top of page

glossary

NOUN: a collection of specialized terms with their meanings [1]

synonym Keywording: a process of cataloguing vocabulary; a mode of interrogation; to make work accessible; to serve as record of change over time [2]

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Keywords for African American Studies (2018)

Family Tree

NOUN: a genealogical diagram [1]

[1] Merriam-Webster

For ease of reference, my family tree can be viewed on Canva here.

Appendix​

NOUN: a bodily outgrowth or process [1]

NOUN (body part): a small tube-shaped part that has no use in humans [2]

LATIN: an addition; continuation; something attached [3]

NOUN: supplementary matter added at the end of a book [1]

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Cambridge Dictionary

[3] Online Etymology Dictionary

Archive

NOUN: a death sentence, a tomb, a display of the violated body, an inventory of property, a medical treatise on gonorrhea, a few lines about a whore’s life, an asterisk in the grand narrative of history [1]

NOUN: a site of community identity and self-realization; a monolithic accumulation of knowledge; a sponge-like fluidity of information; a particular location but with no fixed address; a place of affect and emotion; a context for evidence and memory; a deliberate site of power [2]

NOUN (pertaining to slavery): slavery’s archive is in no one place; is never completely knowable; an imaginary with no specific location; exists wherever the material might exist – in traditional archives, but also in the abstract and in the possible [3]

 

[1] “Venus in Two Acts” by Sadiya Hartman (pg. 2)

[2] “Moving the margins to the middle: reconciling ‘the archive’ with the archives” by Jeannette Bastian (pg. 6, 9) in Engaging with Records and Archives 

[3] “Moving the margins to the middle: reconciling ‘the archive’ with the archives” by Jeannette Bastian (pg. 7-8) in Engaging with Records and Archives

Assemblage

NOUN: a collection of things; the process of joining [1] 

 

[1] Cambridge Dictionary

Blood

NOUN: the fluid that circulates in the heart, arteries, capillaries, and veins carrying nourishment and oxygen to and bringing away waste products from all parts of the body  [1]

NOUN: related by birth [2]

 

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Cambridge Dictionary

Care​

VERB: to cultivate anticipation of another world; to live now dedicated to the task of turning this world into a better one [1]

NOUN: the antidote to violence [2]

NOUN: care and acts of care as complicated, gendered, misused; shared and distributed risk; mass refusals of the unbearable life; total rejections of the dead [3]

related to IRISH (gairm) to cry; PROTO-GERMANIC (karo-) to lament; OLD ENGLISH (carian) to grieve [4]

NOUN: looking away; closing our eyes; seeing beyond the intellect and observation [5]

[1] “What White Supremacists Want” by Bonnie Honig

[2] Saidiya Hartman

[3] Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

[4] Online Etymology Dictionary

[5] “Looking Away” by Lisa Stevenson

Colonialism

NOUN: a practice and logic organizing the modern world through uneven distribution of resources and subordination of black and brown bodies [1]

NOUN: domination of a people or area by a foreign state or nation [2]

 

[1] Keywords for African American Studies (2018) entry by Shona N. Jackson (pg. 56)

[2] Merriam-Webster

Descendant 

ADJECTIVE: proceeding from an ancestor [1]

NOUN: something similar to and influenced by something that existed before it [2]

 

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Cambridge Dictionary

[Dis]Inherit(ance)

NOUN (from dead person): money or objects someone gives you when they die [1]

NOUN: tradition; a valuable possession; common heritage [2]

VERB (biology): to have (a characteristic, disease, etc.) because of your parents’ genes [3]

NOUN (for descendents of the enslaved): the inheritance of a blocked inheritance; the radically unequal distribution of property, privilege, and rights on the basis of race [4]

 

[1] Cambridge Dictionary

[2] Merriam-Webster

[3] Britannica

[4] The Implicated Subject by Michael Rothberg (pg. 64-65)

Entangle(ment)

NOUN: ​​condition of being involved [1]

VERB: to make complicated [1]

NOUN: wrapped and twisted together in a mass [2]

 

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Cambridge Dictionary

Genealogy​

NOUN: regular descent of a person from a progenitor [1]

