Ugly Freedoms and The Democratic Sublime share a number of arguments. Both assert that fundamental political values—freedom and democracy—are due for rigorous reconceptualization; that art and cultural objects should contribute to this process as much as political theory texts; and that aesthetics of discomfort—the overwhelmingness of the sublime, the disgust and displeasure of ugliness—illuminate new understandings of political practice. Yet they differ in the type and scale of practices they find significant, and it is on this point that Frank’s generous and thoughtful review raises challenges to Ugly Freedoms.

Frank parses the two uses of the term ugly freedom—one, that freedom’s idealized practices have historically entailed domination and exploitation as much as emancipation and self-determination; and two, that more promising freedoms can be identified in practices otherwise deemed repellant, disconcerting, or inconsequential by the first type of ugly freedom. The second use of ugly freedom, Frank argues, can risk neglecting larger social solidarities and turning political weakness into a triumph.

To address the first concern: social solidarities and collective practices span Ugly Freedoms; indeed, the primary definition of freedom advocated in the book is “collective work to compose a shared world across difference without exploitation or domination” (p. 14). This happens at multiple levels of society. Chapter 2 finds collective freedom in the ensemble subterfuge of a self-governing Black polity that dissembles to whites as a slave plantation. Chapter 3 locates freedom against neoliberalism in unruly collaborations by neglected neighborhoods and stale bureaucracies. Chapter 4 dissolves individual sovereignty altogether into the collective agency forged among people and their more-than-human worlds, and includes vastly scaled collaborations across space and time among pre-planetary stardust, interspecies relations, desert ecosystems, invisible toxins, and the trillions of microbiota shaping “gut” decisions. I argue that these collaborative worlds often fly under the radar in part because they do not manifest in the familiar boundaries and cathartic promises of nation-states, organized international movements, or even individual autonomy. But this does not mean that they are not worldmaking freedoms in their own right. Shared worldmaking as a practice of freedom often happens in neglected regions, which is part of Ugly Freedom’s main argument. Perhaps Frank underestimates the scale of these practices precisely because they happen in denigrated places enacted by those who have little power and fewer options. Yet they reveal freedom’s possibilities beyond commonplace expectations, even as they are not majestic, heroic, or comforting.

It is Ugly Freedom’s emphasis on the nonheroic, minor, and disappointing aspects of freedom that I think most worries Frank, whose second and larger concern is that the sole focus on these types of actions can celebrate collective weakness and demobilize wider fights for freedom. My concern is the inverse: the people, spaces, and tactics relegated to weakness or dismissed as inconsequential are unjustly presumed to have little to offer freedom. Even in conditions of enforced demobilization, or in provincial practices of power, inventive and weird freedoms are created all the time. These practices will look different from standard visions of heroic strength or national sovereignty, and thus can seem disheartening, trivial, or degenerate by comparison. But those standard visions are deeply problematic: they often hide their own constitutive dominations of race, class, or gender, while their popularity overwhelms and devalues the forms of freedom I examine. In Ugly Freedoms, finding unjustly denigrated freedoms is more important than shoring up customary expectations for collective power. As I emphasize in the book, this doesn’t mean that visions for freedom should not be grand or large-scale. It means that we must take a hard look at the brutalities upheld in familiar forms of freedom, while revaluing unconventional alternatives too often belittled and discounted.