Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
On Freedom  By  cover art

On Freedom

By: Maggie Nelson
Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.88

Buy for $18.88

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

A Guardian Books of 2021 pick.

So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing, rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice and wellbeing, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs and climate.

Drawing on a vast range of material, from critical theory to pop culture to the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, Nelson explores how we might think, experience or talk about freedom in ways responsive to the conditions of our day. Her abiding interest lies in ongoing "practices of freedom" by which we negotiate our interrelation with - indeed, our inseparability from - others, with all the care and constraint that relation entails, while accepting difference and conflict as integral to our communion.

For Nelson, thinking publicly through the knots in our culture - from recent art world debates to the turbulent legacies of sexual liberation, from the painful paradoxes of addiction to the lure of despair in the face of the climate crisis - is itself a practice of freedom, a means of forging fortitude, courage and company. On Freedom is an invigorating, essential book for challenging times.

©2021 Maggie Nelson (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation." (Olivia Laing)

Love Books? You'll Love Audible.

Placeholder Image Alt Text

Transform your day

Replace endless scrolling with endless listening. Chores can be fun.

Placeholder Image Alt Text

Listen everywhere

Download titles to listen offline, wherever you are in the world.

Placeholder Image Alt Text

Carry your entire Library

Your stories go where you go. Audiobooks don’t weigh a thing.

Placeholder Image Alt Text

Listen and learn

Discover stories that can change your mind, your well-being, and your life.

Placeholder Image Alt Text

Reach your reading goals

You can’t turn pages while you drive—but you can press play.

Placeholder Image Alt Text

Find your niche

WIth thousands of titles to explore, there’s something for everyone.

Try for $0.00 $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

What listeners say about On Freedom

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.