'On Freedom': Maggie Nelson explores the concept of freedom in sex, drugs, climate and art
Maggie Nelson’s last book “The Argonauts” shot to the top of bestseller lists in 2015 with its potent, genre-busting mix of memoir and criticism. What made it stand out from other works of auto-theory – the now-trendy mashup of philosophy and autobiography – was its lyrical use of language and riveting storyline, which focused on her romance with trans artist Harry Dodge and subsequent decision to have a child. One minute she was talking about the famously difficult philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the next about the “sordid, bougainvillea-strewn back streets of Hollywood.”
Nelson’s new book, “On Freedom” (Graywolf Press, 288 pp., ★★½ out of four), is more academic, less personal. Subtitled “Four Songs of Care and Constraint,” the book consists of a series of linked essays examining different conceptions of freedom in the realms of art, sex, drugs and climate change. Nelson says she decided to group her thoughts under the rubric of freedom in part because of her “long-standing frustration with (the word’s) capture by the right wing” – think “freedom fries,” the Freedom Caucus and the pro-military saying, “Freedom’s never free.”
In “Art Song,” Nelson surveys some recent controversies in the art world, including the 2017 uproar over the white artist Dana Schutz’s painting of Black lynching victim Emmett Till, and asks whether artists have an obligation to make work that seeks to repair our deeply polarized society. After considering arguments on both sides, she thinks not. “When I write about art,” she says, “I try to imagine approaches that don’t moralize … knowing we all have our hobbyhorses,” then listing her own as “openness, nuance, context, and indeterminacy.”
The second essay, “The Ballad of Sexual Optimism,” grapples with how to reconcile sexually abusive behavior, so amply documented by the #MeToo movement, with the basic human desire to satisfy one’s sexual urges. In one passage, Nelson, who taught at the California Institute of the Arts and is currently on the faculty of the University of Southern California, talks about quitting a job “educating first-year college students about consent, as I felt the program did not leave enough space to discuss the ravenous, turbulent fact of female desire, which I had experienced as the most powerful force ripping through my life.”
In the section “Drug Fugue” she explores the relationship between drugs and freedom – does taking the former lead to the latter? Or does it lead to the slavery of addiction? She considers several examples of “the literature of intoxication” – titles you’ve probably never heard of – while noting that “only a handful of users are or ever become writers of note.” As a committed feminist, she also examines the legacy of “famous addicts who double as feminist icons,” such as Courtney Love and Billie Holiday, only to come down firmly on the side of sobriety. Citing her own experience of becoming sober through Alcoholics Anonymous, she writes, “Drugs can grant nearly matchless access to feeling free while simultaneously working, over time, to diminish the space in a life for practices of freedom.”
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The last section, “Riding the Blinds,” is the most vivid and accessible, taking up the topic of climate change and how to deal with the terrifying prospect of “a mass extinction that may eventually wipe out life on earth as we know it” without becoming overwhelmed by anxiety and despair. The title of the section refers to “the hobo practice of riding between cars on a moving freight train” – out of sight of the authorities but unable to see where you’re going – and coincides with her son Iggy’s passion as a toddler for the “unthinkably large locomotives” in LA’s Griffith Park.
As in the essays on sex, drugs and art, she returns to the practice of care as the solution. “In caring,” she says, “one is attending to the effects of past actions, attempting to mitigate present suffering, and doing what one can to reduce or obviate future suffering, all at once.”
If you approach this book expecting another “Argonauts,” you’re likely to be confounded or disappointed. But if you approach it in a Nelson-esque spirit, with an open, curious mind, you may stumble at times over the dense language and academic theory, but you’ll also find lots to keep you engaged – provocative ideas, thinkers you’ve never heard of and a vast encyclopedia of cultural references, from the teachings of Buddhist nun Pema Chodron to the Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin’ Man.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'On Freedom': Maggie Nelson on freedom in sex, drugs, climate and art
