M U L L A duel of ideas

The language for what doesn't have a name

Toni Morrison  vs  Esmé Weijun Wang

Morrison wrote that the function of freedom is to free someone else, and the function of language is to find the name of what we did not know we knew. Wang writes about psychic experience that the available vocabulary has refused to host. Both treat naming as the central labor of writing — and as a form of moral repair.

Name something true about your inner life that you have not yet found language for.

Whose side are you on?

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