This book offers a simple answer to a simple question. What is “we”?

“We” – I propose – is a method. Not a who to be specified. Not a collective to join or from which to be expelled. “We” is a method: a technique; a procedure; a means to some end (actually, many ends); a craft; a systematic mode of arrangement. “We” is a method through which the world is structured and ordered, from the micro-unit of “we two”1 to the macro-units of geopolitical or even interspecies alliance. As a method, “we” can be repeated – and is – with varying degrees of intentionality. As a method, “we” conscripts and recruits, sometimes frankly, sometimes slyly. “We” is a method that underpins the ordering structures of our selves, our societies, and our worlds.

Which means, of course, that there is nothing simple about it. What is “we”? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “we” is “the subjective case of the first-person plural pronoun.” It is a pronoun “used indefinitely in general statements in which the speaker or writer includes those addressed, i.e., his or her contemporaries, compatriots, fellow human beings, etc.” Dictionary.com defines “we” simply as the “nominative plural of I.”

“We” is not just me, not just you, not just I, but rather meplus, you-plus, I-plus. I-pluralized. More than me. When queried, ChatGPT writes that “we” wouldn't earn a player many Scrabble points, but it is nevertheless a “common and essential word in English for expressing group membership … a fundamental part of language used to talk about ourselves in relation to others.”