Review of The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together As Things Fall Apart by Astra Taylor

Oh boy, I don’t know if this was the best time or worst time to read The Age of Insecurity. It was certainly A Time. Written just prior to Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States, Astra Taylor’s Massey Lectures for 2023 nevertheless capture the zeitgeist of the 2020s with uncomfortable clarity and, dare I say, prescience. This book is not a salve for our age, alas, but it might be a good treatment nonetheless.

Taylor’s lectures, organized as always into five chapters or nights of lecturing, focus as the title implies on the topic of insecurity. Specifically, she believes that insecurity is one of the primary tools capitalism uses to keep workers beholden to the powerful. So much of what drives our economy and our efforts is the fear of insecurity—a fear shared by the rich, Taylor points out, as well as the poor.

This book took me a while to read. In part that’s just because it is dense, well referenced, well argued. In part because I needed frequent breaks, for the topics Taylor covers are not easy. I am a fairly secure, middle class, privileged white woman here in Canada. I have a good union job, benefits, a pension. Yet Taylor describes my condition exactly in these pages. She seizes upon the fear I experience, along with the rest of the middle class: the fear of falling. The fear of our quality of life decreasing, of a reduction of station. The precarity we feel is the insecurity, she argues, that drives our fears of socialism, fears of helping people more marginalized than ourselves.

Taylor weaves an insightful and interesting history lesson throughout each chapter. From there, she actually gives prescriptions on what she thinks we can do. Always, her advice centres on organizing. The power of collective action. This, I think, is what makes this book so redeeming despite its fairly bleak outlook at the big picture: Taylor is not beaten down, and she isn’t suggesting we accept defeat.

I’m not sure who the audience for this book is. Maybe it’s me prepandemic? I think the past year or so have honestly woken a lot of people to the issues Taylor covers here, though I guess that the connective tissue of her exposition and history lessons helps too.

If I have a criticism, it’s simply that, like most of the Massey Lectures, this one opts for breadth over depth. Taylor touches on so many issues: Indigenous land defence and sovereignty, insurance and subprime loans, housing, food, etc. She does a great job showing us how everything is connected, yet at the same time, I suspect most people will need additional texts to truly grasp most of the issues she mentions here. The Age of Insecurity is an intriguing starting point yet far from an endpoint.

Not the greatest Massey Lecture I have ever read but certainly one of the most urgent, most topical entries. Well done.