The Emperor's New Clothes

neither static nor extrinsic to power

Words attain meaning through the history of their usage, and these histories contain traces of the struggle not only to name but also to create the world.

단어가 사용되는 방식, 맥락, 시기마다 의미가 달라지고, 이러한 변화는 사회적, 정치적, 경제적 권력 구조에 의해 영향을 받는다.

For example, the word "freedom" carries different meanings in different contexts (colonial independence, economic freedom, individual rights). Just as Donald Trump's notion of freedom differs from Martin Luther King Jr.'s, the concept varies depending on who uses it and for what purpose.

Naming has historically been a war zone

이름 붙이기(명명)는 단순히 사물을 구분하거나 이해하려는 과정이 아니라, 권력을 두고 벌어지는 갈등의 장이다.

Deciding who gets to name something and how it is named reflects underlying power dynamics and systems of control. For example, debates over place names(such as colonial-era names versus post-independence names) shows conflicts over power and identity, as seen in the case of Bombay versus Mumbai in India, Gyeongseong versus Seoul in Korea.

the attribution of names takes the undifferentiated whole and parses it into discrete and manipulable units, the evolution of word usage tends to correspond with developments in what Marx called “the productive forces.” As Raymond Williams noted, “ordinary, everyday language” is “directly subject to historical development” (1980, 50).

이름을 붙이는 행위는 대상을 인식하고 분류하며, 그 대상을 다룰 수 있는 구체적인 개념이나 단위로 만들게 된다. → 이를통해 혼란스럽고 구분되지 않은 전체(복잡한 현실)가 분리되고, 조작 가능하게 된 단위로 만들기(통제하는 방식)

Economy and Labor: by assigning the name "labor," human activities are transformed from acts of survival into measurable and controllable units of production. This becomes the foundation for systems in capitalist economies to buy and organize labor as a resource.
Nature and Resource: defining "nature" as "resources" transforms nature from it's existance into usable and manipulable units.
Social Identity: like race, gender, and class are shaped into distinguishable social units through naming. E.g. the term "consumer" defines an individual not just as a person but as a unit in specific economic activities, manipulable and targeted for economic purposes.

단어 사용과 의미의 변화 = 충돌과 기회의 동시성

No guarantee that change(in real life) is positive
Word changes and transformation of Labor in the context of Post-Fordism
Social media and labor
Importance of linguistic controversies

↘︎명칭의 문제보다는 본질적인 문제를 지적하는 것이 더 효과적일 수 있음: 예를 들어, 이스라엘의 "펜스"와 "벽"이라는 명칭 자체를 바꾸거나 논쟁하는 대신, 그 펜스가 어떤 의도로 사용되고 있으며, 그 결과가 무엇인지에 초점을 맞추는 것이 더 중요해지는 지점. 예를 들어, 펜스가 대규모 토지 수탈을 가능하게 하는 도구로 사용된다면, 그것이 "펜스"라고 불리든, "벽"이라고 불리든 상관없이 본질적으로 문제라고 지적해야 한다는 것이다. 즉, 명칭에 대한 논의는 부차적인 문제이고, 오히려 그 구조물이 수행하는 역할이나 기능을 문제 삼아야 한다는 주장. 이는 명칭보다 구조적, 기능적 문제를 비판하고 행동의 정당성을 부여해야 한다는 활동가들의 전략적 관점을 반영한 관점.

When taken seriously, they can foster the development of coherent strategic lines and increase the impact of our political interventions. By honing in on these points of conflict, it becomes possible to uncover the social contradictions that find expression, as Williams observed, “within language” (1983, 22). Indeed, because “earlier and later senses” of words often “coexist” within a single moment of enunciation, words themselves can often come to signal “actual alternatives” through which “problems of . . . belief and affiliation are contested” (1983, 22). On this point, Williams comes close to the position advanced by feminist poet Adrienne Rich, who, in her 1971 poem “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children,” recounted how “a language is a map of our failures.”