True Names Research Articles

“Catachresis at the Origin”: Names and Power in Toni Morrison’s Fiction

Abstract: Toni Morrison’s fiction is replete with characters who carry nicknames, who rename themselves, or are renamed by others. Some misnamings carry the stories of histories of marginalization and oppression—as with the “drunken yankee” responsible for the naming of Macon Dead in Song of Solomon . Morrison’s characters also rename themselves to resist the legacy of American slavery and institutionalized racism. What ties Morrison’s namings, misnamings, and renamings together is the sense that there is no path to the recovery of true names for many African American people. The consequence is not powerlessness; rather, the “catachresis at the origin” that Gayatri Spivak refers to is intuited organically by many Morrison characters, who embrace misnaming and rename themselves as a mode of claiming self-ownership. Catachresis may begin as rhetorical violence imposed from without, but in Toni Morrison’s fiction, it can end as an opportunity to assert power, autonomy, and a boundless creativity.

“Call me by my true names”. The utopian search for endometriosis and adenomyosis terminology devoid of ambiguous pathogenic meaning: Just an illusion?

“Call me by my true names”. The utopian search for endometriosis and adenomyosis terminology devoid of ambiguous pathogenic meaning: Just an illusion?

The Flesh Made Word: a word on seventeenth-century “true names” as an epistemology of sensibility

The Flesh Made Word: a word on seventeenth-century “true names” as an epistemology of sensibility

S7ílhen tl’a Swa7ám̓ (Food of the Ancestors)

T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss has dedicated most of her life to Indigenous plant remediation and restoration projects that support wetlands ecosystems, food forests and the wild inhabitants of these places. This is diligent and time based work. It will take several lifetimes to heal our planet, and everything we plant now will help to ensure that our future ancestors will survive. Through the work of planting and rebuilding these wetlands and food forests we are gifting the future a little of what was greatly taken from the natural world in the past 150 years. Through interdisciplinary documentation of this work, we assure that our future ancestors will continue to be connected to the natural world, by knowing the true names in our Indigenous languages, of these sacred plant relatives. These photos, along with the Sḵwx̱úmesh Snichem text, are part of the knowledge carrying that must be taken to the next generations to stay informed and connected. This is what reciprocity means to us. This is what Indigenous Food Sovereignty looks like.

Parmenides on the True and Right Names of Being

Parmenides as a knowing mortal (F I. 3) writes a philosophical-poetic account of a travelogue in which distinctive voices (F. 2) that are a mixture of myth and logos come out of an unnamed goddess (F I. 23) who didactically speaks with an unnamed young man as her direct listener and addressee (F II. 1) in order to reveal for him different spheres and routes (F II. 2) of inquiry about a specific referent. In the hybrid and tailored account of the immortal about a specific subject-matter, such as being, we can read different approaches of the thoughtful mortals through the narration of the goddess, and the idea of the immortal herself. And exactly when thoughtful mortals want to introduce their thinking and understanding of the “referent” in human lingual terms they appeal to the act of naming and making names, though there is no explicit account by the immortal about her approach for lingual expressing of the referent. Such an account gives us some useful and distinctive hints about Parmenides’ conception as a mortal about naming/names which makes his conception in a specific position in regard to the other pertinent and close words, such as ἔπος/ἔπεα, ῥῆμα, ἔργον, καλεῖν, λόγος and Presocratic thinkers like Heraclitus, Democritus, and Empedocles. According to the immortal’s account, in relation to naming and names thoughtful mortals can be classified mainly into two groups: (1) Those who are in Aletheia are informed of the distinctive features of the referent that is a “totality” and should be able to make “true” names for it but fail (F8. 38-39). If they succeeded, then their naming and names are true/ ἀληθῆ; and (2) those who are in Doxa think to know the features of the referent that is a “dual” and accordingly thoughtful mortals make names. Though all of names that are made are not unacceptable, one set is acceptable/χρεών (F 8. 54). As a result, we can infer that if Parmenides as a thoughtful mortal wants to express his thought about eon in lingual terms, he should appeal to naming and making names for they have specific dynamis (F IX. 2—a term that appears in Plato’s Cratylus 394b) in communicating the nature of any specific referent. The first best situation or Aletheia is where on the basis of his “knowledge”, he can communicate the distinctive features of eon in names and thereby make “true” names. Besides, there is the second best or Doxa, where he can communicate his “beliefs” about the essence and essential features of eon in names and make “acceptable” names.

