“Really, what I’m arguing for is the possibility of an art of using and not using category, of being deft and supple and imaginative or maybe just fully awake in how we imagine and describe the world and our experiences of it. Not too tight, not too loose, as a Zen master once put it. Categories are necessary to speech, especially to political and social speech, in which we discuss general tendencies. They’re fundamental to language; if language is categories – rain, dreams, jails – then speech is about learning how to conduct the orchestra of words into something precise and maybe even beautiful. Or at least to describe your world well and address others fairly.”
p. 224
Solnit, R. (2017). The pigeonholes when the doves have flown. Essay in The mother of all questions (pp. 222-226). Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Libraries Within Libraries 