Escapist freedom: The anthropocene, escape theory, and the persistence of non-freedom

Abstract

Why has human freedom, increasingly defined in plural subjectivities, been continuously unable to confront its antithesis of non-freedom? Classical debates on liberty theorized exit as various attempts to reclaim freedom, epitomized by Rousseau’s return to the natural self. This precipitated a shift from autonomous to authentic notions of freedom, yet exit is both non-viable and essential in the 21^st century as a response to the Anthropocene’s suicidal logic of non-freedom. This essay attempts to address responses to the global paradox of non-freedom by theorizing a set of disparate efforts to engage institutions of non-freedom, which I term ‘escapist freedom’. Escapist freedom is individual, focused on the generation of meaning, and has a contentious relationship to liberal democracy.