Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right and conside-red a core value in liberal democracies. However, it is also one of our time’s most contested issues, constantly claimed either to be too wide-ranging, allowing continuous repression of minority groups, or too limited – restricting dissent and democratic deli-beration. In this book we depart from conventional approaches to free speech, which tend to focus on whether specific types of public utterances should be legally allowed or not. Instead, we study how the boundaries of free speech are contested and negotiated through social processes which silence certain groups and opinions while amplifying others.Dramatic events in the past decade have demonstrated how free speech is deeply connected to global struggles over power and recognition. When the Danish newspaper Jyllandspostenpublished twelve caricatures of the prophet Muhammad in 2005, this led to heated debates and demonstrations in Europe as well as protests and the burning of Danish flags and embas-sies in the Middle East. The terror attack on the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015, resulting in the death of twelve people, led to renewed debate about the role of satirical cartoons in defining and pushing the frontiers of free speech in a global perspective.1 The Charlie Hebdo attacks also served as a forceful reminder that the exercise of free speech may be followed by acts of violence.