Prelude. Out of words…

This poetic meditation opens the volume by exploring the limits of language, justice, and binary thought. Jefferson reflects on the paradox of writing ‘beyond’ structure and agency while inevitably invoking them. Through a close reading of Caleb Femi’s poem Two Bodies Caught in One Cell , he examines confinement, racialized violence, and yearning for justice as both spiritual and material conditions. The cell becomes a metaphor for bounded thought and constrained life, while light, sleep, and prayer evoke solidarity, hope, and silence. Jefferson invites readers to inhabit the tension between speech and silence, idea and effect, suggesting that it is through words – even as we run out of them – that new futures and less constrained forms of thought might emerge.