Chapter III focuses on another key feature of Tolkien’s literary technique, namely the lavish use of omissions, allusive language, and, more specifically, the deletion of (almost) all the explicit references to the hidden ‘divine narrative’ underlying the story; these are scattered throughout the book, but always in a ‘hidden’ or ‘glimpsed’ form. The second part explores the theoretical implications of this poetics of ‘cloaking’ or ‘glimpsing’. This technique evokes in the reader a “heart-racking” longing for something unattainable. This is not just a (well-paralleled) strategy: rather, literature for Tolkien does not just come from the human mind, since human beings are only sub-creators, and the light that their works refract comes from a higher Light: incompleteness and cloaking are thus means by which Tolkien acknowledges the mysterious origin of his sub-creations, and at the same time expresses God’s high concern for freedom, His own and that of the human sub-creators and their readers.

Good states want to increase the well-being of their citizens, and act to do this. Insofar as state efforts constrain action for the sake of well-being, however, there is a danger that these constraints will limit liberty in a way that actually undercuts the individual achievement of well-being. If we limit liberty in order to bring us to one desirable state (say, good health) that doesn’t necessarily increase well-being if the loss of liberty in itself diminishes well-being. However, when we consider the three major theories of well-being, hedonism, desire-satisfaction, and objective list theories, we see that there is nothing in the loss of liberty that necessarily diminishes well-being at all. It depends on what that loss brings about. Sometimes liberties make us better off, but it depends on the specific liberty and what it contributes. There is nothing about loss of liberty per se that does us any harm.

Freedom in a choice does not just requires the absence of interference by another, whether with a preferred option or with any option; it requires the absence of domination: the absence of vulnerability to a power of interference on the part of another. Law and only law can guard citizens equally against the domination of others by identifying a common set of basic liberties and by providing intuitively adequate resourcing and protection against others to enable people to exercise those choices. But the state that imposes law will itself dominate all or some of its citizens if it is not subjected to a system of intuitively adequate, democratic control over its imposition of law. Such a system should enable people to shape the framework of government, to impose operational checks, constitutional and contestatory, on officials in government, and to appoint or oversee the appointment of such authorities.

When tribes are allowed to operate as governments, states will push back because states fear tribal competition. In particular, states are concerned tribes will offer lower tax rates and other legal incentives to attract businesses to their land. This is a misguided concern. States already craft numerous exceptions to their laws, often designed specifically for their favorite corporations; plus, the source of state power over tribes is lacking. Apart from this, tribal development benefits states. New jobs in Indian country often employ non-Indians who purchase goods and pay taxes off reservation. Thus, tribal sovereignty also serves as a shield against state protectionism and promotes economic opportunities that benefit everyone.

Throughout the twentieth century, many Europeans agreed that individual freedom had to be defended against an oppressive state. Dissidents strove to do so at the risk of imprisonment and physical violence. Political radicals and neoliberals accused even democratic states of undermining the very possibility of living freely. But for others the relationship was far more equivocal. Social democrats promised to foster working-class people’s freedom by expanding the welfare state, thus rendering them independent of capitalism and the family. Even major dictatorships, out of an interest in mobilization or acquiescence, did not present themselves solely as collectivistic projects. Whether or not the power of the state promoted or stifled freedom thus remained a matter of controversy. This chapter explores three aspects of this relationship: how inmates of concentration and work camps in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Franco’s Spain were deprived of their freedom but desperately attempted to safeguard some vestiges of it; how the Third Reich, various Eastern Bloc regimes, and the late Francoist dictatorship tried to accommodate individualistic desires and demands within their repressive structures; and, finally, how the project of social democratic liberty took shape and was challenged from both the left and the right.

In twentieth-century Europe, work was related to individual freedom in different ways. Rationalized, large-scale production imposed disciplinary constraints on men and women and threatened to undermine their independence, yet other developments promised to safeguard independence and raised the prospect of choice. Moreover, the relationship between work and individual freedom was subject to diverging definitions and contrasting political agendas. Some of these definitions and agendas stemmed from the nineteenth century, but now had to be pursued under very different conditions. Others rose to prominence in the twentieth century, as capitalist, extreme-right, and Communist promises to enhance freedom at work competed with each other. These ambitious projects, however, were confronted with structural contradictions and subversive behaviors. The three major aspects treated in this chapter are how farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers endeavored to defend their economic independence at a time of capitalist pressure and Communist hostility; how millions of Europeans, having entered factories for want of a better alternative, strove to create a shop floor of their own; and, finally, how women (and, to a lesser extent, men) balanced chores and choices when carrying out domestic tasks and reflecting on their meaning.

The twentieth-century quest for individual freedom was pursued not merely in Europe proper but also at its boundaries. This had much to do, in the first instance, with a desire for liberation from metropolitan societies that many identified with an excess of constraints and conventions. It also reflected a strong sense of European superiority over both Americans and colonized peoples. But, as the century wore on, uncertainties arose from the growing power of the United States and the increasing criticism and various reforms to which colonial rule was subject. American popular culture appealed to youth across the continent, to the dismay of many adults, while colonized subjects increasingly claimed the status of free individuals, both in overseas colonies and as immigrants to Europe. This chapter discusses whether there was autonomy or conformism in America, at a time when its supposed freedoms were so attractive to many Europeans though they appalled others; how colonial self-reliance was loudly claimed and staunchly defended against indigenous demands and more liberal forms of European rule; and, finally, what colonized subjects’ perspectives were on the individual freedom they were denied but were seeking as part of their efforts to become decolonized.

