I was recently at a hotel breakfast and watched a girl of two or three years age.
There were impressionistic sculptures of animals on each table. At first she was clueless, then puzzled and curious. With her mother’s help, she ‘named’ one sculpture for the creature that it represented. With a little help, all the names came tumbling out.
Her delight was evident as she ran from table to table amidst the guests repeating the names of each animal.
Various thoughts came to mind:
• Gen 2:19. By naming her world she was gaining understanding and a measure of control. She could talk about her world to herself and with others. In short, naming opened the path to mastery.
• Is naming one expression of what it mean so bear God’s image? To exercise stewardship and dominion over necessitates a measure of mastery? And naming is one means to that mastery.
• Observe how naming enables a child’s development towards autonomous human identity. Correspondingly, note how the inability to name blocks development. Or how a disability that prevents a person from naming there world prevents further development or even catalyses regression.
• In human society, who names what? To what extent does this give them power?
• Witness the habit of tyrants etc to rename places and even the calendar. Witness the Japanese renaming of Singapore on occupation in 1942. Witness the return to Maori names in much of NZ and what they express and create re the status of traditional culture. Witness the Generals renaming of Burma as Myanmar and how that is meant to bolster their claim to legitimacy by linkage to the past.
• Note Freire’s comments on the political import of naming the themes for discussion in language teaching and how the selection of themes and their naming either domesticates or liberates.
• Note how naming links to labeling which is so necessary in taxonomies but once set, takes on a metaphysical as well as an epistemological dimension.
• Note the power of naming and labeling as we humans move up the ladder of abstraction. As we name and label we make and express an evaluation which then frames our perceptions which, in turn, shape our actions and reactions.
Far more was at stake that morning than a girl’s simple delight at having names for the shapes before her.
2 comments:
Hi Rev. Burke,
Reading your post make me reflect on one of the function of followers of Christ is to name things/events.
By naming, we are exposing the destructiveness of a certain object on one end, and the constructiveness of the gospel on the other (for eg. consumerism).
Hence, the idea of 'witnessing', 'proclaiming', or 'preaching comes under new light when seen through your reflection on the act of naming itself.
I think there is much that you can develop further from this otherwise simple breakfast encounter.
:)
Yes ... it struck me as a quite profound moment.
It happened when i was on holiday and I thought about for a few days.
I had hoped to write much more on it but time pressed in and I was keen to get something down anyway.
I hope to get back to the topic as it fits with some other interest of mine to develop it further.
Post a Comment