What is it about?
The language we use shapes our conception of our world. At the level of structure--the order of nouns and verbs, the use of active or passive voice and the pronouns we use (like 'she' versus 'it')--language conveys an understanding of ourselves and our world. Comparing Irish and English languages shows how the words we use shape a view of nature and ourselves. How we speak can shift our view of the world, opening up the possibility of seeing people and nature as interdependent--instead of humans as inevitably environmentally destructive and apart from nature.
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Why is it important?
It's widely presumed that all European cultures are the same and all European people are like colonizers and imperialists--with a cultural ethos that justifies human mastery over other life and some humans mastering other humans. However, analysis of the Irish language demonstrates cultural diversity in Europe. Traditional Irish, or Celtic, culture and language conveys an understanding of humans as living with non-human life and becoming non-human after our death--through the decomposition of our bodies into soil which is the basis for all other life. Humans are connected to all other life and our lives are more meaningful than our individual personal striving. We become the flowers, fields and trees which feed the birds, bees and critters. These kinds of ideas are prevalent in lots of minor, European cultures including Icelandic, Basque and Lithuanian. Breaking down the binary between the 'West and the rest' breaks down the exceptionalism at the heart of white supremacy and is important in the present moment where eco-fascism is on the rise. European people have other cultural lineages than imperialism and colonialism, with their ecological destruction, genocide and enslavement. These ways of being European should be valued instead of the colonial and imperial ones that see life as competitive and violent. To be European does not over-determine someone to being a violent killer of life.
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This page is a summary of: Human to Humus: Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Cré na Cille and Ecocriticism as a Decolonialist Strategy, Resilience A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, January 2021, Project Muse,
DOI: 10.1353/res.2021.0006.
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