Senior forsker ved Institut for Kriminologi, Universitetet i Ljubljana og gæsteprofessor ved London School of Economics and Politics, Birkbeck University of London og Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law i New York.

Renata Salecl er uddannet filosof og sociolog fra Universitetet i Ljubljana og tilhører den teoretiske skole, der går under betegnelsen ’critical legal studies’. Hun har specialiseret sig i forholdet mellem psykoanalyse, kriminologi og jura og forsker blandt andet i de følelsesmæssige dimensioner af relationen mellem advokat og klient samt de psyko-sociale dimensioner af juridisk praksis.

Salecl har endvidere udforsket og afdækket en lang række af det moderne samfunds dominerende fænomener og fortællinger såsom ’angsten’ og ’valget’. Hun har tidligere spillet en aktiv rolle i slovensk politik og er en respekteret kommentator og debattør i sit hjemland.

Hendes publikationsliste inkluderer blandt andet:

• The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism after the Fall of Socialism, 1994.
• Gaze and Voice as Love Objects, 1996.
• (Per)versions of Love and Hate, 1998.
• Sexuation, 2000.
• On Anxiety, 2004.
• Choice, 2010.

Contemporary capitalism relies on the ideology that everyone can make it in today’s society and that people are essentially free to choose the direction of their lives. This ideology has greatly contributed to people’s feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and guilt. At the same time, people also more and more engage in various forms of self-torture as well as violent outbursts towards others. The paper will look at the news forms of self-violence that we can observe in post-industrial capitalism as well as at the new forms of violence expressed in the society as such. It will also look at how the fantasy structure of contemporary capitalism has contributed to the new forms of ignorance that we can observe in the developed and developing world.