Naming and Being: Knowledges, Identities and Cultural Politics(Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception)

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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction ROOT/ROUTE ONE: PERSONAL NAMES a. WHAT MY NAME (DOESN’T) TELL YOU 1. My White Woman Name Was Denise 2. The Cartography of a Name 3. Reflections on Names and Identities: “What Do You See in My Name?” 4. Listening in Pinyin: Reflections on Speaking Good English 5. Radbwa ê tiré tik-layé. Opossum Pulling Off the Ticks 6. Call Me by My Name (Instagram Project) b. SAY THEIR NAMES 7. Leidy lost in translation: Names and their stories in forensic identification practices in the context of Colombian armed conflict 8. ‘2847’ 9. “They Called Us Manas”:The Transgender Politics of Naming in Maputo, Mozambique c. SOCIAL MEDIA AND NAMING 10. “I Need a New Name”: Confessions of a Chinese Fangirl 11. Die Summe meiner Daten (The Sum of My Data) 12. Provocative Personas & Speculative Selves: The Alter Ego as Feminist Performance and Algorithmic Resistance 13. Digital Identity in Yorùbá Naming ROOT/ROUTE TWO: NAMING AND BEING IN THE WORLD 14. Sitsóoi Yoo, My Ancient Relation from Whence I Evolved 15. Names that Make the World 16. tânisi ôma ê-takihtêk wîhêtâwâwasôwin? What does it mean to be given a name? 17. ‘On This Site’: Naming and Indigenous Struggles for Land Rights 18. ‘Ат асмандан дечү эле / A Name comes from the Sky (heaven)’: The Naming Practices of the Kyrgyz People 19. “Make a Name for Yourself” Senegalese Wrestling Pseudonyms and the Making of a National Tradition 20. Naming Minamata Disease ROOT/ROUTE THREE: NAMING AND ORDERING THE WORLD 21. NUNULU I KA LANI: A sky that is immensely filled with activity, causing it to reverberate. The Hawaiian Naming Processes of the Papahānaumokuākea Cultural Working Group 22. Birding the Future: Naming and Calling 23. He aha kei te ingoa/What’s in a name/? Renaming the present to connect with the Māori past 24. Juabáyan, Jabocán (To Name/To Deprive): A Collaborative Research-Action Project to Recover the Kamëntšá World Through Names 25. Between the Global and Local in Scientific Naming: Efim Lukin’s case of coining zoological species names in Ukrainian 26. Chemical Names and the Culture of Modern Chemistry 27. You Are What You Were ROOT/ROUTE FOUR: LEGITIMIZING AND DELEGITIMIZING THROUGH NAMING 28. “I am the river, and the river is me”: Re-naming and re-shaping legal categories to enhance relationships between individuals, communities, and rivers 29. Reclaiming and Renaming: Understanding Thangmi Identities in a Changing Nepal 30. Ghosts of the Past? Naming the Places of the Displaced 31. The Last Yugoslavia 32. The Wymysorys Way of Spelling Surnames and the Vilamovian Community of Memory 33. What’s My Name? Cultural Politics of Name Change through DACA 34. Atik no more: A legal step towards the elimination of the legacy of slavery carried through surnames in Tunisia / لا "عتيق" بعد اليوم: خطوة قانونية نحو الغاء مُخَلَّفَات العبودِيَّة التي يحملها اللقب في تونس 35. The Cartography of a Name—Continued. Index

About the Author :
Gwyneira Isaac is Curator of North American Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, USA. She is also director of the Recovering Voices program. 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 is coordinator of the Polish-Siberian research group in the Faculty of ‘Artes Liberales’ at the University of Warsaw, Poland.