Josh Berson
Fiction, essay,
marks on paper.
More
For help etc, write.
Represented by Salma Begum, London.
Recent and Selected
Envelope
On Meaning
The Signaling Game
Letter from a Peripheral Character
Stuff
Dialectal Tribes
The question we collectively face now is whether we can reshape our habits — and habitus — again. And as Josh Berson … argues in a fascinating new book
The Human Scaffold, the issue is not just about material goods: social, emotional and biological patterns also matter deeply. —Gillian Tett,
Financial Times
A thorough, imaginative, and compelling rebuttal of the pervasive argument … that meat consumption is central to human existence.
—
Choice
2016 PROSE Award, Language and Linguistics
Help
I work with individuals and collectives looking to stretch themselves, sharpen their habits of thought, or simply reflect on their circumstance, perhaps with a view to making changes.
My practice is grounded in two decades’ experience observing human efforts to create meaning. To give the conversation structure I might propose we read or listen to something together.
The benefits of this kind of work include mental elasticity but equally emotional elasticity and, with luck, a modicum of equanimity in the face of the unknown.
My collectives practice emphasizes clarification of purpose and ethos. I’ve worked with three-person startups and mature incumbents in areas ranging from slow fashion to civic literacy to climate justice.
Our conversation is confidential from the moment it begins. If you sense I could be of use, write.
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Bio
My work explores the relationship between bodily activity and value: how our habits of listening, breathing, eating, etc inform what matters and conversely. Over time, my pursuit of this theme has grown more experimental. But at the center remains a commitment to the cultivation of an exploratory mindset. It is through the struggle to say what we mean that we learn to experience life as a thing of openness and value.
I was trained as a historian, anthropologist, and philosopher, with emphasis on the historical dynamics of practical knowledge; an earlier career in computer science continues to inform my habits of thought. I’ve held appointments, inter alia, at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Wellcome Collection, and the Berggruen Institute, where I was inaugural Berggruen Fellow in the Transformations of the Human.
Occasionally I do things with noise.
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