Book Club/Discussion Questions for What is We? (2025)

Available now from Agenda Publishing
Available now from Columbia University Press

1. Srinivasan proposes that "we" is a method — a technique or procedure through which the world is ordered — rather than just a list of people who belong to or are excluded from a group. How does this change the way you think about the word when you use it? Can you think of a time when someone said "we" to "conscript" or recruit you into an idea you didn't necessarily agree with?

2. Srinivasan describes her early "suspicion" of the word "community," fearing it was a way of "typecasting" people rather than seeing them as individuals. However, her friend later tells her that "community is what we are working toward". In your own life, do you find that your "we" groups (like your ethnic, religious, or hobby groups) provide support and witnesses to your life, or do they sometimes feel like a "trap"?

3. While we usually think of the family as an inclusive "we," the author argues that the modern family can be a tool of exclusion. Drawing on the work of writers like Sophie Lewis, she suggests that by focusing so heavily on "our own" children or relatives, we often privatize care and ignore the needs of the wider collective. Does this idea of the family as a "private firm" resonate with your experience of parenting or family life?

4. The book explores the "deep irony" of new technologies: they promise connection but often heighten human isolation. The author describes a "digital swarm" (Byung-chul Han’s phrase) of isolated individuals who do not develop into a “we” because they lack real presence and interiority. Do your online interactions make you feel like part of a true "we," or do you often feel "alone together" (Sherry Turkle’s phrase) while staring at a screen?

5. Srinivasan critiques phrases like "we are all in this together" and "we have the tools" used during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that they were effectively used as a form of "gaslighting". She argues these phrases were used to mask widespread social and political abandonment and the fact that many people were actually on their own. Looking back, how did these uses of "we" affect your sense of trust in your community, neighbors, government and — maybe most importantly — yourself?

6. Drawing on the work of poet and essayist Claudia Rankine, the author distinguishes between our "self self" (our individual personality) and our "historical self" (the racial or social history we carry). She describes how "historical selves" can arrive with full force to rupture a friendship or familial relation. Have you ever felt that a "we" based on history or race became an obstacle to connecting with someone on a personal level?

7. In the chapter on abortion, the author suggests that talking about reproductive rights only as a matter of "privacy" makes it an "I" issue rather than a "we" issue. She asks if we can learn to narrate these experiences as a "collective choice" or a shared social responsibility. How might our social conversations change if we viewed personal health decisions as what poet Abby Minor calls “h/ours" (plural) rather than just "hers" (singular)?

8. The book cites philosopher Ernest Renan, who argued that a nation is defined not just by what its people remember, but by what they have "forgotten together". The author suggests that "we the people" often requires us to ignore difficult pasts to maintain a sense of unity. What are some parts of your country’s history that you feel you were encouraged to "forget" in order to feel like part of the national "we"?