Description
This paper explores what it calls ‘free speech nationalism’ – the imagination and building of the nation-state in debates surrounding free expression. There are as many free speech nationalisms as there are approaches to free speech, from classical liberal and libertarian defenses of free speech, to leftist multicultural and feminist advocacy for regulation. Through an analysis of historic and contemporary free speech politics in Western Europe, North America and the Antipodes, the paper argues that, despite their differences, free speech nationalisms consistently shape the nation-state along lines of race, gender and ability. It shows that, far from a struggle of freedom against regulation, free speech advocacy has been central to controlling speech, not only by excluding enemies of the nation-state (imagined as Black, Brown, Jewish, Indigenous, trans, feminine and/or mad) from free expression, but by imposing terms of speech in which ‘speakers’ are individual or corporate entities and ‘freedom’ is the protection of rights by the state. The paper argues for a more expansive vision of ‘freedom’ and ‘expression’, drawing on Indigenous, Jewish, trans and mad activism which, it shows, exceeds, resists, or builds alternatives to, free speech nationalism.