MUSICAL CULTURE OF THE PRINCIPALITIES OF GALICIAN AND VOLYNIAN LANDS, THE RUS’ KINGDOM (12TH–14TH CENTURIES): NEW APPROACHES AND INFORMATION

The article aims to note new sources and systematize the found facts for a broader description of the development of multinational musical culture in Volynia and Galicia during the Princely era. At t he same time, the methodology of our studies is based on the interpretation of the collected materials, which consolidates the hermeneutic studies of music development. The application of the historical and anthropological approach not only helps to replace the historiographical name «Galician-Volhynian Principality» with true historical names of this area, but also reinforces one of the reasons for the emergence of music, its existence and development as interconnected parts of the following systemic process: «creation – performance – perception». The scientific novelty of the article also lies in the fact that it puts the found facts in order with a slightly different emphasis; thanks to this, the formation of multinational musical art in this region of medieval Rus’ is shown more clearly as it supplements the already published essays. It was possible to better confirm the development of pre-Christian beliefs as one of the foundations of the progress of music, to enrich organological information, including a clearer delineation of the components of bell-ringing, in particular, the existence of various bells and bell towers. The article contains notes on the existence of different components of musical culture in one city and supplements its iconography. It notes the emergence of new versions of the Mytusa from chronicles and the continuous disappointing reproduction of whimsical information about him. Conclusions. New information and necessary clarifications to the previous description of the musical culture of the region contribute to a clearer delineation of its polyethnicity in the Romanovychs’ Principality, and later the Kingdom of Rus’, where the Ruthenian/Ukrainian artistic component played an important role.

Корреспондент святителя Феофана «г-жа NN»

The article presents materials about Varvara Alexandrovna Iordan, a correspondent and spiritual daughter of St. Theophan, whose letters to her have been printed for over a century as “Letters to Mrs. NN.” Concealment of true names of St. Theophan’s correspondents was often dictated by the addressees themselves, who removed recognizable facts and details when preparing letters for publication. The name of “Mrs. NN” is defined by the mention of this person in a letter to V. V. Shvidkovskaya. By family ties V. A. Iordan (nee Pushchina) was connected with the family of the rector of St. Petersburg University P. A. Pletnev, thanks to whom she met her future husband, the famous engraver F. I. Iordan. The atmosphere of family happiness contributed to the successful work of Iordan on the second engraved portrait of N. V. Gogol, which is confirmed by previously unpublished letters from F. I. Iordan to F. V. Chizhov. Correspondence between V.A. Iordan and St. Theophan began in 1879, four years before the death of her husband. The surviving letters contain information on external events in the life of V.A. Jordan, her spiritual growth under the influence of St. Theophan; his recommendations and advice, assessments and judgments are invaluable. The letters contain many unique testimonies of how the life of the Vysha hermit proceeded in recent years.

History of Novonikolaevsk City Formation (1877–1905)

The official date of the Novosibirsk (Novo-Nikolaevsk) city foundation, established in the early 1990s, was the result of an opportunistic ideological agreement between Soviet party and economic bodies, representatives of science and the public. The city formation was considered both in the event and in the legal aspect. The article is based on the terms, accepted in science: “foundation of a settlement” and “transformation of a settlement into a city”. In chronological order, based on archival sources, the main foundation stages of the settlement and its transformation into the city of Novo-Nikolaevsk are highlighted. The report contains irrefutable evidence regarding 1904, as the date of the Novo-Nikolaevsk city formation, the key role of Emperor Nicholas II and the heterogeneous population, in the process of the city formation and development. The restoration of historical truth by returning true dates, names and events should become the norm for other Russian cities, the return of its true history.

