Surveillance, data farming, and revived conflict renew the case for existentialist freedom.

Evidence

But that was sixteen years ago, at the time I’m writing, and since then freedom has come into the spotlight again. We find ourselves surveilled and managed to an extraordinary degree, farmed for our personal data, fed consumer goods but discouraged from speaking our minds or doing anything too disruptive in the world, and regularly reminded that racial, sexual, religious and ideological conflict are not closed cases at all. Perhaps we are ready to talk about freedom again — and talking about it politically also means talking about it in our personal lives. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 97

Categorization

• XREF: This is the contemporary-resonance argument the whole reading purpose (orienting to existentialism) rides on; ties to today’s surveillance capitalism discourse. — connects to: Sartre novelized existential freedom through collective crisis in The Reprieve — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 403; Perceiving possibilities for freedom enables breaking with existing patterns. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 13; Modern freedom rests on an unacknowledged capitalist metaphysic (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Perceiving possibilities for freedom enables breaking with existing patterns. #corroborates (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 13
• Sartre novelized existential freedom through collective crisis in The Reprieve #expands (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 403
• Modern freedom rests on an unacknowledged capitalist metaphysic #expands (0.75)
• The past is fixed being while the future remains modifiable by freedom #qualifies (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 454
• Objective possibility constitutes freedom but requires knowing and wanting #qualifies (0.73) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1285
• Existentialism directly fueled the rights movements of mid-century #corroborates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 889