In Ugly Freedoms Elisabeth R. Anker reckons with the complex legacy of freedom offered by liberal American democracy, outlining how the emphasis of individual liberty has always been entangled with white supremacy, settler colonialism, climate destruction, economic exploitation, and patriarchy. These "ugly freedoms" legitimate the right to exploit and subjugate others. At the same time, Anker locates an unexpected second type of ugly freedom in practices and situations often dismissed as demeaning, offensive, gross, and ineffectual but that provide sources of emancipatory potential. She analyzes both types of ugly freedom at work in a number of texts and locations, from political theory, art, and film to food, toxic dumps, and multispecies interactions. Whether examining how Kara Walker's sugar sculpture A Subtlety, Or the Marvelous Sugar Baby reveals the importance of sugar plantations to liberal thought or how the impoverished neighborhoods in The Wire blunt neoliberalism's violence, Anker shifts our perspective of freedom by contesting its idealized expressions and expanding the visions for what freedom can look like, who can exercise it, and how to build a world free from domination.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Ugly Freedoms 1
1. White and Deadly: Sugar and the Sweet Taste of Freedom 37
2. Tragedies of Emancipation: Freedom, Sex, and Theft after Slavery 77
3. Thwarting Neoliberalism: Boredom, Dysfunction, and Other Visionless Challenges 113
4. Freedom as Climate Destruction: Guts, Dust, and Toxins in an Era of Consumptive Sovereignty 148
Notes 181
Bibliography 207
Index 231
