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Every year, we become obsessed with a different word containing the prefix “post-”. “Post-truth” was the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year in 2016, cynically and officially giving us a lexical tool for discussing the incomprehensible absurdity of the world post-Brexit, post-Trump. It is our linear temporal vision that makes “post” particularly heartbreaking (more so than “non” or “anti”): “post” doesn’t just mean that something is absent; it means that it is gone, behind us in time as we float helplessly forward without it. Even though “post-“ typically attaches itself to critical …