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A review by beaconatnight
Everybody by Olivia Laing
4.0
In traditional political theory, freedom is thought of as being determined by what people are allowed or capable to do or say. Over centuries these ideas have been codified in legal principles that now articulate the core values of liberal democracies. Some of its achievements are due to the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. However, there have been marginal (or marginalized) figures that fought against more fundamental forms of oppression based on the kind of body you inhabited.
In Everybody Olivia Laing traces the efforts of those individuals that shared the dream of a free body, or of all bodies being equally free. Her starting point is the idea that all important experiences take deep roots in what I guess you would call the subconscious. Many chapters take up and discuss biographical nodes in the life of Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst and protégé of Sigmund Freud that firmly believed that bodily liberation would lead to a better world. In his early works bodily liberation was sexual in nature.
Frankly, it's easy to make fun of Reich. He's perhaps most famous for his orgone energy accumulator, a medical device designed to bring healing by channeling life forces or energy. It's fascinating, though, to reproduce the factors that led him so fully astray. Unlike most of his peers, he worked with the least advantaged members of society and cared deeply for how to better their plight. He lived in Nazi Germany and witnessed the effects of its despicable repression.
His life was fully thrown out of joint when he was rejected by an ailing Freud for differences over the role that should be assigned to social matters in psychoanalysis. He was cast out of the society of psychoanalysts (or whatever it is called) and from then on pursuit his research that culminated in his pseudoscientific writing and practice. Later in his life he was violent and believed he was fighting against alien invaders.
His story is well integrated in the overall ark. Still, given the book's subject matter, I wasn't entirely sure what justified the focus on Reich. If you go into it with some common preconception you might for instance think of prisons as the most obvious locus of bodily restriction. Laing indeed discusses the subject, but only in one of the last chapters. She is more concerned with how historical circumstances put more metaphorical bars around individuals, which also becomes the focal point of the prison chapter.
So far I have only talked about political freedom and liberation. Naturally, ailment too can be conceptualized as an oppression of the body. It's especially in illness that we realize how completely and utterly at our body's mercy we actually are. What I thought was very striking, though, was how relentlessly the individual might fight to liberate itself from this oppression. The depiction of the kind of procedures Susan Sontag allowed to be performed on her body to free herself from breast cancer – I have to say, it was not easy to read.
Quite befitting the subject matter, reading Everybody is a very visceral experience. Approaching the book with a background in political philosophy, whose principled models usually abstract away from the meatier or harsher realities, I was (should I say) shocked by how graphic it was. For instance, at the time when Reich sought approval of Freud, his mentor suffered from buccal cancer for many years. The book doesn't shy away to talk about what this implies. Similarly in cases of violence and tragedy.
Bodily oppression is not of one kind. A main concern of Laing's is how societal prejudice and law put up a framework that not all bodies fit in. In some instances she talks about her own experiences as someone who grew up with Lesbian parents, as someone who identifies as non-binary in gender, and as someone who dropped out of university to fight in social movements. The book is personal, but it's primarily about her, nor is it written from her point of view. Except of course of the usual framing that authors provide.
Experiences can be shared to some extent, but are essentially unique. In Laing's portrayals of other individuals – political thinkers, activists, artists, musicians – there is nothing like the unified stance to take or the unambiguous clarity of how to conceptualize matters. The overall narrative is refreshingly unpreachy and the cases speak for themselves.
Maybe this is the best kind of "theory", the one that makes you think differently by turning your gaze to matters you usually don't think about at all.
Rating: 4/5
In Everybody Olivia Laing traces the efforts of those individuals that shared the dream of a free body, or of all bodies being equally free. Her starting point is the idea that all important experiences take deep roots in what I guess you would call the subconscious. Many chapters take up and discuss biographical nodes in the life of Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst and protégé of Sigmund Freud that firmly believed that bodily liberation would lead to a better world. In his early works bodily liberation was sexual in nature.
Frankly, it's easy to make fun of Reich. He's perhaps most famous for his orgone energy accumulator, a medical device designed to bring healing by channeling life forces or energy. It's fascinating, though, to reproduce the factors that led him so fully astray. Unlike most of his peers, he worked with the least advantaged members of society and cared deeply for how to better their plight. He lived in Nazi Germany and witnessed the effects of its despicable repression.
His life was fully thrown out of joint when he was rejected by an ailing Freud for differences over the role that should be assigned to social matters in psychoanalysis. He was cast out of the society of psychoanalysts (or whatever it is called) and from then on pursuit his research that culminated in his pseudoscientific writing and practice. Later in his life he was violent and believed he was fighting against alien invaders.
His story is well integrated in the overall ark. Still, given the book's subject matter, I wasn't entirely sure what justified the focus on Reich. If you go into it with some common preconception you might for instance think of prisons as the most obvious locus of bodily restriction. Laing indeed discusses the subject, but only in one of the last chapters. She is more concerned with how historical circumstances put more metaphorical bars around individuals, which also becomes the focal point of the prison chapter.
So far I have only talked about political freedom and liberation. Naturally, ailment too can be conceptualized as an oppression of the body. It's especially in illness that we realize how completely and utterly at our body's mercy we actually are. What I thought was very striking, though, was how relentlessly the individual might fight to liberate itself from this oppression. The depiction of the kind of procedures Susan Sontag allowed to be performed on her body to free herself from breast cancer – I have to say, it was not easy to read.
Quite befitting the subject matter, reading Everybody is a very visceral experience. Approaching the book with a background in political philosophy, whose principled models usually abstract away from the meatier or harsher realities, I was (should I say) shocked by how graphic it was. For instance, at the time when Reich sought approval of Freud, his mentor suffered from buccal cancer for many years. The book doesn't shy away to talk about what this implies. Similarly in cases of violence and tragedy.
Bodily oppression is not of one kind. A main concern of Laing's is how societal prejudice and law put up a framework that not all bodies fit in. In some instances she talks about her own experiences as someone who grew up with Lesbian parents, as someone who identifies as non-binary in gender, and as someone who dropped out of university to fight in social movements. The book is personal, but it's primarily about her, nor is it written from her point of view. Except of course of the usual framing that authors provide.
Experiences can be shared to some extent, but are essentially unique. In Laing's portrayals of other individuals – political thinkers, activists, artists, musicians – there is nothing like the unified stance to take or the unambiguous clarity of how to conceptualize matters. The overall narrative is refreshingly unpreachy and the cases speak for themselves.
Maybe this is the best kind of "theory", the one that makes you think differently by turning your gaze to matters you usually don't think about at all.
Rating: 4/5