Published as a Penguin special in October 2016, John Cusack's and Arundhati Roy's book dates back to an extended conversation that took place in 2014, and was first published as a series of articles in "Outlook India".

The slim book now consists of five interrelated parts and contains not only Roy's and Cusack's essays but also a conversation between the two authors and the two whistleblowers Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden. The essays and the conversations embedded into them essentialise a critique of the nation-state and the principles that structure entities that have been posed into concurrence to one another by a global economy neglecting human rights.

 

In addition, the book contains fundamental reminders for the so-called "political left". Throughout the book, Daniel Berrigan's "The Nightmare of God: The Book of Revelation" is cited. "Still it should be said", he wrote in 1983, "that of the political left, we expect something better. And correctly. We put more trust in those who show a measure of compassion."

Arundhati Roy continues thinking about the Left, arguing:  “[…] the language of the Left, the discourses of the Left, has been marginalized and is sought to be eradicated. The debate - even though the protagonists on both sides betrayed everything they claimed to believe in- used to be about social justice, equality, liberty, and redistribution of wealth."  She then turns to another central point:  "All we seem to be left with now is paranoid gibberish about a War on Terror whose whole purpose is to expand the War, increase the Terror, and obfuscate the fact that the wars of today are not aberrations but systemic, logical exercises to preserve a way of life whose delicate pleasures and exquisite comforts can only be delivered to the chosen few by a continuous, protracted war for hegemony - Lifestyle Wars." How very inconvenient. This part, of course, should be a global wake-up call echoing into every detail of politics, calling for a reinstallment and critical discussion about central questions concerning participation and the formation of a dynamic result that deserves to be called "opinion".

 

The (re)installment of global justice standards is another central topic in the book:

“They tinker with your imagination, with language. The idea of ‘human rights’ for example - sometimes it bothers me. Not in itself, but because the concept of human rights has replaced the much grander idea of justice.", says Roy.  "Human rights are fundamental rights, they are the minimum, the very least we demand. Too often, they become the goal itself. What should be the minimum becomes the maximum - all we are supposed to expect - but human rights aren’t enough. The goal is, and must always be, justice.”

This goal, however, is undermined:  “[…] the catch-22  is that violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony.” Neoliberalism thus produces violence.

 

“History", writes Arundhati Roy, "is really a study of the future, not the past.”

"Things that can&cannot be said" studies sometimes directly, often indirectly, the history of whistleblowing and hierarchy in light of recent and possibly future political decisions that have already shaped and will continue to shape the 21st century.