Renata Salecl (born 1962) is a Slovene philosopher, sociologist and legal theorist. She is a senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana, and holds a professorship at Birkbeck College, University of London.[1] She has been a visiting professor at London School of Economics, lecturing on the topic of emotions and law. Every year she lectures at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (New York), on Psychoanalysis and Law,[2] and she has also been teaching courses on neuroscience and law.[3] Since 2012 she has been visiting professor at the Department of Social Science, Heath and Medicine at King's College London. Her books have been translated into fifteen languages. In 2017, she was elected as a member of the Slovene Academy of Science.
She studied philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, graduating with a thesis on Michel Foucault's theory of power under the supervision of the Marxist philosopher Božidar Debenjak. From 1986, she started working as a researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, In 1991, she obtained a PhD at the Department of Sociology at the University of Ljubljana under the supervision of Drago Braco Rotar. Her work focuses on bringing together law, criminology and psychoanalysis. She has worked on the theories of punishment, and on the analysis of the relation between late capitalist insistence on choice and the increased feelings of anxiety and guilt in post-modern subjects. The book also analyses how matters of choice apply to law and criminology.
She also writes columns in various European newspapers, including Delo (Ljubljana) and La Vanguardia (Barcelona).
Awards
In 2010, she was awarded the title of "Slovenian woman scientist of the year".[7] In December of the same year, she was a candidate for a "Slovenian person of the year" by the daily newspaper Delo.[8]
In 2011, she was named the most successful woman in Slovenia and got the title ONA 365 by the women magazine Ona (English: SHE magazine).[9]
Salecl, Renata; & Žižek, Slavoj (1996). Gaze and voice as love objects. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN9780822318132.
Salecl, Renata (1998). (Per)versions of love and hate. London & New York: Verso. ISBN9781859842362.
Salecl, Renata (2000). Sexuation. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN9780822324379.
Salecl, Renata (2004). On anxiety. London & New York: Routledge. ISBN9780203508282.
Salecl, Renata (2010). The tyranny of choice. London: Profile. ISBN9781847652263.
In Slovene
Salecl, Renata (1993). Zakaj ubogamo oblast? Nadzorovanje, ideologija in ideološke fantazme [Why do we love power? Control, ideology, and ideological phantasms]. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije. ISBN9788634108538.
Salecl, Renata; Kobe, Zdravko (2010). Disciplina kot pogoj svobode [Discipline as the condition of freedom]. Ljubljana: Krtina. ISBN9789612600303.
In Spanish
Salecl, Renata (2018). Angustia. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Godot. ISBN9789874086525.
Chapters in books
Salecl, Renata (2001), "Cut in the body: from clitoridectomy to body art", in Ahmed, Sara, Stacey, Jackie, Thinking Through the Skin, London: Routledge, pp.21-35, ISBN978-0415223560.
Salecl, Renata (2013), "The myth of choice for children and parents: why we deny the harm being caused to our children", in Wild, Jim (ed.), Exploiting childhood: how fast food, material obsession and porn culture are creating new forms of child abuse, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp. 98–109, ISBN9780857007421.
^Merljak, Sonja; Petek, Barbara; Orlić, Ante (16 December 2010). "RENATA SALECL: Glas razuma" [RENATA SALECL: voice of reason]. DELO (Work). Delo, d.d.