NOUN: demands relentless erudition; opposes itself to the search for “origins”; seeks to reestablish the various systems of subjection and the hazardous play of dominations [2]

related to OLD ENGLISH (folctalu): folk tale, study of family trees [3]

NOUN: concerned with submerged problems whose itches feel impenetrable, whose remedies are ever just beyond our grasp, and whose very articulations require a severe work of thoughts [4]

NOUN (plural): histories of inversion [5] 

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] “Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History” in Language, counter-memory, practice by Michel Foucault (pg. 142 and 148)

[3] Online Etymology Dictionary

[4] Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity by Colin Koopman (pg. 1)

[5] “Foucault, Genealogy, Counter-History” by Gabriel Rockhill (pg. 86) in Theory & Event

Haunting

ADJECTIVE: staying in the mind [1]

NOUN: visitation by a ghost [2]

NOUN: not easily forgotten [2]

NOUN: a way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known; an animated state where a repressed or unresolved social violence makes itself known [3]

 

[1] Cambridge Dictionary 

[2] Merriam-Webster

[3] Ghostly Matters by Avery Gordon (pg. xvi)

Implicated Subject

NOUN: ​​neither a victim nor a perpetrator; a participant in and beneficiary of a system that generates dispersed and unequal experiences of trauma and well-being simultaneously; a person who is implicated in the past, but not complicit in crimes that took place before our birth [1]

 

[1] The Implicated Subject by Michael Rothberg (pg. 1, 12, 14)

Implication​

NOUN: a close connection [1]

LATIN (implicare): involve, entangle; embrace [2]

related to VERB (implicate): to draw attention to how we are “folded into” events that at first seem beyond our agency as individual subjects [3]

 

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Online Etymology Dictionary

[3] The Implicated Subject by Michael Rothberg (pg. 1)

Node

NOUN: an entangling complication; a point where parts originate; a swelling [1]

NOUN (biology): a place where a leaf and stem join on a plant [2]

 

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Cambridge Dictionary

Permaculture

NOUN: an agricultural system seeking to integrate human activity with natural surroundings to create self-sustaining ecosystems [1]

NOUN: plant-growing systems that cause little damage to the environment [2]

 

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Cambridge Dictionary

Privilege

VERB: to accord a higher value or superior position  [1]

NOUN: an opportunity to do something enjoyable [2]

NOUN (law): legal protection that a person has due to their position within a society [2]

 

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Cambridge Dictionary

Remediation​

NOUN: the act of remedying [1]

NOUN: the removal of a poisonous substance from the environment [2]

NOUN: assumes that all previous forms of representation have failed, necessitating new forms of contestation [3]

[1] Merriam-Webster

[2] Cambridge Dictionary

[4] The Implicated Subject by Michael Rothberg (pg. 83)

Story

NOUN: a form of compensation or even reparations, perhaps the only kind that can be given [1]

NOUN: an account of incidents; a fictional narrative; widely circulated rumor; a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation [2]

NOUN: a description, either true or imagined; a lie [3]

 

[1] “Venus in Two Acts” by Sadiya Hartman (pg. 4)

[2] Merriam-Webster

[3] Cambridge Dictionary

Taxonomy

NOUN: dry classification that spoils all enjoyment [1]

NOUN: the pleasure of naming [1]

NOUN: orderly classification of plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships [2]

 

[1] “Arts of Inclusion, or How to Love a Mushroom” by Anna Tsing in Mānoa (pg. 192)

[2] Merriam-Webster

Redress

NOUN: to correct a wrong [1]

TRANSITIVE VERB: to set right; to remove the cause of grievance; to requite for a loss [2]

NOUN: relief from distress [2]

 

[1] Cambridge Dictionary 

[2] Merriam-Webster

Slavery

NOUN: the condition of a person in permanent servitude [1]

NOUN: the state of a person forced under threat of violence to labor for the profit of another [2]

 

[1] Keywords for African American Studies (2018) entry by Sowande’ M. Mustakeem (pg. 208)

[2] Merriam-Webster

emma peterson | silent suffering | chid senior thesis

bottom of page