The Dialectic of Freedom by Maxine Greene

Maxine Greene pushes against common conceptions of what it means to be free. By exploring how various individuals and groups struggled to identify, confront, and transcend the obstacles that limited their agency, Greene shows us that resistance to oppression is essential to the pursuit of human freedom. Reflection and action upon conditions that constrain us is an “existential project” directed at achieving freedom, and as such it is “a central life task” (p. 67). Informed by philosophy, history, art and literature, Greene explores how freedom-seeking women, immigrants, minorities, and other oppressed groups have moved from private to public domains in their efforts to connect with others to reshape the realities of their lives