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Choice (Big Ideas)

Choice (Big Ideas)

by RenataSalecl (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2010

    $3.49
Synopsis

We are encouraged from all sides to view our lives as being full of choices. Like the products on a supermarket shelf, our careers, our relationships, our bodies, our very identity seem to be there for the choosing. But paradoxically, this seeming freedom to choose can create extreme anxiety, and feelings of inadequacy. Choice explores how late capitalism's shrill exhortations to 'be oneself' can be a tyranny which only leads to ever-greater disquiet. Drawing on diverse examples from popular culture - from dating sites and relationship self-help books, to our obsession with imitating celebrities' lifestyles - and fusing sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy, Salecl shows that choice is rarely based on a simple rational decision with a predictable outcome. With wisdom, humour and sensitivity, she examines the complexity of the essential human capacity to choose which has become mired in consumerist ironies.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 224
 Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 17 Jun 2010
ISBN 10: 1846681928
ISBN 13: 9781846681929
Book Overview: A brilliant study on the nature of choice, and how limitless freedom can be overwhelming

Media Reviews
This book has as powerful a message as Naomi Klein's No Logo and is packed with wit and consumerist ironies -- Patrick Neale * Bookseller *
A superb study of our contemporary predicament. You have no choice but to read this important book -- Hanif Kureishi
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
Lucid and well-argued * Metro *
Salecl's engaging critique of life as a supermarket sweep should fall on fertile ground ... sassy, high-spirited blend of neo-Marxist radicalism, pop-culture observation and psychoanalytics ... a book full of brisk, pertinent analysis, telling anecdotes - and sudden lurches into lecture-room exposition ... Whether this mesh of the wittily concrete and fiercely abstract seduces, amuses or annoys, no reader could accuse Salecl of failing to obey her own rule... Moreover, her grasp of the snares and decoys of desire helps illuminate the way that today's austerity chic - lower consumption, frugal living and the rest - acts as the flip-side of the choice-cult rather than a true alternative ... A fine chapter on reproductive choices examines - with insight and compassion - the emotional outcomes of IVF, surrogacy and other hi-tech interventions for the children as well as the parents -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *
Properly scathing of the notion that we find the opportunity to choose our electricity supplier an uplifting experience -- John Kay * Financial Times *
Author Bio
Renata Salecl is a Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics, a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a Recurring Visiting Professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York.