Renata Salecl – författare

An original and provocative exploration of our capacity to ignore what is inconvenient or traumaticIgnorance, whether passive or active, conscious or unconscious, has always been a part of the human condition, Renata Salecl argues. What has changed in our post-truth, postindustrial world is that we often feel overwhelmed by the constant flood of information and misinformation. It sometimes seems impossible to differentiate between truth and falsehood and, as a result, there has been a backlash against the idea of expertise, and a rise in the number of people actively choosing not to know. The dangers of this are obvious, but Salecl challenges our assumptions, arguing that there may also be a positive side to ignorance, and that by addressing the role of ignorance in society, we may also be able to reclaim the role of knowledge.Drawing on philosophy, social and psychoanalytic theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Salecl explores how the passion for ignorance plays out in many different aspects of life today, from love, illness, trauma, and the fear of failure to genetics, forensic science, big data, and the incel movement—and she concludes that ignorance is a complex phenomenon that can, on occasion, benefit individuals and society as a whole.The result is a fascinating investigation of how the knowledge economy became an ignorance economy, what it means for us, and what it tells us about the world today.

Contributors. Elisabeth Bronfen, Mladen Dolar, Fredric Jameson, Renata Salecl, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic

Contributors. Alain Badiou, Elizabeth Bronfen, Darian Leader, Jacques Alain Miller, Genevieve Morel, Renata Salecl, Eric L. Santner, Colette Soler, Paul Verhaeghe, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic

Triage decision-making during a pandemic is linked to complex ethical, medical, and legal dilemmas, which in the past have been discussed mainly based on hypothetical scenarios. The crisis caused by Covid-19 has shown these dilemmas to be very real, and many countries faced significant health care challenges during the pandemic. The book presents different views on the problems of triage during the time of Covid-19 and to shed a light on how various countries approached triage during the pandemic. 

The absence of staff and resources in many countries opened a discussion of whether they should strive for the most egalitarian way of deciding whom to help with limited resources or to act in a utilitarian manner and establish a triage system based on saving as many people as possible. There were so-called conflicts of duty in many parts of the world, and decision-makers who had to choose which patients would survive in the absence of resources were under tremendous pressure. This book presents different views on the issue of such decision-making from legal, ethical, and medical points of view. The authors explain the origin of the concept of triage and its use in modern medicine. They point out the distinction between triage and the allocation of resources while also analysing how pandemic triage differs from emergency and disaster triage.