Todos los cuerpos

The body is a source of pleasure and pain, both vulnerable and brimming with power. In this ambitious essay, Olivia Laing embarks on a passionate journey through the historical struggles for the freedoms of the body and uses the life of renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich as a starting point to explore everything from LGTBIQ+ rights and sexual liberation to feminist movements. and for civil rights. Drawing on his own experiences, and traveling from 1920s Berlin to McCarthy-era prisons in America, Laing confronts some of the most important and complicated figures of the last century, including Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X. Despite its many burdens, the body remains a powerhouse, even in an age as high-tech and automated as ours. Arriving at a time when basic bodily rights are once again in jeopardy, Laing proposes an investigation of the forces arrayed against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.