Nuance and Paradox
On Freedom testifies to the value of Christians attending to the wisdom of nonbelievers.
Review by Emily Carter
On Freedom might sound like the title of an Enlightenment-era political treatise striving for comprehensiveness, but Maggie Nelson is not in the business of providing clear-cut answers within fully fleshed-out systems of thought. Her newest book examines art, sex, drug use, and climate change through the lens of freedom. Anecdote meets social criticism as Nelson abides with the details, nuance, and complexity of human experience in these realms. Her work defies summary, but remains refreshingly accessible. Readers require no extensive background in art theory or climate science or queer theory or drug writing to track her engagement with these conversations. A brief but substantial snapshot of one mind’s grappling with everyday issues, On Freedom feels like a long conversation with a stranger on an international flight. One turns the last page, armed not with a new big idea about contemporary culture or the human experience, but instead with a deeper appreciation for how our commitments, intuitions, and assumptions shape our views in complex ways resistant to political and theological labels.
In examining these controversial domains of life, Nelson values contemporary experience situated in context, which she calls the “real and irregular news of how others around me [think] and [feel].” Her goal in On Freedom is to “pay attention to the ways in which freedom appears knotted up with so-called unfreedom, producing marbled experiences of compulsion, discipline, possibility, and surrender.” Sometimes, she refuses to assign freedom to one situation or another—leaving open, for example, whether people are sexually freer when they claim and articulate their desires, or when they leave these desires unarticulated in a posture of openness. She believes that goodness is highly contextual, repudiating neither the substance use of her earlier years nor today’s sobriety. Seeking to convey the complexities of people’s experiences with art, sex, drugs, and climate change, she rejects binaries like good and evil, free and unfree, right and wrong, ethical and unethical, caring and uncaring. Nelson’s disinterest in articulating decisively what is good and what is right runs counter to the way many Christians understand the meaning of human life and relationship with God, but her persistent dedication to description over prescription makes possible a secular appreciation for paradox, more typically found in the realm of faith.
Nelson’s acceptance of humanity’s limitations, as well as its goodness fused with badness, mirrors the Christian view closely. She insists on the value of radical compassion for people who are flawed and uncertain—a commitment which accords well with Christianity’s view of humankind as sinful and made in the image of God, in need of grace and having been granted it. Nelson argues that “acting as if the world neatly divides (or that our task is to divide it) into problematic, ethically turbulent, essentially dangerous people who should stay ‘over there,’ and nonproblematic, ethically good, essentially safe people who should be allowed to stay ‘over here,’ is not our only option,” thereby offering a warning against divisive, us-versus-them thinking.
Nelson favors what she calls practices of freedom—finding and pursuing freedom in ordinary action—over the expectation that a liberatory moment will make everything right.
Christians would do well to keep this warning in mind as we seek to build peace among people and with God. The #MeToo movement encourages women to share stories about the unjust sexual conduct of men. Nelson acknowledges that this move is a necessary step toward improving the quality of our relationships, but she also worries about how this pressure warps our perceptions of ourselves and others. It pushes us to categorize individuals as victims and aggressors rather than rightly discerning the shades of gray in all people. Moral grayness, for Nelson, is inevitable: “We need to allow ourselves to be unafraid of the contaminations of ambivalence, and unafraid of experimenting with describing—indeed, experiencing—sexual encounters in frames beyond that of sin, abuse, violation, trauma.” Approaching the experiences of other people with a humility and curiosity that stems from a deep regard for their value, Nelson helps us to hold in tension the brokenness of a world in need of redemption and our mission as the Body of Christ to care for it, with the participation of every human being in that brokenness. Nelson’s insistence on nuance pairs well with the Christian insistence on mystery and paradox.
Nelson favors what she calls practices of freedom—finding and pursuing freedom in ordinary action—over the expectation that a liberatory moment will make everything right. Such a position aligns with the Christian commitment to realizing the Kingdom of God in the here and now, even if it departs from our hope for a final resurrection and judgment. Her understanding of freedom incorporates both individual autonomy and interdependence, favoring sincerity and risk-taking over paranoia. She rejects a utilitarian approach to art, preferring to let “go of the insistence that aesthetic and political practice mirror each other, or even correspond amicably” and to allow expression to be a sufficient justification for producing art. Artists have freedom to create, just as viewers have freedom to react and judge. Sexual freedom exposes people to pain and difficulty alongside joy and healing, all a “potential site of learning” about ourselves and about others. Through drug use, people come to know the meaning of freedom by encountering its limits. Reckoning with climate change involves searching for joy in the face of despair.
On Freedom testifies to the value of Christians attending to the wisdom of nonbelievers. If the Spirit is at work in the overlaps between Nelson’s worldview and orthodox Christian doctrine, the same might be true in her careful analysis outside these bounds. Faith wins little overt mention in her book. She briefly identifies Christianity with a capacity to feel free when we are not, with an inner freedom disconnected from political power. Her views on sexuality and drug use are more libertarian than those defended within the average church, but to fail to seek the good in Nelson’s work is to engage in the sort of flattening judgment that Nelson joins the Gospel in refusing to apply to individuals. Her citation of potentially unfamiliar literature, and her espousing of views perhaps uncommon in our communities, are no grounds for denying the insight she brings to challenging topics. The God who has revealed Himself through the many voices of scripture has no problem speaking through the earnest work of those committed to compassion. With freedom having meant many different things to different Christians through the ages, we would do well to add On Freedom to our conversation.
Emily Carter is pursuing a Master of Divinity at Yale Divinity School. She enjoys caring for chickens and exploring the outdoors.
On Freedom was published by Graywolf Press on September 7, 2021. Fare Forward appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase a copy of your own through their website here.
