We frequently hear that we live in an age of anxiety, from "therapy culture," the Atkins diet and child anti-depressants to gun culture and weapons of mass destruction. While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its "Scream" franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties.
"On Anxiety" takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic-stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is responsible. Putting anxiety on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness?
Drawing on vivid examples from film such as the "X Files" and "Cyrano de Bergerac," drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it.
Erudite and compelling, "On Anxiety" is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today.

An original and provocative exploration of our capacity to ignore what is inconvenient or traumatic Ignorance, whether passive or active, conscious or unconscious, has always been a part of the human condition, Renata Salecl argues. What has changed in our post-truth, postindustrial world is that we often feel overwhelmed by the constant flood of information and misinformation. It sometimes seems impossible to differentiate between truth and falsehood and, as a result, there has been a backlash against the idea of expertise, and a rise in the number of people actively choosing not to know. The dangers of this are obvious, but Salecl challenges our assumptions, arguing that there may also be a positive side to ignorance, and that by addressing the role of ignorance in society, we may also be able to reclaim the role of knowledge. Drawing on philosophy, social and psychoanalytic theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Salecl explores how the passion for ignorance plays out in many different aspects of life today, from love, illness, trauma, and the fear of failure to genetics, forensic science, big data, and the incel movement-and she concludes that ignorance is a complex phenomenon that can, on occasion, benefit individuals and society as a whole. The result is a fascinating investigation of how the knowledge economy became an ignorance economy, what it means for us, and what it tells us about the world today.

This text examines the emergence of nationalist, racist and anti-feminist ideologies in post-socialist Eastern Europe. In a political context that includes ethnic wars, post-socialist totalitarianism, capitalist moral majority ideologies, and a virulent new patriarchy, this study asks what has become of the notions of democracy and human rights since the collapse of socialism. It also challenges the "political correctness" movement and western theoretical responses to the events which have occurred in former Communist countries. "The Spoils of Freedom" views major social and political change through contemporary theory. Using psychoanalytic, post-structuralist and feminist theories, Salecl argues that the success of the new nationalist and anti-liberal ideologies can be understood through the concept of fantasy, and the willingness of individuals to identify with the hidden fantasies embedded in political discourse. In doing so, she offers a new approach to human rights, feminism and other liberal theories grounded in her own active participation in the struggles against communism, nationalism and anti-feminism.

This text examines the emergence of nationalist, racist and anti-feminist ideologies in post-socialist Eastern Europe. In a political context that includes ethnic wars, post-socialist totalitarianism, capitalist moral majority ideologies, and a virulent new patriarchy, this study asks what has become of the notions of democracy and human rights since the collapse of socialism. It also challenges the "political correctness" movement and western theoretical responses to the events which have occurred in former Communist countries. "The Spoils of Freedom" views major social and political change through contemporary theory. Using psychoanalytic, post-structuralist and feminist theories, Salecl argues that the success of the new nationalist and anti-liberal ideologies can be understood through the concept of fantasy, and the willingness of individuals to identify with the hidden fantasies embedded in political discourse. In doing so, she offers a new approach to human rights, feminism and other liberal theories grounded in her own active participation in the struggles against communism, nationalism and anti-feminism.

An original and provocative exploration of our capacity to ignore what is inconvenient or traumatic Ignorance, whether passive or active, conscious or unconscious, has always been a part of the human condition, Renata Salecl argues. What has changed in our post-truth, postindustrial world is that we often feel overwhelmed by the constant flood of information and misinformation. It sometimes seems impossible to differentiate between truth and falsehood and, as a result, there has been a backlash against the idea of expertise, and a rise in the number of people actively choosing not to know. The dangers of this are obvious, but Salecl challenges our assumptions, arguing that there may also be a positive side to ignorance, and that by addressing the role of ignorance in society, we may also be able to reclaim the role of knowledge. Drawing on philosophy, social and psychoanalytic theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Salecl explores how the passion for ignorance plays out in many different aspects of life today, from love, illness, trauma, and the fear of failure to genetics, forensic science, big data, and the incel movement-and she concludes that ignorance is a complex phenomenon that can, on occasion, benefit individuals and society as a whole. The result is a fascinating investigation of how the knowledge economy became an ignorance economy, what it means for us, and what it tells us about the world today.

