On Freedom

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

What can freedom really mean? In this invigorating, essential book, Maggie Nelson explores how we might think, experience or talk about the concept in ways that are responsive to our divided world. Drawing on pop culture, theory and the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, she follows freedom - with all its complexities - through four realms: art, sex, drugs and climate. On Freedom offers a bold new perspective on the challenging times in which we live.

'Tremendously energising' Guardian

'This provocative meditation...shows Nelson at her most original and brilliant' New York Times

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

A *New York Times Notable Book *
A *Guardian and TLS 'Books of 2021' Pick *

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Maggie Nelson

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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.