This book has historicized the quest for individual freedom in twentieth-century Europe by highlighting conflict-ridden expansion: more and more people claimed the status of free individuals, but they did so in very different ways, in various contexts, and more often than not in the face of powerful opposition. The Conclusion brings out the overarching narrative centered around ordinary Europeans’ efforts to expand their realm of control in spite of obstacles, to carve out a space for themselves, and to live freely according to their own preferred understandings. It also argues that these efforts stood in tension with various political movements that aspired to combine individual and collective freedom. This tension eased when the quest in its unheroic versions, having put both democracies and dictatorships under pressure to adapt, could be pursued in the more favorable context of détente and affluence. With the end of the Cold war, it seemed indeed to have prevailed. But the relationship between individual freedom and Europeanness was never entirely exempt from conflict and complexity and has recently become more controversial again.

This book explores what Europeans in the twentieth century understood by individual freedom and how they endeavored to achieve it, often against the odds. The Introduction lays out its conceptual bases, arguing that the quest was multi-faceted and unfolded in nonlinear ways, which jars with teleological narratives of the rise and decline of “the individual.” It disputes Annelien de Dijn’s recent account of one dominant concept of modern liberty and is attentive to mainstream as well as marginalized versions of individual freedom, questioning Michel Foucault’s idea that the former were “imposed on us” through disciplinary power. Instead, the book borrows from sociologist Georg Simmel and political philosopher Isaiah Berlin to stress the subjective, gradual, and unpredictable character of individual freedom and the fact that it was pursued against a range of obstacles and constraints. It tells a story of conflict-ridden expansion. Men and women had to claim their personal freedom in a context marked by world wars, the expanding power of the state, the constraints of work life, pre-established moral norms, the growing influence of America, and the uncertain future of colonial rule.

On the face of it, total war would seem to be fundamentally and entirely at odds with the very notion of individual freedom. Yet the relationship between the two was more complicated than that. From the beginning of World War I, much propagandistic effort went into stressing the voluntariness of military or quasi-military service. At the same time, imposing discipline on complex societies triggered major tensions, unintended effects, and subversive behaviors, allowing for some unexpected gains in personal independence. In general, military conflicts exacerbated disputes about the very meaning of freedom – both while they were being fought and when they were being anticipated or commemorated. This chapter discusses three issues: the extent to which military mobilization and enemy occupation created room for female independence, the ways in which contemporaries understood conscription and soldiers coped with it, and the various means by which Europeans endeavored to free themselves from military conflict, from muddling through to principled resistance under Nazi occupation or during the Cold War.

The quest for individual freedom was defined and pursued in the twentieth century in an environment shaped by moral norms that were established in the nineteenth century, if not before, but continued to be staunchly defended before undergoing a process of adjustment. At the same time, the question arose of what life would be like once these norms had been shaken off or decisively weakened. Furthermore, the selfhood of those who pushed for liberation was contested between coherence and control, on the one hand, and various modes of transgression, on the other. While such issues were first debated and probed in countercultural circles, they had become a mainstream concern by the end of the century, leading to new uncertainties about how far individual freedom should go and whom it should benefit. This chapter explores how sexuality was restrained by a morality that came to be adjusted in the decades after World War II; how the prospect of a “liberated” life emerged, leading to new expectations, but also creating imbalances and bringing disappointments alongside gains; and how the transgressive urge to expand the ego questioned the norm of coherent selfhood before eventually revealing its darker side.

This chapter summarizes evidence from Chapters 2 through 5 that organizational conditions in urban schools facilitate both single- and double-loop learning amongst K-12 teachers about their students’ lived experiences as racial and cultural minorities in American society. It builds the argument that even where urban teachers may take the initiative to engage in double-loop learning, prevailing cultural and organizational norms in urban schools make doing so nearly impossible.

More than 200,000 Africans were freed from slave ships after 1807 as a result of British policy. Most were processed by Mixed Commission or Vice-Admiralty Courts and assigned the status of “Liberated Africans,” but their freedom was severely restricted by “apprenticeships” of varying lengths supposedly to prepare them for entering a free labor market. However those entering Cuban or Brazilian jurisdictions had lives little different from slaves. In Sierra Leone, by contrast, apprenticeships were short-term and did not involve plantation labor. Photographic, anthropometric, and per capita income evidence indicates that most did not do as well as the poor European migrants who were emigrating in large numbers to the Americas at this period. Liberated Africans did not have the same opportunities as Whites because of racism. They did not have access to the land distributed by the Homestead Act, and could not enter labor markets on the same terms as Whites. In other words, the anti-Black attitudes that made the transatlantic slave trade possible continued after its abolition. The Liberated African records allow us to examine the African origins of enslaved people. The nineteenth-century slave trade from West Africa had a preponderance of Yoruba, Igbo, and Mende speakers.

The conclusion surveys the core interventions of the book: its conceptual and methodological work to open new pathways in African intellectual history beyond decolonisation through postcolonial civil wars to the present, among working-class migrants and war-displaced people, within the multiple discursive worlds (at home, in Sudan, and globally) accessible to them. This chapter challenges atheoretical interpretations of southern and South Sudanese politics, reasserting the place of political imagination in this history and demanding close engagement with everyday conversations over political ethnicity, wealth, class, and power. The chapter ends with a reflection based on conversations over 2015–23 with many of the same activists, teachers, and writers in South Sudan, on opportunities lost, and on continuing projects of political creativity today. As a history in the aftermath, the project was built during a time of a loss of optimism and political freedom, and is currently a history of possibilities lost.