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6 books match the query 'Naming'

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Indiscretion

Thomas A. Carlson

University of Chicago Press, 1998

How can one think and name an inconceivable and ineffable God? Christian mystics have approached the problem by speaking of God using "negative" language—devices such as grammatical negation and the rhetoric of "darkness" or "unknowing"—and their efforts have fascinated contemporary scholars. In this strikingly original work, Thomas A. Carlson reinterprets premodern approaches to God's ineffability and postmodern approaches to the mystery of the human subject in light of one another. The recent interest in mystical theological traditions, Carlson argues, is best understood in relation to contemporary philosophy's emphasis on the idea of human finitude and mortality.

Combining both historical research in theology (from Pseudo-Dionysius to Aquinas to Eckhart) and contemporary philosophical analysis (from Hegel and Nietzsche to Heidegger, Derrida, and Marion), Indiscretion will interest philosophers, theologians, and other scholars concerned with the possibilities and limits of language surrounding both God and human subjectivity.

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Naming the Dawn

Abdourahman A. Waberi

Seagull Books, 2018

The poems in this new volume by Abdourahman A. Waberi are introspective and inquisitive, reflecting a deep spiritual bond—with words, with the history of Islam and its great poets, with the landscapes those poets walked, among which Waberi grew up. The sage yearns here for the simplicity of each individual moment to somehow become eternal, for the histories and people that are part of him—his mother, his wife, his unborn child, the sacred texts that ground his being—to come together harmoniously within him, and to emerge through his words. Lyrical and personal, but with powerful historical and cultural resonances, these poems are the work of a master at the height of his powers.

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Naming the Wind

Steven Rood

Omnidawn, 2022

Poems that navigate the complexities of human relationships, personal ethics, and religious tradition.

Wind moves through this collection, opening the poems to the dying beauty of the natural world, to the weathers inside the psyche and without, and to the connections between a family and between the speaker his mentor, the great poet Jack Gilbert. The collection navigates the intimacies of human relationships with others, the challenges of working as a lawyer trying to maintain integrity as others fall prey to corporate greed, and the complexity of holding a Jewish identity while being awake to tradition’s hold on the mind and its cost. Steven Rood offers a powerful account of how to be a human in dynamic relationships while also holding respect for the non-human beings that comprise most of the life on our planet.

Rood employs structures and forms that directly relate to the content of the poems themselves. Spontaneous breaks and starts reflect the writer’s turns of mind, offering readers insight into the meaning and measure of the work.

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Naming the World

Language and Power Among the Northern Arapaho

Andrew Cowell

University of Arizona Press, 2018

Naming the World examines language shift among the Northern Arapaho of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, and the community’s diverse responses as it seeks social continuity. Andrew Cowell argues that, rather than a single “Arapaho culture,” we find five distinctive communities of practice on the reservation, each with differing perspectives on social and more-than-human power and the human relationships that enact power.

As the Arapaho people resist Euro-American assimilation or domination, the Arapaho language and the idea that the language is sacred are key rallying points—but also key points of contestation. Cowell finds that while many at Wind River see the language as crucial for maintaining access to more-than-human power, others primarily view the language in terms of peer-oriented identities as Arapaho, Indian, or non-White. These different views lead to quite different language usage and attitudes in relation to place naming, personal naming, cultural metaphors, new word formation, and the understudied practice of folk etymology.

Cowell presents data from conversations and other natural discourse to show the diversity of everyday speech and attitudes, and he links these data to broader debates at Wind River and globally about the future organization of indigenous societies and the nature of Arapaho and indigenous identity.

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The Secret Powers of Naming

Sara Littlecrow-Russell; Introduction by Joy Harjo

University of Arizona Press, 2006

Sara Littlecrow-Russell’s style emerges from the ancient and sacred tradition of storytelling, where legends were told not just to entertain, but to teach and, if necessary, to discipline. The power of the storyteller is the power of naming, to establish a relationship, a connection, and a sense of meaning. A name is both a bequest and a burden. Each of the poems in this collection is, in essence, a naming ritual. Sharply, energetically, and always provocatively, these poems name uncomfortable moments, complex emotions, and sudden, often wryly humorous realizations.

As Littlecrow-Russell explores how names imposed by outsiders both collide and merge with the identities that Natives create for themselves, these poems decisively counter the images of Indians as colorful dancers, stoic saints, and defeated warriors. These verses are not constructed of beautiful images, nor are they stories of redemption. Instead, Littlecrow-Russell offers stark and honest witness to urban and reservation life at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In short snaps of honed lyric and voice, she tackles topics ranging from family, love, and spirituality, to welfare, addiction, and the thorny politics of tribal identity. Her work displays tremendous bitterness and anger, but there is also dignity, humor, and plenty of irony.

Candid and compelling, this collection brings fluent verse and human face to the commonly misrepresented experiences of Native Americans.

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Violence and Naming

On Mexico and the Promise of Literature

By David E. Johnson

University of Texas Press, 2019

Reclaiming the notion of literature as an institution essential for reflecting on the violence of culture, history, and politics, Violence and Naming exposes the tension between the irreducible, constitutive violence of language and the reducible, empirical violation of others. Focusing on an array of literary artifacts, from works by journalists such as Elena Poniatowska and Sergio González Rodríguez to the Zapatista communiqués to Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and 2666, this examination demonstrates that Mexican culture takes place as a struggle over naming—with severe implications for the rights and lives of women and indigenous persons.

Through rereadings of the Conquest of Mexico, the northern Mexican feminicide, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, the disappearance of the forty-three students at Iguala in 2014, and the 1999 abortion-rights scandal centering on “Paulina,” which revealed the tenuousness of women’s constitutionally protected reproductive rights in Mexico, Violence and Naming asks how societies can respond to violence without violating the other. This essential question is relevant not only to contemporary Mexico but to all struggles for democracy that promise equality but instead perpetuate incessant cycles of repression.

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