Struggles to change place-names are struggles over the symbolic codes that function to ground us in the so-called “New World,” where we are made to see private property and other enclosures as natural. How is ideology—the frame through which we see, understand, and relate to the world—embedded not only in naming practices, but also, more broadly, in the language and words we use to communicate and express ourselves?
This panel will explore the ways in which language systems and keywords function to structure thought and action, as well as how struggles over language can be part of a collective project of decolonization. Together, panelists will explore the modes of communication through which people have come to discover and assert their collective difference in the world.
