Freedom’s Poses

Abstract

Kathy Ferguson’s anarchist women enact walking as freedom’s pose. In my response, I ask how the way we imagine poses and postures, comporting our bodies this way or that, alone or together, shapes the way we practice freedom. I worry that the focus on walking, a dominant and frequent metaphor for freedom in many diverse political registers, occludes our ability to see freedom in other poses, registers, and spaces. I argue that highlighting walking as freedom’s preferred pose hovers too close to the replication of the posture (and maybe the perspective too?) of the masculine self. These moves, and this movement, make it harder to discover other sites and kinds of freedom, and to fully appreciate contingency, non-necessity, and the unexpected possibilities available in every encounter. Drawing on the work of Adriana Cavarero, Simone de Beauvoir, and Hannah Arendt, I explore postures of inclination—Beauvoir’s housewives stooped over pots and pans—and consciously chosen inactivity—Arendt lying on her daybed thinking. These postures and poses open up our ability to see freedom in the encounter, an affective and agonistic freedom enacted only with others, and too easily hidden or missed.