I’ve been working on an essay and perhaps more, but rather than reduplicate my efforts, I share the podcast and two seminal links to the Substack contents.

Note that this remains decidedly a work in progress; experience it as it unfolds.

Working thesis and abstract

This essay examines three mechanisms of institutional silence: the inhibition of inquiry under sacral authority, the inhibition of avowal under social consensus, and the inhibition of uptake under structural non-reception. Through the paired metaphors of the Grail (via The Fisher King), the Emperor’s New Clothes, and Cassandra, I argue that modern power often survives not by establishing truth but by organising silence across the social life of diagnosis. The result is a normatively managed gap between what subjects can perceive, what they are permitted to ask, what they are permitted to say, and what institutions are structured to hear.

Outline and thoughts