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The word “freedom” is so overly used—and frequently abused—that it is always in danger of becoming nothing but a cliché. In Another Freedom, Svetlana Boym offers us a refreshing new portrait of the age-old concept. Exploring the rich cross-cultural history of the idea of freedom, from its origins in ancient Greece to the present day, she argues that our attempts to imagine freedom should occupy the space of not only “what is” but also “what if.” Beginning with notions of sacrifice and the emergence of a public sphere for politics and art, Boym expands her account to include the relationships between freedom and liberation, modernity and terror, and political dissent and creative estrangement. While depicting a world of differences, she affirms lasting solidarities based on the commitment to the passionate thinking that reflections on freedom require. To do so, Boym assembles a remarkable cast of characters: Aeschylus and Euripides, Kafka and Mandelstam, Arendt and Heidegger, and a virtual encounter between Dostoevsky and Marx on the streets of Paris.

By offering a fresh look at the strange history of this idea, Another Freedom delivers a nuanced portrait of freedom, one whose repercussions will be felt well into the future.

These two special issues focus on estrangement, a concept that pervades twentieth-century literary study and related fields. Estrangement lies at the heart of human experience in art and life: how the familiar is made strange, perceptible, disturbing, as if never before encountered. Also known as defamiliarization or disautomatization, estrangement originated as a form of literary and poetic theory within Russian formalism in 1917 and was elaborated largely through the work of Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky. In essence, estrangement is a method of analyzing the artfulness, rather than the psychological meaning or logical message, of imaginative works of prose and poetry.

Each essay in these special issues proceeds from a different perspective. Two essays compare the ideas of Shklovsky with those of equally well-known thinkers—such as Hannah Arendt and Mikhail Bakhtin—regarding freedom and aesthetics. Other essays are historical surveys of estrangement theories and their diasporas during the last century. One contributor considers Diderot's views on art alongside certain modern views on poetry. Another discusses estrangement as seen in the visual artwork of the Russian painter and art theoretician Kazimir Malevich. A third contributor explores estrangement in the work of Dostoyevsky. The special issues end with a previously unpublished interview with Shklovsky, who looks back on a long and troubled career, speaking his mind about literary issues, Communist oppression, and friends and enemies, including Stalin.

Contributors. Svetlana Boym, Marietta Chudakova, Jacob Edmond, Caryl Emerson, Michael Holquist, Anna Wexler Katsnelson, Ilya Kliger, Nancy Ruttenburg, Greta N. Slobin, Tatiana Smoliarova, Meir Sternberg, Galin Tihanov, Cristina Vatulescu

Meir Sternberg is Professor of Poetics and Comparative Literature at Tel Aviv University. Svetlana Boym is Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Harvard University.