liz reviewed Everybody by Olivia Laing
Keeping alive the dream of a bodily freedom that is equally shared
5 stars
Reconsidering the work and biography of dissident psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (Foucault's favorite foe in his History of Sexuality), Olivia Laing wanders in this non-fiction book through an archive of individual and collective struggles for bodily autonomy and freedom that marked the 20th century both before and after World War Two. This sumptuously written text has itself the qualities of fluidity it unearths in the resistance, willfulness and emancipator agency of the multiplicity of marginalized body constitutions and ways of embodiment it describes and learns from. Alongside accounts of Andrea Dworkin, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Agnes Martin and many others, the reader is invited to reflect on sexual liberation and vulnerability, depathologization and illness, collective action and mental health, with a lot of room left to pursue their own reverie. It sometimes feels just like a conversation with a friend you haven't seen for a while and with whom …
Reconsidering the work and biography of dissident psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (Foucault's favorite foe in his History of Sexuality), Olivia Laing wanders in this non-fiction book through an archive of individual and collective struggles for bodily autonomy and freedom that marked the 20th century both before and after World War Two. This sumptuously written text has itself the qualities of fluidity it unearths in the resistance, willfulness and emancipator agency of the multiplicity of marginalized body constitutions and ways of embodiment it describes and learns from. Alongside accounts of Andrea Dworkin, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Agnes Martin and many others, the reader is invited to reflect on sexual liberation and vulnerability, depathologization and illness, collective action and mental health, with a lot of room left to pursue their own reverie. It sometimes feels just like a conversation with a friend you haven't seen for a while and with whom you can unleash your imagination and thought thanks to topics that pop up unexpectedly in a dialogue cemented by trust. Amazing.