Being Numerous shatters the mainstream consensus on politics and personhood, offering in its place a bracing analysis of a perilous world and how we should live in it.
There's a lot to talk about here...but Lennard manages to cover a lot of ground. Importantly, she explores the appeal of fascism, reminding us that even the most fervently self-avowed anti-fascist among us can fall prey to the lures of fascism's desire to dominate ... There's a refreshingly clear conscience to Lennard's writing. She doesn't get lost in the labyrinth of logic that drowns so many liberals; hers is a defense of both rights and social justice, with a very practical view toward how they can be used to complement each other. For those who are wondering whether it's okay to punch Nazis, Lennard offers useful food for thought (and a rounding endorsement) ... Being Numerous is a rewarding and thoughtful collection of essays, written in refreshingly clear, accessible and often beautiful prose. They're short, mostly comprised of previous pieces of journalism, but provocative and enlightening nonetheless, from an author we may hope to hear more from.
...a collection of essays that seek to demonstrate and enact a means of non-fascist thinking ... The title of the book itself is a reference to mass political action, and Being Numerous demonstrates Lennard's thoughtful clarity through an impressive range of subjects and styles. Watching Lennard apply a clean analytic framework that uses narrative evidence to describe systemic problems is both satisfying and instructive. Approaching all these social problems is a tricky task for Lennard and readers alike, but Being Numerous suggests a persuasive scheme for how to process the world as it grows ever more fascist, and how to conceive of a better future—even or especially when something better might seem inconceivable.
...an urgently written collection of essays ... Being Numerous is beautifully written, often incisive and astute, and eminently relevant. Yet its limitations struck me, as a Black leftist, as indicative of limitations of the white left more broadly, which are tied to persistent problems of de facto segregation. Under such conditions, a failure to adequately attend to Black thought—or to the often inherently state-undermining orientation of Black life—is to be expected. But as more and more literature from the white left reproduces this lack of consideration for nonwhite existence, it grows more and more difficult to explain to those willfully omitting our existence from their canon that our lives do matter (even as they repeat the slogan) and that, even without canonical recognition, our thought and social organizations are often the most subversive to the nation-states created on the basis of our subjugation.