Editor’s Plaisance

Editor’s Plaisance

A Dream of Dual Citizenship

Many problems exist for United States (U.S.) descendants of Cabo Verde (In 2015, the government of Cabo Verde asked in the United Nations that the official name be Cabo Verde in all documents, opposed to the colonial version, “Cape Verde”) Islands seeking dual citizenship. Much of this is due to multiple 20th century racial discriminatory practices by the U.S. in soliciting cheap labor from Cabo Verde Islands, including changing the birth names of Cabo Verdean immigrants when they entered the United States. Without knowing the true birth names of their ancestors, descendants such as myself have no access to proof of birth in the dual citizenship process. Years often pass by as Cabo Verdean Americans search for clues that may lead to proving their legal status through family stories, and track related names as well as birth and death records. For many, dual citizenship may never be granted from the Cabo Verdean government, despite having U.S. death certificates that state that the family member was born in Cabo Verde. This autobiographical case study explores why so many Cabo Verdean Americans seek dual citizenship with a strong desire to connect to their motherland. Moreover, issues related to language, class and colorism discrimination between Cabo Verdean-born immigrants and descendants in the U.S. are explored. In so doing, the researcher hopes to ameliorate the divisions between the current government policies and Cabo Verdean American descendants, as well as build greater intracultural connections between those born in the Cabo Verde Islands and those born in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The True and Fake Names of Boris Godunov

This paper takes a new look at the “anthroponymical dossier” of Boris Godunov and his family. Insufficient familiarity with the structure of the Medieval Russian polyonymy (that is, the practice of using many names for the same person) has been known to lead not only to the introduction of redundant and never-existing people to research papers, but also to real people taking redundant, imaginary names, which they did not and often could not have taken in reality. This paper takes a look at both the names the tsar had, without a doubt, and the names under which he existed in previous research (Boris, Bogolep, Iakov, Bogdan, Theodot). Special attention is given to the personal patron saints’ cult in Godunov’s family, mostly to St. Theodotus. Some problems of attribution and dating of several artifacts are raised.

Call Me by My True Names

Call Me by My True Names

Questioning Authenticity: On the Documentary Film Reclaiming Our Names

Questioning Authenticity:On the Documentary Film Reclaiming Our Names So Hye Kim (bio) The South Korean documentary film Reclaiming Our Names (Ponmyŏng sŏnŏn, 1998) is, to date, the first and only South Korean documentary that attends to the moments of ethnic "coming out" of Koreans in Japan, commonly known as Zainichi. Made by the renowned independent filmmaker Hong Hyŏng-suk (b. 1962), the film centers around the biannual ritual of honmyō sengen (lit. "declaration of one's original name") that was enacted at Amagasaki High School in Osaka, Japan, in the late 1990s. During honmyō sengen, Zainichi students publically declare their "Korean" names as their true names, rather than the Japanese tsūmei (lit. "passing name") by which they had previously been known. Reclaiming Our Names depicts the real and psychic challenges Zainichi students face when torn between their two names, as well as the personal and social meanings attached to each. Toward the end of the film, a Zainichi student speaks to the audience in South Korea via an interview with the director. This student had chosen to render his ethnic identity visible by declaring his honmyō ("original name"; Korean name) as Pak Sŏng-yong in front of his Japanese classmates. Yet what he says in front of the camera is not a statement about the predicaments he faces in Japan as Zainichi, but a sincere request for Koreans to recognize Zainichi issues with empathy. He goes on to mention [End Page 335] that one of his Zainichi friends experienced ethnic discrimination during her visit to South Korea, suggesting that Zainichi Koreans are still invisible in their "homeland" even after and despite having endured the arduous and intense experience of reclaiming Korean identity. Looking at the camera, he appeals to the South Korean audience to recognize the existence of Zainichi. Within Zainichi communities, issues surrounding ethnic identity have long been considered serious social, political, legal, and psychological concerns. However, as Sŏng-yong's remark poignantly reveals, in the wake of such moments of choice between dichotomous paths of identity, there is an enduring experience of grief that has remained all but invisible in South Korea. Compared with the relative visibility in recent years of Zainichi students within the Korean ethnic education system, representations of the complicated ethnic identity of Zainichi and the related issues of their passing in Japanese society are rarely found in South Korean films. Reclaiming Our Names focuses primarily on portraying, in sentimental terms, the moment when Zainichi students stand before their Japanese classmates and declare themselves ethnically Korean. Yet, on screen, this ritual appears more as a performance of authentic identity than a confirmation of it. Such ambivalences thus call our attention to the many implications of a practice that equates the choice between names with the choice to pass or to "come out." Given that most Zainichi students have lived with their Japanese names their whole lives, to what extent can we regard the Korean name as "original" and the Japanese name as "fake" or "a disguise"? If Zainichi students do "choose" to use their honmyō, to what extent does this claiming of identity give closure to questions of authenticity? If the ritual of "reclaiming our names" actually ends up perpetuating a crisis of identity, in what ways do educational institutions shape this act of self-displacement into one of ethnic redemption? Not only are these questions left unresolved in Reclaiming Our Names, but the film itself has raised overlapping concerns [End Page 336] about authenticity that exceed the boundaries of textuality. About ten minutes of footage that appears in Reclaiming Our Names was not actually shot by Hong Hyŏng-suk but by the Zainichi filmmaker Yang Yonghi (b. 1964) as part of Yang's short documentary The Swaying Spirit (Yureru kokoro, 1996). A few days after Hong's film premiered at the 3rd Busan International Film Festival (hereafter BIFF), Yang sent a message regarding the unauthorized use of her film in Reclaiming Our Names to several newspapers and film magazines in South Korea. In the latter half of 1998, the dispute over these two documentaries developed into one of the most polarizing controversies to sweep the...

