed to the formation of new psychological symptoms where people impose particular new forms of aggression toward themselves, while, on the other hand, it has also encouraged various forms of social violence. The lecture will look at how consumerist society plays on the idea that everyone can make it, how it encourages identification with luxury and how it promotes a certain form of ignorance and aggression. The lecture will also show how denial has played an important role in the way the ideology of choice functions, which is why people continuously turn a blind eye toward social inequalities and thus forget that choice can also imply social change.

Bio: Renata Salecl is a philosopher, sociologist and criminologist on the subject of psychoanalysis and law. She has a long association with the critical legal studies movement and is exploring the psychoanalytical and emotional dimensions of the practice of law.
Professor Salecl is senior researcher in criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is also Centennial Professor at the department of law at the London School of Economics, was Visiting Professor at the Birkbeck School of Law, University of London, and also often teaches as Visiting Professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York.
Professor Salecl is author of The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism After the Fall of Socialism (Routledge, 1994), (Per)versions of Love and Hate (Verso, 1998), On Anxiety (2004) and Choice (2010). Professor Salecl was also awarded the title Slovenian Woman Scientist of the Year, issued by the Slovenian Ministry of Science on 21 October 2010.

RSVP: A light lunch will be served from 12.45pm, therefore please RSVP to Debbie.Paulides@uts.edu.au by Friday 12 August for catering purposes.