Naming and Being

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 towards 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.