Does the Great Fire Wall cause self-censorship? The effects of perceived internet regulation and the justification of regulation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of internet censorship, which is represented by the Great Fire Wall, on Chinese internet users’ self-censorship.Design/methodology/approachA 3×2 factorial experiment (n=315) is designed. Different patterns of censorship (soft censorship, compared censorship, and hard censorship) and the justification of internet regulation are involved in the experiment as two factors. The dependent variable is self-censorship which is measured through the willingness to speak about sensitive issues and the behavior of refusing to sign petitions with true names.FindingsThe results show that perceived internet censorship significantly decreases the willingness to talk about sensitive issues and the likelihood of signing petitions with true names. The justification of censorship significantly decreases self-censorship on the behaviors of petition signing. Although there are different patterns of internet censorship that Chinese netizens may encounter, they do not differ from each other in causing different levels of self-censorship.Research limitations/implicationsThe subjects are college students who were born in the early 1990s, and the characteristics of this generation may influence the results of the experiment. The measurement of self-censorship could be refined.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the body of literature about internet regulation because it identifies a causal relationship between the government’s internet censorship system and ordinary people’s reaction to the regulation in an authoritarian regime. Unpacking different patterns of censorship and different dimensions of self-censorship depicts the complexity of censoring and being censored.

Predication or Participation? What is the Nature of Aquinas’ Doctrine of Analogy?

Predication or Participation? What is the Nature of Aquinas’ Doctrine of Analogy?

