Thread by @WorthwhileRandC

Linguistic anthropologist here who specializes in expressions of bias in language.

@IBJIYONGI asked that I write something up explaining why @NASA’s use of “Ultima Thule” is NOT “reclamation.” So here goes… /1

First, let's be clear on
what it means to reclaim a word or phrase,
who does the reclaiming, and
why they do it. /2

A quick definition:

Reclamation is a process in which a word that has been used negatively, as a slur, starts to be used positively by in-group members.

It is a way for them to "reclaim" that word, and by speaking it to each other, in the in-group, defang it. /3

Turn it into something positive.

A word that they now own, too.

A word that now has another "flavor." /4

A great Russian theorist named Mikhail Bakhtin wrote about the "taste" and "flavor" of words.

He noted that there's more than just semantics in a word's meaning. Every time we encounter a word, it comes with the flavor of its context. /5

Who said it? And how did they say it?

Was it loving?
Cruel?
Dismissive?
Respectful?

You get the picture. /6

Like an ever-expanding snowball, a word keeps acquiring the flavor of the contexts in which we have heard or read it.

And when we say the word ourselves, it has a certain taste in our mouth.

It's the subtle, complex, combined taste of all the times we've encountered it. /7

Slurs taste terrible.

They taste like fear and hatred.
Like anger.
Like trauma.
Like the threat of violence.
For some unlucky people, like actual violence and maybe death. /8

Reclamation is the way that people change the flavor of a slur and take away its negative power. They are pushing back at the terrible ways that their group is talked about and threatened. /9

When they use this word with each other, in safe spaces -- ironically, knowingly, with love -- it creates new contexts with new flavors. /10

Instead of "queer" tasting only like gay bashing and being raided by the police and being beaten up in allies, it starts to acquire the flavor of the friends you hang out with, go dancing with, who patch you up after someone punched you in the face because you're gay. /11

A very few words, like "queer", change their flavor so much over the course of a lifetime that it becomes ok for out-group members to use them. Here, reclamation has "done its job."

(But note that there's a whole bunch of LGBTQ people for whom "queer" still tastes terrible.) /12

I used to subscribe to a magazine called "Heeb." This was reclamation by a group of hipster NY Jews who put together fun, anti-stereotype content. /13

One day, my father was visiting and saw a few issues on my coffee table. He froze, his eyes wide.

He swallowed hard a few times and said, "What's that magazine there?" /14

For me, the word "Heeb" didn't taste like anything.

I'd never heard it spoken aloud in my lifetime.

Not when I'd had pennies thrown at me. Not when people made "cheap" jokes, or talked about big noses. /15

I had to learn that for him, "Heeb" tasted like fear.

Like threatening boys and men in the Brooklyn of his youth.

Like taunts that were lobbed at him when he was 11, the same year he learned his mother's whole family in Poland had been murdered in the war. /16

Like violence and death. /17

My dad was an aerospace engineer for much of his life, and worked on celestial navigation with the Navy. He got access to pre-public 1968 "earth rise" photos and screened them for his family. He LOVED @NASA and flight and space. /18

If my father was still around, he would be devastated that @NASA has chosen to use the name "Ultima Thule" as part of its scientific exploration.

"Ultima Thule" tastes like white supremacy and violence and genocide.

It does not taste like science or space exploration. /19

When @NASA uses "Ultima Thule," it is NOT ENGAGING IN RECLAMATION. /20

"Ultima Thule" is not a slur.

Nazis are not a disempowered group with the slur "Ultima Thule" thrown at them.

@NASA scientists are not in-group recipients of the slur "Ultima Thule" trying to change its flavor and push back at stereotypes and fear. /21

So it is time to walk this backwards and rename "Ultima Thule" to something with a scientific -- or completely positive -- flavor.

While intentions may have been good (?), the impact is awful.

White supremacy and genocidal justifications have no place in science or space. /Fin

*alleys (!!!)