A dazzling work of philosophy and personal reflection.

In this bold, invigorating book, Maggie Nelson examines freedom in four arenas of modern life: creative expression, sexuality, substance use and the fight for environmental survival. Weaving literary criticism, memoir and cultural analysis, she invites readers to rethink what liberation can look like amid moral complexity.

On Freedom is at once intellectual and intimate - a conversation across art and activism, reason and desire. One of the most important voices in contemporary thought, Nelson offers a vision of freedom rooted in empathy, curiosity and care.

'Tremendously energising' Guardian

'Nelson is such a friend to her reader, such brilliant company' Literary Review

Autorentext

Maggie Nelson

Klappentext

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021

A GUARDIAN AND TLS 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK

'One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' - Olivia Laing

So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.

Drawing on a vast range of material, from critical theory to pop culture to the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, Nelson explores how we might think, experience, or talk about freedom in ways responsive to the conditions of our day. Her abiding interest lies in ongoing "practices of freedom" by which we negotiate our interrelation with-indeed, our inseparability from-others, with all the care and constraint that relation entails, while accepting difference and conflict as integral to our communion.

For Nelson, thinking publicly through the knots in our culture-from recent art world debates to the turbulent legacies of sexual liberation, from the painful paradoxes of addiction to the lure of despair in the face of the climate crisis-is itself a practice of freedom, a means of forging fortitude, courage, and company. On Freedom is an invigorating, essential book for challenging times.