Renata Salecl (Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia, 1962) grew up watching the soporific news broadcast on television during Tito’s communism, in extinct Yugoslavia. After the change of regime, and for more than three decades, the Slovenian sociologist and philosopher is well aware of the wilder side of capitalism and has grown tired of the sensationalism that populates her news. Passionate since her youth about psychoanalysis and Lacan’s thought – like Slavoj ŽiŽek, with whom she was married and had a child – Salecl has been wondering for twenty years what happened amidst the yawns and excitement that the news arouses today and analyzes what neoliberalism is doing inside. Angst, The Tyranny of Choice (both from Godot editions) e Passion for ignorance (by Paidós) are some of his books. In the last one, Rude (also published a month ago by Godot), tells of how the masks of courtesy have fallen on all fronts: in politics – insults have crept into parliaments -, on television – cruelty reigns reality shows– and between us. In the subway, he points out, there is almost no space for the elderly and pregnant women.
At a very young age, the essayist obtained a research position at the Institute of Criminology of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana and taught at the London School of Economics or at the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School in Manhattan. Today he teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London, and collaborates with Hiroshima University together with Danish-Scottish artist Shona Illingworth in a project that calls for renewing the international laws that regulate the air attacks we receive from drones, satellites, missiles or the effects of the climate emergency. “These laws are more than outdated,” says Salecl, who last October went to Madrid to speak, in the Thought and Literature cycle of Contemporánea Condeduque, about the rudeness of the end of the world. The appointment was the next day at his hotel.
Ask. Lacan has a great influence on you. Why?
Answer. As a young man, while I was studying the thought of Michel Foucault and I was in the midst of the socialist phase, I began to feel the lack of the psychoanalytic dimension to explain the why behind the different ideologies. Lacan developed Freud’s thoughts on our unconscious and added the social dimension to it, which is why it is so relevant. I was very interested in the social climate, in the unconscious mechanisms that operate on the emotional side of politics.
Q. When we watch the news it is impossible to ignore what is described Rude. We live in times of unlimited rudeness. Violence has stopped being masked. How did we get here?
R. It has been a slow process of degradation, it has crept into communication standards and has been promoted by neoliberalism. We have winner-takes-all slogans and rugged individualism. Programs like MasterChef They make me feel bad. To stand out you have to be provocative, aggressive, rude. The absence of mercy is valued in the company. Snakes in a jacket. Psychopaths get up easily.
Q. Many people have been raised to love and respect and are raising their children to these same values. Love and respect at home, rudeness outside.
R. We see him on the street, we don’t even notice others. We are glued to our cell phones. Many do not internalize the rules of education, do not give in and do not realize that they do not. Watch people deliver food to your door. They are welcomed without education, we don’t consider it a job they need. We perceive others as obstacles. There has been a change on the field.
Q. Many people identify with this lack of manners. Why?
R. It’s part of this bad education. It gave way to a space of identification, opening the door to the aggressive impulses we had reproached. Attack ideas to fantasize about. It is the power of populists, who seem to say what the rest of us don’t, unleash our impulses. The ignorance they demonstrate, for example, when they say it is a pride not to read. In this way they ensure that many do not feel guilty for not opening a book. Identification in ignorance brings personal satisfaction. The same thing happens with obscene language, they also open up that identification.
Q. How can we manage suffering in the face of this paradigm shift?
R. You have to find a way to disconnect. I understand those who need to make withdrawals, those who abandon social networks to preserve their sanity. We are surrounded by information that is nothing but shit, like the video of Trump bathing everything in poop. But it will also be increasingly important to be well informed. There may be a return to investigative journalism.
Q. In Spain this lack of education has permeated political communication, to which the left has recently added, albeit at a certain distance.
R. What you describe is a sad development. The language of the far right was so provocative that people reacted. Perhaps his voters thought like Milei, something good will come from the chaos, there will be a renewal, everything will change. It is Freud’s death drive. There is the fantasy of a society starting over. And this gives a lot of power to destructive forces. Trump is even physically destroying the White House, a symbol of power. Why doesn’t anyone stop him? It’s your home now. You can do it.
Q. What analysis do you make of this left that joins this way of communicating?
R. I imagine they need attention, the help of algorithms, which bring more attention to disruptive messages. He reflects that aggression has permeated society. The language we use is what shapes the culture we build. But we are responsible when we use this language. (The philosopher) Judith Butler said that when we judge people who incorporate racist discourse that already existed before, we are wrong, because this person repeats something that he did not invent. I argue the opposite: we repeat and we have a responsibility to have fun. There is no need to repeat this way of speaking.
Q. In Rude he cites the “pessimism of intelligence and optimism of will” mentioned by the Marxist theorist Gramsci.
R. Why do we struggle to find the will to do things? There is a lack of mobilization for a hypothetical social change. There are few social thinkers, there is no mobilization around ideas that propose an optimistic vision of change. Look at Zohran Mamdani (the Democratic mayor of New York). Use populist language. It’s as if there’s a leak in the well of ideas. Nobody is thinking about what the change should be. It is intended to last only 4 years.
Q. You were born and knew communist society well and today you know neoliberal individualism well. When you imagine a political system, what do you see?
R. During the collapse of socialism, things were copied from capitalist regimes, it was not reflected whether there was a third option. Now I revisit some of those ideas. I am interested in self-managed cooperatives. Public education and health. And I would add leave due to the birth of a shared lineage between men and women and a community organization for the care of minors. And it would put an end to all this harmful aggressive consumption.
Q. 35 years ago you ran for election in Slovenia in opposition to the communist path. Which party will you vote for today?
R. For Levica, a small party that defends the social ideas I believe in: public education and healthcare. He is in favor of abortion, a right enshrined in the Slovenian Constitution. We don’t want to lose him.
