Who Am I For Myself?

I’ve been reading and thinking about the concept that increased consumer choice is turning us all into twitchy, neurotic messes. In doing so, I’ve come across the fascinating Renata Salecl, who is currently working on a book on this subject called Tyranny Of Choice. This led me to a podcast of a Slought Foundation event from early last year, called “Who Am I For Myself? Anxiety & The Tyranny of Choice”, in which she expounds her thinking in a lecture format, covering the drivers behind – and inevitable products of – capitalism: identity, happiness, individual freedom and generational anxiety.

“In the Western world, people are not only under the impression that there are endless possibilities to find fulfillment in life, but they are also encouraged to be some kind of self-creators, i.e., they are supposedly free to choose what they want to be. In this highly individualized society, which allegedly gives priority to the individual’s freedoms over submission to group causes, people, however, face an important anxiety provoking dilemma: ‘Who am I for myself?’”

This subject necessarily requires a high-level conceptual approach covering philosophy and psychoanalysis, with the involvement of fear-inducing names like Foucault and Lacan. However, what attracts me to Salecl’s approach is that she constantly relates the theory to current, real-world examples, using populist references like Big Brother (and specifically, its transgender winner Nadia), TV makeover shows, branding taglines and even basic household admin like the choice of electricity provider (the very thing that started me thinking about all this in the first place).

“The idea that we are supposed to be able to manage ourselves and that there is a choice in how we deal with our emotions, is linked to the very perception of the self that dominates late capitalist society. Today, the true self is increasingly self-made, and more than that, an individual project.”

Salecl is a wry and engaging speaker, though at times during the podcast the low audio quality means that you have to concentrate quite hard, even before you start trying to come to terms with the essence of her words. Her style is compact and succinct, so to get the most out of the lecture you really need to pay it your full attention; distracted for thirty seconds, I was lost when my attention returned to the speakers. The first 36 mins cover the meat of her address, after which several other speakers contribute more specifically on psychoanalytical theory before the Q&A session.

“If, one the one hand, we live under the assumption that everything in life can be a matter of choice (on top of consumer and usual political choices, we can choose not only how we look, but our sexual orientation, whether or not to have children, what kind of medical treatment we want, etc.), on the other hand, the very choice itself seems to be anxiety provoking and deeply dissatisfying.”

She appears to have a formidable back catalogue, but after a cursory glance I think I’ll start off with her book On Anxiety, which seems to cover the territory more generally, rather than focusing on the phenomenon as a by-product of capitalism. Amazon’s blurb neatly sums up her accessible approach, while suggesting that the conclusion of her theory is actually a delightful but rather unsurprising twist on the old chestnut that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Whether or not this is an accurate summary, I guess I’ll have to read the book to find out.

“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.”