Linguistic Imprecision and Colonialism in Cultural Reconnection Movements
In recent years, as fascism’s expansion into the periphery of white attetion has caused counter efforts focused on white people reconnecting with their ethnic culture to offset the encroachment of white supremacy. I do not condemn this effort, in fact, I view it as deeply important to decolonizing.
That said, I have two very big issues with how it’s conducted. The first is a fixation on historic ethnicity rather than immediate cultural group (I’ll talk about this in another post) and the second is a colonial attitude towards reconnection.
Though colonial de-colonizing efforts take many different forms, I’m going to focus on a specific manifestation of it that’s been on the brain today, thanks to a chat with friends, which is a resistance to developing a relationship with a culture’s language.
See how I didn’t say *learn*. Yeah, I would be a hypocrite if I said that, I haven’t learned Lemko, not even close. I say develop a relationship because as you engage with a culture, you should learn their words for things. Yes, even if it’s just transliterated or you stammer or feel like a white college girl who came back from her semester abroad in France pronouncing it. Yes, even if you have to answer multiple asks about what it means and when it’s frustrating you can’t translate in your head. It’s due deference.
Even if learning a new language in its entirety is inaccessible or difficult for whatever reason, I can’t think of a reason to not call gods by the term the people that worshipped them used, or to use the right word for a head covering instead of just saying veiling. Non-specific language lends itself to appropriation. That’s why devotional jewelry often takes the shape of rosaries depspite not being for a Catholic practice, or veiling seems to always mimic the styles of hijabs instead of hair coverings that emulate those actually used by a cultural or historical group.
Now, I can already hear certain demographics running to the reblogs, comments, and my asks to screech about me using examples from two colonial religions for this discussion, but that, too, is intentional.
Colonialism encourages making certain things the default en masse, therefore making similar traits in different cultures easier to ‘other'. Pushing back against that defaulting with careful, precise language use benefits everyone. It fosters precision, it fosters thoughtfulness, and it fosters patience when you have to take a moment to explain something to somebody. To me, this thoughtfulness, if practiced regularly or, at the very least, earnestly, will naturally expand into other aspects of one’s cultural/religious reconnection efforts. Precise language lends itself to precise research, which lends itself to deeper understanding, and so on.
What I listened to while rambling about this. Naturally I lost my train of thought when i swapped what I was listening to.
