{"product_id":"on-un-certainty","title":"On Un\/Certainty: The Uses of Doubt in Dangerous Times","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWe live in uncertain times. But what does uncertainty mean for our ability to act?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile politicians, CEOs, and pundits reflexively invoke “uncertain times” to explain everything from pandemic responses to climate inaction, journalist and theorist Natasha Lennard offers a radical intervention. Lennard demonstrates how our obsession with uncertainty masks the violent certainties that dominate our fracturing world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn Un\/Certainty\u003c\/i\u003e applies philosophical insight to political practice, offering readers not just analysis but hope—and conceptual tools with which to act. The book tackles contemporary flashpoints through an original philosophical lens, demystifying our constant talk of crisis, polycrisis, and omnicrisis. Lennard examines the way entrenched conceptions of gendered experience are weaponized to harass the most vulnerable. Dissecting the discourse around borders, she reveals their enforcement to be a site of paranoid vigilance and violent property logics, which threaten millions of lives. Lennard addresses head-on the limits to traditional forms of political persuasion and demands that we think anew about how to build more liberatory forms of life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and placing his work alongside thinkers rarely put into conversation, Lennard contends with the nature of certainty, identity, and ideology as we struggle into the future.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch5\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h5\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNATASHA LENNARD\u003c\/b\u003e is a British-born, Brooklyn-based writer. She is a professor of critical journalism at the New School for Social Research in New York and a columnist for the Intercept. Her work has appeared in the Nation, Bookforum, Dissent, and the New York Times, among others. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eBeing Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life\u003c\/i\u003e and coauthor (with Brad Evans) of\u003ci\u003e Violence: Humans in Dark Times\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch5\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat People Are Saying\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h5\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"An invitation to rethink what we know, and how we know it. Lennard challenges conventional understandings of crisis, borders and gender, revealing how deeply entrenched certainties shape our perceptions of the world.'\" \u003ca data-lwsa=\"eyJhdXRvbGluayI6dHJ1ZSwiYXV0b19pZCI6IjkzNTEifQ==\" href=\"https:\/\/leftwingbooks.net\/collections\/all\/naomi-klein\" title=\"Naomi Klein\"\u003eNaomi Klein\u003c\/a\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eDoppelganger\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eOn Un\/Certainty \u003c\/em\u003eseeks to name and so unseat 'pernicious certainty in action,' and call for a different paradigm around the truths we take for granted–specifically as they pertain to what pundits are calling the polycrisis...Lennard’s got a knack for making the heady feel approachable, even to a layperson. This promises to be a most topical intervention for the thinking human. (Bonus: it’s slim enough to take on the subway.)\" Most Anticipated Books of 2026,  \u003cem\u003eLit Hub\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"For penetrating and revolutionary insights, not only into “the news” per se but also into our hell-world’s basic epistemic workings and (especially) their impermanency, I always look to Natasha Lennard. At the same time as demonstrating almost every day—for well over a decade now—what a precious thing journalism can still be, Lennard has become this century’s most illuminating political reader of Wittgenstein and our most invigorating public philosopher of antifascism.\" \u003ca data-lwsa=\"eyJhdXRvbGluayI6dHJ1ZSwiYXV0b19pZCI6IjkwNzQifQ==\" href=\"https:\/\/leftwingbooks.net\/collections\/all\/sophie-lewis\" title=\"Sophie Lewis\"\u003eSophie Lewis\u003c\/a\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003e\u003ca data-lwsa=\"eyJhdXRvbGluayI6dHJ1ZSwiYXV0b19pZCI6IjM3OTcwIn0=\" href=\"https:\/\/leftwingbooks.net\/products\/femmephilia\" title=\"Femmephilia\"\u003eFemmephilia\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"We are snowed under by known unknowns. Thank heavens for Natasha Lennard then, here to talk us through the expectations we place on words and walk us out of the numbness induced by their mindless repetition.\" \u003ca data-lwsa=\"eyJhdXRvbGluayI6dHJ1ZSwiYXV0b19pZCI6IjM3OTcxIn0=\" href=\"https:\/\/leftwingbooks.net\/collections\/all\/quinn-slobodian\" title=\"Quinn Slobodian\"\u003eQuinn Slobodian\u003c\/a\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eHayek's Bastards\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Sometimes an essay arrives that sends a gust of fresh air into the stuffy present from an unexpected angle. What does it mean when people say they feel assailed by uncertainty and insecurity? A sign hovering over a conjuncture of seemingly ubiquitous instability, this trope has never been investigated – until now. Making surprising use of Wittgenstein, Natasha Lennard here enjoins us to think anew, and closer, about the meanings of uncertainty on the fronts – racism, transphobia, genocide – that define our age. Hers is a vital contribution to the hard work of making any sense of what’s going on.\" \u003ca data-lwsa=\"eyJhdXRvbGluayI6dHJ1ZSwiYXV0b19pZCI6IjkzNTIifQ==\" href=\"https:\/\/leftwingbooks.net\/collections\/all\/andreas-malm\" title=\"Andreas Malm\"\u003eAndreas Malm\u003c\/a\u003e, author of\u003cem\u003e How to Blow Up A Pipeline\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Fascism attempts to destroy the capacity to think. Natasha Lennard restores it here with lyric philosophy.\" Hannah Zeavin, Associate Professor of History, UC Berkeley\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Amidst inflationary talk of uncertainty and crisis, Lennard makes a bracing case, instead, for the critique of pernicious certainties. A brilliant provocation to further thought. A hinge book.\" Adam Tooze, author of \u003cem\u003eShutdown\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"While doubt and uncertainty can be fear-inducing, the entrenched certainties on which society rests are far more dangerous, according to this stimulating treatise from journalist Lennard…Her energetic challenges to the status quo are timely and intellectually robust. This is sure to spark conversation.\" \u003cem\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I can think of no better guide to the perplexing present than the brilliant Natasha Lennard. This luminous book, unflinching in its moral clarity, upends conventional thinking about thinking itself, and emboldens its lucky readers to question and resist today’s most pernicious shibboleths and lethal certainties.\" Astra Taylor, author of \u003cem\u003eDemocracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Lennard takes readers on a brief tour of doubt, certainty, and knowledge...[\u003cem\u003eOn Un\/Certainty\u003c\/em\u003e] stands as a stark reminder that we move through uncertainty with hope sustained by collective action. As Lennard puts it, 'There, on some of the harshest of terrains, we have been shown what it is to go on.'\" \u003cem\u003eCalifornia Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Nobody writes more clearly than Lennard about the current mess of things, especially about the uses of language to describe the mess...Each chapter in Natasha’s book had me spiraling outward to make connections with ten other things… if it’s not urgent, it’s essential.\" Elvia Wilk\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Verso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45000252915805,"sku":"9781804295618","price":33.95,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0562\/0826\/1213\/files\/onuncertainty_verso2026.jpg?v=1791995036","url":"https:\/\/leftwingbooks.net\/products\/on-un-certainty","provider":"Leftwingbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}