Rethinking Freedom

This book examines the use and abuse of the term 'freedom'. Based on interviews with people concerning the nature of freedom, the author compares what the people he talked with said about freedom with what writers and thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Herbert Marcuse, and Iris Murdoch have to say about freedom. He concludes that the 'political' is not the answer, and that most of the people interviewed for the book and those like them would be better served by learning the political and social skills necessary to carve out small spaces of freedom in a rationalized world.

"Professor Alford's thoughtful and innovative book adds valuable dimensions to the several literatures in which the idea of freedom plays a central role. He effectively melds empirical materials based on extensive interviewing with the abstract, conceptual discussions most prominent in philosophical and political theoretical writing, thereby giving welcome existential substance to his argumentation. His conception of 'freedom with' and the related notion of finding viable spaces between inner and outer or what he calls 'losing' and 'fusing' will be of interest to anyone who thinks about freedom."

- Richard E. Flathman, Johns Hopkins University

"This is a rich, accessible and engaging investigation of freedom's meanings and possibilities in contemporary 'borderline' mass cultures. While deftly weaving among interview material, philosophy, psychoanalysis and political theory, Alford offers his own surprising and provocative proposals for 'transgressive practices' available to ordinary citizens. His thinking will help anyone to 'see more clearly' through the current fog obscuring what freedom is and could be now. " - Jane Flax, Howard University

"C. Fred Alford is one of the leading critical theorists writing today. Rethinking Freedom is a critical blend of social philosophy, politics and psychoanalysis grounded in empirical research. It offers the reader a fresh, vivid and well written account of what freedom means to us in the 21st century. Drawing on Sartre, Tocqueville, Murdoch and Marcuse, among many of his companions in this book, Alford explores what he terms the often borderline quality of many of the responses he has received in investigating the nature of Freedom. In weaving his way through classical philosophy, political science and literature, Alford not only supplies us with a long awaited and important overview of the area, but also provides us with his own indelible stamp, that of a critical theory of Freedom." - Dr Simon Clarke, Editor. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society

"Skillfully weaving together political philosophy, psychoanalysis and the vivid stories of fifty, mostly young Americans, Fred Alford offers us some fascinating insights regarding the lived of experience of freedom in Bush's America. Tragically, but perhaps not surprisingly, many equated freedom with power, especially the power to be free from the encroachments of others. But some also provided a kind of `minority report' from which Alford derives, among other powerful ideas, the concept of `freedom with' - that we are only truly free when in intercourse with others. A fascinating book, dispiriting and uplifting in equal measure."

- Paul Hoggett, University of the West of England, Bristol

C. Fred Alford is Professor of Government at University of Maryland, College Park, USA.