Nikolas Kozloff discusses Occupy Wall Street with Renata Salecl, author of the book, 'The Tyranny of Choice'.New York, NY - When people think about the word "tyranny", autocrats such as Bashar al-Assad may come to mind. But to Renata Salecl, who teaches law at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia and Yeshiva University in New York, "tyranny" can also refer to the anxiety-producing array of choices faced by many in post-industrial capitalism.
In her latest book, The Tyranny of Choice, Salecl writes, "From the late seventeenth century on, the Enlightenment project promoted the idea of choice... And capitalism, of course, has encouraged not only the idea of consumer choice but also the ideology of the self-made man, which allowed the individual to start seeing his own life as a series of options and possible transformations."
In theory it all sounded good, but according to Salecl, "The idea of choosing who we want to be and the imperative to 'become yourself' have begun to work against us, making us more anxious and more acquisitive rather than giving us more freedom." Recently, Nikolas Kozloff, the founder of Revolutionary Handbook, sat down with Salecl to discuss her book and its relationship to the Occupy movement. Read More
