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What Is Free Speech?

byFara Dabhoiwala

The History of a Dangerous Idea

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‘Free Speech!’ is a clarion call all over the world, yet what it means today is more contested than ever. Many cultures regard it as dangerous: in China, India, and across the Islamic world, unorthodox views about politics, sex, and religion are repressed and people are often punished for expressing them. Even in the west, where it is held up as a core value, there is widespread discord and disagreement about what freedom of expression means. Amidst perennial imbalances of power, continually evolving cultural taboos, dramatic new technologies and a fast-changing global media landscape, where free speech comes from – and how we might think about it – are critical questions.

Through the lens of history, What Is Free Speech? shows us that freedom of speech is not an absolute from which societies and regimes have drifted or dissented at different times, but something more complicated and interesting. This book explains how to think more deeply about free speech as a global as well as a local question — by tracing how we got into our current predicaments, showing that history complicates our contemporary presumptions, and suggesting fresh possibilities for the future.

A brilliant history [of what] has long been a “weaponized mantra” in a public sphere dominated by the moneyed and the powerful, this fascinating book questions whether such a misunderstood ideal should be lauded as an end in itself ... Dabhoiwala wants us to think of free speech in terms of which voices are heard most loudly and which are marginalised ... meticulous and much-needed

Joe Moran, Guardian

About Fara Dabhoiwala

Fara Dabhoiwala was born in England, educated in Europe, and is of Indian descent. He is a Senior Research Scholar at Princeton, and previously taught for many years at Oxford. His last book, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution was an Economist and Sunday Times book of the year and has been translated into several languages.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780141988245
  • Length: 580 pages
  • Price: £16.99
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