Introduction to Liberation Theology and Engaged Buddhism

Introduction to Liberation Theology and Engaged Buddhism Kristin Johnston Largen As more and more people continue to discover, Buddhism and Christianity are fruitful dialogue partners, not least because while they have different significantly world-views and orientations, their doctrines and practices often seem to be generally complementary, rather than contradictory. So, when these two religions are brought into conversation around a specific issue or challenge, often the result is that fresh light is cast onto an old problem, creating the possibility for creative thinking and new insights. Such is the case in the four articles that appear in this issue of the journal. All four articles take as their theme an encounter between Engaged Buddhism and liberation theology, asking what resources each has to offer the other, and what new interpretations and/or correctives might be shared in the course of the conversation. There are several common threads that weave through all the articles, and serve as touchstones for the overarching discussion. First and foremost is the dialectic between compassion (or love) and justice. Several authors note how sometimes these two attitudes are juxtaposed, as though they are opposites, when in reality, they stem from a similar motivation and share a similar purpose. And, even more, they need each other for true transformation to occur. Paul Knitter discusses this symbiosis, showing not only how compassion must be translated into action through the demands of justice, in order to create structural change, but also how actions for justice always must arise out of “genuine feelings of deep compassion for all sentient beings,” in order to endure (Knitter, p. 102). The second commonality is the reexamination of the theological idea of a “preferential option for the poor.” This is a key theme of liberation theology, and it is one of the important insights liberation theology offers to the theological community as a whole. However, as several of the authors note, this concept easily can be both misunderstood and misapplied. From a Buddhist perspective, this idea too quickly causes one group to be pitted against another, with one group labeled “good” and the other labeled “bad.” As Karen Enriquez notes in her article, “The main objection of Engaged Buddhists against the preferential option for the poor is that, from a Buddhist perspective, it can and has led to partial, dualistic and exclusionary language, attitudes, and actions that lead to greater suffering” (Enriquez, p. 70). In the articles, [End Page 51] both Christian and Buddhist authors seek to reinterpret the preferential option in such a way that it becomes liberating for everyone and encourages empathy for the other, rather than judgment. The third important commonality in the articles is the interrogation of the practice of universal compassion in Buddhism. What does it mean to have compassion for both perpetrator and victim? Is that compassion the same? How can/should that compassion be actualized in the life of a community? In this context, both Sallie King and Karen Enriquez cite the famous poem by Thich Nhat Hanh “Please Call Me by My True Names.” This is a powerful poem, inspired by the tragic rape of a twelve-year-old Vietnamese girl by a pirate, and her subsequent suicide. In the poem, Hanh not only imagines himself in the place of the girl and voices her suffering, but also puts himself in the place of the pirate and imagines his suffering, too. King used this poem in a class she was teaching in Germany, and she was surprised by the strong reaction of some of her German students, who passionately insisted “that it is not right to always be nonjudgmental, that it is imperative that the Nazis be judged as deeply wrong” (King, p. 58). Appreciating their perspective and experience, she says, “I found it impossible not to feel that sometimes one side is simply wrong and the side trying to stop it is simply right” (King, p. 60). Finally, all the articles address the need to balance the desire to change society with the necessity of first or simultaneously changing oneself. To this end, both Knitter and King quote Thich Nhat Hanh’s well-known formulation “To make peace you first have to be peace...

“They can learn to say my name”: Redistributing Responsibility for Integrating Immigrants to Canada

Newcomers to Canada whose names index identities other than “white” and “English” face pressure to alter their names to facilitate integration. Some immigrants oppose the forces of conformity and refuse to assimilate their names. In interviews, they explain this stance using discourses of agency centring on a belief in true names, a moral obligation to get names right, and a need for a strong self. Focusing on ideologies of identity and language in their meta-agentive discourses, I argue that the act of immigrants keeping their ethnic names is a political move to redistribute responsibility for the integration of newcomers into the host society.

Monarchs’ Names and Numbering in the Second Bulgarian State

The article explores the onomastic practices of medieval Bulgarians, focusing on the Second Bulgarian State, from the late 12th to the early 15th century. The collected evidence suggests that soon after their conversion to Christianity, Bulgarians abandoned the attested pre-Christian clan names. Yet, despite the undeniable strength of Byzantine cultural influence, neither aristocrats nor commoners in Bulgaria seem to have adopted Byzantine-type family names, nor, for that matter, making recourse to the use of patronymics as found among the Eastern and other Southern Slavs. Thus, for example, the name Asen became a true family name only among members of the royal family living in Byzantium. More generally, the few cases of family names or patronymics apparently applied to medieval Bulgarians, seem to be restricted to a foreign context. While family names and patronymics do not seem to have been employed in Christian Medieval Bulgaria, many individuals (at least where males are concerned) appear to have sported double names, composed almost invariably of a baptismal Christian name paired with a folk name usually derived from Slavic or even Bulgar tradition. This practice included Bulgaria’s monarchs, most of whom had such double names that should not be misinterpreted as family names or patronyms, as often done in the past. Specific names did, however, function as indicators for belonging within a particular lineage, as witnessed by the propagation of names like Asen, Terter, Šišman, and Sracimir. Thus, while these cannot be considered true family names, we could continue to use them as expedients to designate the ruling clans of Medieval Bulgaria (e.g., the House of Terter), albeit recognizing this to be a modern label. These considerations not only elucidate another aspect of cultural practice in Medieval Bulgaria, but also allow and necessitate a relatively inobtrusive emendation and systematization of the historiographical nomenclature of Medieval Bulgarian monarchs. Discarding the notion of family names and recognizing foreign patronymics for what they are, it becomes possible to recover the actual results of dynastic name selection, as well as the rationale behind them.

