Another Freedom

by Boym, Svetlana

• ISBN13: 9780226069739
• ISBN10: 0226069737
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The word "freedom" is in danger of becoming a distorted and tired cliche. InAnother Freedom, Svetlana Boym explores the rich cross-cultural history of the idea of freedom, from its origins in ancient Greece through the present day, suggesting that our attempts to imagine freedom should occupy the space of not only "what is" but also "what if." Beginning with notions of sacrifice and the emergence of a public sphere for politics and art, Boym expands her account to include the relationships between freedom and liberation,modernity and terror, political dissent and creative estrangement, and love and freedom of the other. For Boym, "another freedom" is an adventure that tests the limits of uncertainty and responsibility, of individual imagination and pubic culture.While depicting a world of differences, she affirms lasting solidarities with the commitment to passionate thinking that reflection on freedom requires. Another Freedomis filled with stories that illuminate our own sense of what it means to be free, and it assembles a remarkable cast of characters: Aeschylus and Euripides, Pushkin and Tocqueville, Kafka and Osip Mandelshtam, Arendt and Heidegger, and a virtual encounter between Dostoevsky and Marx on the streets of Paris. What are the limits of freedom and how can freedom be imagined anew? Drawing upon her experience as a native of St. Petersburg, Russia transplanted to the United States, Boym dares to ask whether American freedom can be transported across national borders. With these questions in mind, Boym attempts to reinvent freedom as something "infinitely improbable"yet nevertheless still possible. By offering a fresh look at the strange history of this idea,Another Freedomdelivers a nuanced portrait of freedom's unpredictable occurrences and unexplored plots, one whose repercussions will be felt well into the future.

Author Biography

Svetlana Boym is the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, as well as an associate of the Graduate School of Design. A writer, theorist, and media artist, she is the author of The Future of Nostaligia, among other publications.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: Freedom as Cocreation	p. 1
Adventure and the Borders of Freedom	p. 1
Eccentric Modernities and Third-Way Thinking	p. 7
The Public World and the Architecture of Freedom	p. 10
Agnostic Space: Freedom versus Liberation	p. 15
Scenography of Freedom: Political Optics and Phantasmagoria	p. 17
Passionate Thinking, Judging, and Imagination	p. 24
Shape of the Book	p. 30
Freedom versus Liberation: Corrupted Sacrifice from Tragedy to Modernity	p. 37
Hope or Fate?	p. 37
Technê: Plotting Freedom	p. 43
Mania: Plotting Liberation and Tyranny	p. 48
Catharsis: Freedom or Liberation?	p. 53
Warburg or the Architecture of Deliverance	p. 56
Kafka or the Ground of Truth	p. 66
Mandelshtam or the Theater of Terror	p. 68
Political and Artistic Freedom in a Cross-Cultural Dialogue	p. 77
Plurality or Pluralism? Svoboda/Volia/Freedom	p. 77
"Another Freedom" and the Art of Censorship	p. 82
Freedom in Russia versus Democracy in America? Pushkin and Tocqueville	p. 89
Two Concepts of Liberty beyond the Cold War: Berlin and Akhmatova	p. 94
Liberation with a Birch Rod and the Banality of Terrorism	p. 103
Modern/Antimodern: Dostoevsky's Dialogues	p. 103
Freer Freedom in Prison	p. 108
The One I Love Is the One I Flog: Violence and Enlightenment	p. 114
Urban Phantasmagoria: Dostoevsky, Marx, Baudelaire	p. 119
Underground Man and Venus in Furs: Resentment, Play, and Moral Masochism	p. 127
The Banality of Terrorism between Left and Right	p. 141
Religion of the People and Liberation from Freedoms	p. 152
Love and Freedom of the Other	p. 159
Totalitarianism for Two, or Adventure in World Making?	p. 159
"The Seducer's Diary": An Embrace as an Appeal to Arms	p. 163
Kierkegaard's Interior Design: Shadowgraphy and Architecture	p. 171
Love/Freedom: Either/Or?	p. 173
Aestheticized Sacrifice	p. 176
Arendt and Heidegger: The Banality of Love or Passionate Thinking?	p. 178
The Life of a Jewess from Love to Worldliness	p. 184
Heidegger the Fox or the Traps of Homecoming	p. 188
Loving and Judging	p. 191
"Judgment Is a Difficult Issue"	p. 196
Dissent, Estrangement, and the Ruins of Utopia	p. 201
Dissent in the Plural	p. 201
Monuments to Revolutionary Estrangement: Shklovsky and Tatlin	p. 204
Rootless Cosmopolitanism and Civic Consciousness	p. 216
Estrangement for the World: Arendt and Kafka	p. 224
Writers on Trial: Dissent, Legal Obedience, and National Mythology	p. 232
Artists on Trial: Politics and Religion in the Post-Soviet Frame	p. 248
Judgment and Imagination in the Age of Terror	p. 255
The Tale of Two Arrests: Arendt and Ginzburg	p. 255
The Banality of Evil and the Art of Judgment	p. 261
The Ethics of Intonation and Human Error in Kolyma Tales	p. 266
Rationing Clichés, Documenting Terror	p. 271
Mimicry, Misprint, and Technologies of the Gulag	p. 276
Diamonds in the Sky and the Gulag Effect	p. 281
Conclusion: Freedom and Its Discontents	p. 285
Freedom by Numbers?	p. 285
Is Freedom Lost in Translation? Cultural Critique of Freedom	p. 294
Notes	p. 301
Index	p. 343
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