Overview

This experimental volume explores how intersections between different knowledge systems affect identity formation through names and naming, bringing together anthropologists, community scholars, artists, linguists, scientists, poets, specialists in science and technology, as well as legal and Indigenous studies. This interdisciplinary approach values naming practices as creative and political acts that generate and continuously shape our world(s), as well as our relations with others—both human and non-human. By embracing diverse ways of knowing and creative modes through which naming, re-naming, or un-naming unfolds via language, art, and place-making, the authors and artists bring to the forefront implicit and explicit conflicts over the right to self-definition, as well as impositions and contestations of dominant narratives via naming. The goal is to inspire meaningful exchanges between essays, art, poetry, and ethnographic fiction, with each perspective and imaginative methodology treated as equally robust analytic tools. Political entities and top-down structures often use processes of naming to assert power. While recognizing these mechanisms of oppression are important, by bringing openness toward other positionalities regarding the complex problematics of naming and being in the world, this volume invites a wide range of scholars and practitioners to also engage with and consider the empowering and liberatory potential of names and naming in their own work. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

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9781032557076

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Gwyneira Isaac is Curator of North American Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington DC. She is also director of Recovering Voices, a program for endangered language and knowledge revitalization at the NMNH, and lead for the To Be—Named project. Stanisław Kordasiewicz holds a PhD from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and coordinated the ‘Minority Languages, Major Opportunities. Collaborative Research, Community Engagement, and Innovative Educational Tools’ (COLING) project. Sylvia Ngo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at George Washington University, USA. Tomasz Wicherkiewicz is Professor of Linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Kyunney Takasaeva (Künnei Takaahai) is the coordinator of the Polish-Siberian research group in the Faculty of ‘Artes Liberales’ at the University of Warsaw, Poland.

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