Cave Hibernaculum Surveys of a Townsend's Big-Eared Bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) Colony at Mount St. Helens, Washington

The Mount St. Helens (MSH) colony of Townsend’s Big-eared Bats (Corynorhinus townsendii) uses several caves in the Cave Basalt lava flow near Mount St. Helens, Washington State, USA, including hibernacula and a maternity roost. Federal, state, and private land managers currently consider the MSH colony of Townsend’s Big-eared Bats to be 1 group, based upon apparent high-fidelity use of the known maternity roost and hibernacula, and the unique landscape of the Cave Basalt lava flow, which contains a large number of roost sites in a small area. The Cave Basalt is a clearly-definable flow of pahoehoe lava approximately 9 mi in area, containing numerous lava tubes. Though lava fields and tubes exist in other regions of the Pacific Northwest, the Cave Basalt is relatively unique for its high abundance of lava tube caves in a small area. The lava flow has been radiocarbon dated to approximately 1900 BP (Greeley and Hyde 1972), and forest ecology on the flow differs greatly from the surrounding coniferforested landscape common to western Washington State (Halliday 1962; Mullineaux and Crandell 1981; Nieland and Nieland 1994). The MSH colony of Townsend’s Big-eared Bats has been a focus of substantial conservation efforts. Wildlife biologists and personnel from multiple agencies (USDA Forest Service, Washington Department of Natural Resources, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife) began implementing conservation measures for the MSH colony in the late 1990s, using public outreach to educate recreational cavers, implementing seasonal closures and signage at known hibernacula, and installing bat-friendly exclosure gates at multiple entrances of the known maternity roost. A parcel of land containing the main entrance of the maternity roost was purchased in 1999 from private timberland ownership by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) of Washington State (WDFW 2002). Previous efforts to assess the size of the MSH colony consisted of intermittent exit counts at the maternity roost, recorded by TNC staff, graduate students from the Vancouver branch campus of Washington State University (Green 2003), and ND Reynolds (NDR) as an ecological consultant to TNC (Reynolds 2005, 2006). Although synthesis of these efforts revealed 25 y of persistent use of the maternity roost, surveys were not systematic. A systematic, repeatable survey that could provide an index to population size was needed. In 2003, JM Wainwright proposed a program of hibernaculum surveys. A shortlist of 6 caves was identified from over 64 caves known from the Cave Basalt (per Nieland and Nieland 1994), which were likely, based on expert knowledge and detailed agency reports (Senger and Crawford 1984), to harbor the majority of bats during winter. To protect these caves, we do not report true cave names and or location information. We present data using 6 pseudonyms: ‘‘Cave A’’ through ‘‘Cave F’’. Survey methods consisted of entering hibernacula during winter and counting Townsend’s Big-eared Bats. We are acutely aware that Townsend’s Big-eared Bats are sensitive to human disturbance (BC Wildlife 1998; WBWG 2005), and waking from torpor in midwinter is metabolically expensive (Thomas and others 1990), so we developed rapid-reconnaissance survey methods (Kunz 2003; Tuttle 2003) to minimize disturbance as much as possible. We surveyed only every other year, and each cave was surveyed only once during survey years. GENERAL NOTES

Maps and Biased Familiarity: Cognitive Distance Error and Reference Points

When map readers process information on cartographic maps, there is a competition for visual attention controlled by both top-down and bottom-up mechanisms. We hypothesize that when learning, map readers are predisposed to allocate attention asymmetrically and to initially favour some locations over others. This asymmetrical allocation of attention facilitates learning for certain locations as a result of familiarity bias. In this study, participants were asked to learn city locations on one of three cartographic maps. Maps displayed distributions of cities with true or novel locations and names. Results indicate that cognitive distance error was significantly less for “home” reference points, visually central reference points, and reference points within a visual cluster. Female participants outperformed male participants when learning novel maps; male participants performed significantly better with maps with true locations and city names. Both female and male learners performed better when processing maps with familiar locations and names. The results support the idea that a biased allocation of attention would cause learners to consider favoured relationships more frequently and to improve their accuracy relative to less favoured relationships and those that receive less attention. Results also support the notion that multiple factors on a map cause attention bias and that bias should disappear with sufficient experience.