Free Speech and Neoliberalism

In this book, Asbjørn Grønstad challenges us to reconceptualize the notion of free speech. Focusing on the domains of cultural production, aesthetics, and education, Grønstad argues that neoliberalism currently poses the greatest threat to our freedom of expression.

Crucially, the book argues that freedom of speech should no longer be considered merely as parrhesia — understood as the license to offend — but also as isegoria, the equal right to speak. The latter denotes the original meaning of free speech, Grønstad posits, and should be restored as the conceptual ambit of the term, despite being largely overlooked after Greek Antiquity.

Through a multi-faceted engagement with cultural works and discourses spanning both genre and historical period which grapple with issues of free speech, censorship, and neoliberal politics, this book highlights how art and aesthetics represent a particular case of isegoria, and more broadly, how neoliberal rationality operates to delimit the space of the sayable and the expressible.

Author Biography

Asbjørn Grønstad is Professor in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway.