Matei Candea

In this insightful book, Matei Candea offers us a map with which to make sense of free speech debates over the past decade. Reason, Carnival and Honour is a must-read for anyone who wants to take seriously the claims they live by and — just as crucially — the claims of others

A fresh and thought-provoking analysis of what our battles over free speech are really about, and why they are so heated and intractable. Instead of just focusing on their apparent political or social dimensions, he suggests, we need also to see them as always articulating differing visions of freedom, power, ethics, and language itself

An Anthropology of Free Speech

What does free speech really mean? How does our understanding of it differ around the world? Why does it divide us – and how can we find common ground? 
 
What free speech really means is hotly contested. Is it increasingly under attack in our democracies, or is it being weaponized by the powerful? These debates don’t just happen in the news: they divide families, strain relationships. This is because, anthropologist Matei Candea shows, arguments about free speech are not just about abstract principles: they question what it means to be a good person, to have empathy and courage. They involve fears for the future and longings for the past – and they demand that you pick a side, right now! 
 
In order to move away from the simple binaries of polarised debate, Candea shows us that we need to start counting to three. Deploying the power of thinking anthropologically, Reason, Carnival and Honour outlines three visions of free speech – Reason, or civil rational debate; Carnival, or the right to be outrageous; and Honour, the duty to stand by one’s word. Sometimes supporting each other and sometimes at odds, they entail very different understandings of what language is and does, of what it means to be free. 
 
Building on years of research and an exploration of anthropological literature from around the globe – from tales of French cartoonists to Egyptian Bedouin women, Finnish talk-show hosts to Tibetan Buddhist monks – Reason, Carnival and Honour reveals a richer landscape of differences, to help us find new alliances and even answers to the question of what it is we’re really arguing about.

Reason, Carnival and Honour

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Hunt the Villain

The Fall of the West

From the Library of Jurgen Leitner

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Fight or Flight (Book 21)

Matei Candea

Praise for Reason, Carnival and Honour

In this insightful book, Matei Candea offers us a map with which to make sense of free speech debates over the past decade. Reason, Carnival and Honour is a must-read for anyone who wants to take seriously th ...

A fresh and thought-provoking analysis of what our battles over free speech are really about, and why they are so heated and intractable. Instead of just focusing on their apparent political or social dimensions, he ...

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter