![]() ![]() So it’s important to me that the writing has a certain kind of heat or style, that it’s doing something. I think that part of the book’s resistance is that it does not say, “I’m after this kind of freedom and I’m going to describe it and go for it.” To me, writing that just says things without doing things is not very interesting. MN: I love your list, I think it’s so brilliant and interesting and wise. I am wondering whether for you, as a poet and an artist, these “minor freedoms” are driving at something that you have learned about creative freedom? And if not, how would you characterise the kind of freedom that you’re after? These strike me as unusual kinds of freedoms – they’re not the ones that tend to take centre stage, like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and so on. And I’m interested in what type of freedoms you are addressing in your book, so I made the following list: freedom for complexity freedom to disagree freedom to agree in part freedom to be uncertain freedom to be multiple freedom to be contradictory freedom to change freedom from narrative closures. We have to be careful that the desire for solidarity does not become a form of aggression against difference.ĬRB: I know you’re not too crazy about categorical thinking, but you do mention different types of freedom, like political freedom, spiritual freedom, existential freedom. And I think that this is a really important idea to grasp. She notes that despite certain points of commonality and affinity, even the victory did not look the same to all people involved. This comes out strongly in the climate chapter of my book where I’m quoting William Connolly’s summary of a part of Anna Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World, in which she discusses a group of people coming together to oppose a logging company. I think that this is only possible with, if not exactly a bird’s eye view, then at least a kind of hovering over the terrain – an understanding that we don’t all have to do this the same way, that we need lots of different kinds of thinkers and attitudes and approaches, that we’re not going for homogeneity. And then there’s thinking itself, and the process of trying to figure out what you think by interacting with many other thinkers – this is a great way of continually coming up against constraints in your mind, and then trying to imagine third ways or connections that might make you feel less choked by something that feels on first encounter like you have hit some kind of dead end.Įve Sedgwick taught me a lot about this, as she was a very non-separatist thinker who at the same time always tried to pay homage to thinkers who were very divergent from her ways of thinking. ![]() This kind of writing does not always feel good when you’re doing it, but to have the time and privilege to write – and sometimes to even get paid for that writing – is of course a great freedom. For example, I quote the American politician Barney Frank who says, “If you care deeply about an issue and are engaged in group activity on its behalf that is fun and inspiring and heightens your sense of solidarity with others, you are almost certainly not doing your cause any good.” The book both tries to resist that attitude mightily, while also noting that it is a mistake to think that practices of freedom – such as understanding oneself, grappling with uncertainty and indeterminacy, and so on – have to feel good. It can feel good, and the book offers a light-hearted defence of feeling good in the face of all the people – often white men, but not always – who like to denigrate feeling good. MN: I write about this a little bit in the introduction and the afterword, but I think that part of what makes a practice of freedom difficult is that it does not always feel liberatory when one is doing it. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |