Everybody A Book about Freedom
Everybody A Book about Freedom by Olivia Laing, published by National Geographic Books on August 9, 2022, is a thought-provoking exploration of bodily freedom through the lens of significant movements in the twentieth century. This edition spans 368 pages and is presented in English. Laing investigates the complexities of the body as both a source of pleasure and pain, using the life of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to delve into themes such as gay rights, sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
In this ambitious work, Laing draws on her personal experiences with protest and alternative medicine, traversing historical contexts from Weimar Berlin to McCarthy-era America. Readers will encounter a range of influential figures, including Nina Simone and Malcolm X, as Laing grapples with the ongoing struggle for bodily autonomy. Despite the challenges posed by modern technology and societal pressures, Everybody serves as both an investigation into the forces that threaten freedom and a celebration of the resilience of ordinary human bodies in their quest to resist oppression and effect change.
Official synopsis Publisher
“Astute and consistently surprising critic” (NPR) Olivia Laing investigates the body and its discontents through the great freedom movements of the twentieth century.
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and traveling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century—among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X.
Despite its many burdens, the body remains a source of power, even in an era as technologized and automated as our own. Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Everybody is an investigation into the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.
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