Amia Srinivasan · He, She, One, They, Ho, Hus, Hum, Ita: How Should I Refer to You? · LRB 2 July 2020
There, she argued that the question of the relationship between our physical constraints and the assertion of our freedom is not a ‘problem’ requiring a solution. It is simply the way human beings are. Our condition is to be ambiguous to the core, and our task is to learn to manage the movement and uncertainty in our existence, not to banish it.
Sarah Bakewell • At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
There is a depth of wisdom in language’s flexibility, in the soma of its poetry.
Perry Zurn • Curious Minds: The Power of Connection
I think a lot about the limitations of language and how we interpret the language we use every day to talk about the senses.
ed yong • What Counts as Seeing
Most of the laws, norms, rights and obligations that define manhood and womanhood reflect human imagination more than biological reality.
Yuval Noah Harari • Sapiens
In English these are “I”/“me” and “we”/“us.” In Aboriginal languages there are many more, including pronouns that are translated as “I,” “I myself,” “we two,” “we but not others,” and “we altogether.” Repeating the plural ones twice can mean “It’s up to us,” but repeating “I” twice can mean “I go my own way!”
Tyson Yunkaporta • Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
in the postmodern view, “The individual status and position of those we group together and call ‘women’ and of those we call ‘men’ are argued to vary so greatly over time, space and culture that there is little justification for the use of these collective nouns.”