pseudoliberation

English

Etymology

pseudo- +‎ liberation

Noun

pseudoliberation (countable and uncountable, plural pseudoliberations)

1. False liberation; The process or instance of appearing to be liberation while not actually liberating.
   • 1981, Helm Stierlin, Separating parents and adolescents: individuation in the family:

     In such reconciliation of doing and undergoing, liberation becomes mutual, in contrast to the one-sided pseudoliberation of the revolutionary who, in his moment of triumph, turns into vengeful counteroppressor and thereby perpetuates a negative mutuality; rather, a positive mutuality through which both parties gain a new awareness of, and freedom for, each other, is needed.

   • 2001, David W. Kidner, Nature and Psyche: Radical Environmentalism and the Politics of Subjectivity:

     Viewing instinctual liberation as a purely individual process is as paradoxical as attempting to "save" a wild animal by removing it from its habitat: in both cases, foregrounding the individual and ignoring the context ensures that the liberation is a pseudoliberation into an industrialist arena rather than an authentic articulation of individual structures into a sympathetic natural space.

   • 2012, Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars:

     He understood the male desire for escape, and his movies are a kind of “man's movie” not unlike the old women's pictures that gave women a form of pseudoliberation and lots of terrific clothes and furniture to ogle.