A Change of Method

A new season of fiction about systems that remember

For the next season of Before Language, I’m going to try something different.

Most of the questions explored here eventually run into the same obstacle: explanation.

At some point, an argument becomes easier to show than to describe.

An essay can explain a system. A story can make you live inside one.

So for a while, I’ll be exploring these themes through serialized fiction.

The essays aren’t disappearing.

But the laboratory is expanding.

We’ll still be talking about memory, agency, institutions, language, autonomy, faith, and intelligence.

We’ll still be asking what it means to think, to choose, to remember, and to understand.

We’ll just be doing it with characters instead of footnotes.

The first installment arrives soon.