On Un/Certainty (The Uses of Doubt in Dangerous Times)

We live in uncertain times. But what does uncertainty mean for our ability to act?

While 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.

On Un/Certainty 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. On Un/Certainty 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.

Drawing 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.