ABSTRACT
The power of choice is allocated to those who define its limits, who construct the existing economy that necessarily contains and controls all choices within its bounds. The object speaks to meta-actualizations demanded through the conditions of subjective choice that are the categorical imperative or ultimate commandment of Homo economicus, an obligatory drive defined through the necessity to make choices. The readymade aesthetic places a premium on choice. For Duchamp, the power of choice making is the ability of the individual to actualize possibilities through judgments, by making a choice – by making future choices. The image as object is treated as an impossibility of choosing, because making just one choice necessarily constrains and excludes – fearful words in a culture of capitalist democracy. To justify the choice is to transform consistency into necessity or permission into obligation; it’s to pass from the “it’s possible” to the “it’s necessary.”