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.

Contemporary discourse seems to provide a choice in the way sexual identities and sexual difference are described and analyzed. On the one hand, much current thinking suggests that sexual identity is fluid--socially constructed and/or performatively enacted. This discourse is often invoked in the act of overcoming an earlier patriarchal era of fixed and naturalized identities. On the other hand, some modern discourses of sexual identity seem to offer a New Age Jungian re-sexualization of the universe--"Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus"--according to which there is an underlying, deeply anchored archetypal identity that provides a kind of safe haven in the contemporary confusion of roles and identities.
In this volume, contributors discuss a third way of thinking about sexual identity and sexual difference--a direction opened by Jacques Lacan. For Lacan, what we all recognize as sexual difference is first and foremost representative of a certain fundamental deadlock inherent in the symbolic order, that is, in language and in the entire realm of culture conceived as a symbol system structured on the model of language. For him, the logical matrix of this deadlock is provided by his own formulas of sexuation. The essays collected here elaborate on different aspects of this deadlock of sexual difference. While some examine the role of semblances in the relation between the sexes or consider sexual identity not as anatomy but still involving an impasse of the real, others discuss the difference between sexuation and identification, the role of symbolic prohibition in the process of the subject's sexual formation, or the changed role of the father in contemporary society and the impact of this change on sexual difference. Other essays address such topics as the role of beating in sexual fantasies and jouissance in feminine jealousy.
Literary and gender theorists, as well as psychoanalytic scholars will welcome this insightful collection.

"Contributors." Alain Badiou, Elizabeth Bronfen, Darian Leader, Jacques Alain Miller, Genevieve Morel, Renata Salecl, Eric L. Santner, Colette Soler, Paul Verhaeghe, Slavoj Zizek, Alenka Zupancic

Why, when we are desperately in love, do we endlessly block union with our love object? Why do we often destroy what we love most? Why do we search out the impossible object? Is it that we desire things because they are unavailable, and therefore, to keep desire alive, we need to prevent its fulfillment? Renata Salecl explores the distributing and complex relationships between love and hate, violence and admiration, libidinal and destructive drives, through an investigation of phenomenon as diverse as the novels The Age of Innocence and The Remains of the Day, classic Hollywood melodramas, the Sirens' song, Ceause?cu's Rumania and the Russian performance artist Oleg Kulik, who acts like a dog and bites his audience. (Per)Versions of Love and Hate presents a unique and timely intervention in contemporary debates by questioning the legitimacy of the calls for tolerance and respect by multiculturalism and exploring practices such as body-mutilation as symptoms of the radical change that has affected subjectivity in contemporary society.

This lively book examines the major issues raised by the emergence and transformation of various political identities in the contemporary world. The contributors bring together many current trends of thought-Lacanian psychoanalysis, deconstruction, neo-Hegelianism and political philosophy-that are relevant to the question of identity, as well as concrete studies of some of the more important political identities which have emerged in recent decades. A central theme of the book is the logic implicit in the Freudian category of identification and its consequences for understanding politics. The first half of the book explores the theoretical dimensions of the issue of identity formation. The second half brings these more abstract considerations to bear on a number of case studies-the structure of apartheid in South Africa, the rise of Islam, the Palestinian diaspora, the explosion of national identities in former Yugoslavia, the Greens in Germany, and the spread of Rastafarianism in Britain.

We frequently hear that we live in an age of anxiety, from "therapy culture," the Atkins diet and child anti-depressants to gun culture and weapons of mass destruction. While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its "Scream" franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties.
"On Anxiety" takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic-stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is responsible. Putting anxiety on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness?
Drawing on vivid examples from film such as the "X Files" and "Cyrano de Bergerac," drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it.
Erudite and compelling, "On Anxiety" is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today.