2 What is this? And how is “co-creation” relevant?

This is a book, a text, a way of speaking inside a designated context. But texts are not separate from the world in which they are written. Unlike the borders of nation-states or the fences announced by private property, the mind is continuously permeated by the world. Thinking, itself, is an act that involves being altered by thought.

Maybe “this” also refers to the conditions under which this book originated, particularly the coincidence of its proposal in the week following October 7, 2023, as well as the conditions under which it was written. To begin under these conditions is to admit the instability in our ways of knowing so as to inhabit the particular contingencies of authorship.

To admit is not a negative thing. Admitting permits us to think into the difficult and to ask hard questions about boundaries, borders, and ethics. In this sense, to admit gives us permission to transgress the facile line between “right” and “wrong” and explore what is destroyed by such lines. We can ask who stands to benefit from administering them. We can use mirrors for something besides self-affirmation. A mirror can reveal the gaps between the way we imagine ourselves and actuality.

“Co-creation” turns a monologue into a dialogue that makes creative use of discord and misunderstanding. I make the book as the book makes me; we make each other with every encounter and conversation; we make the world in relation to the ways we know others have made it.

The hardest part for humans is that there is no way to know (or control) what others will make of us. Or: what Others will make of Us.