Peace with Identification

“Oktṓ” means eight and “poús” means foot in Latin. Octopus was named after the count of its legs. So what if it loses one of its legs? Is it still counted as an octopus?

In many cases humans have the tendency to think about nature as something they can possess or rule. So in the course of history the names that were given to many objects, beings and entities were chosen by humankind. But this doesn't necessarily have a negative impact since humans have the ability to learn and create languages. However the problem started when a group of nations went out to various kinds of parts of the world and forced their language upon people. Donna Haraway links this act with a much greater one which is named Plantationocene. She and Anna Tsing define Plantationocene as a consequence of first radical simplification and the elimination of categories of players. It calls out to false universality and it reminds the involvement of race and religion as Anna Tsing explains. This links the definition with colonialism perhaps. The dominance of “elite white male” and the classification which was made by comparing only white male with other beings. Plantionocene also suggests that simplification and substitution requires a world making which might be also linked with this dominance act of these white males and the universality created by eliminating others in order to make one homogeneous world. After people understood the changes which resulted from the Plantationocene and humankind’s traces on the world, Anthropocene was argued as the case. Anthropocene was “a term referring to transformative effects of human activities on Earth” as Haraway explains. Anthropocene also suggests that the change which has been done to Earth by humans started in the mid-eighteenth-century with the use of fossil fuels and steam engines. But like many people did in the past it draws a distinct line between polluted and polluter. It builds two sides one being humans and other being the whole different beings. This discrimination between nature which excludes humans and humankind which excludes the habitat they live in. This separation makes people look to nature in a different angle that somehow alienates all other entities.

In Codex Seraphinianus, Luigi Serafini depicted entities in a unique manner. He created an illustrated encyclopedia of an imagined universe. He illustrated in a manner similar to Medieval bestiaries and used a non-semantic language in the text. It is inspired by the superstition and myths of humankind. The Codex offers a different point of view than a common encyclopedia and exhibits a whole new way of describing the surroundings.

Peace with Identification takes the same method as Luigi Serafini did in Codex Seraphinianus and tries to illustrate surroundings with an alternative way. As the word “identification” advocates the act of naming someone or something, “Peace with Identification” encourages a way to make peace with identifying entities. With the knowledge of Anthropocene and Plantationocene the objects were named as different than they are called today. As Haraway says indigenous people are forced to learn southern idioms. White population insists on the unity of language but that could give birth to a monopoly and a homogeneous culture which lacks color and difference. She suggests that nurturing people contact may help players learn each other's idioms. This would bring diversity into the open and create a colorful language. Indigenous people have a lot to teach about nature and entities other than humans. Peace with Identification suggests that we have an option other than selecting a universal language to name or define entities. Shaping the words in a way that includes kinship and in a more Ecocentric rather than Humancentric approach may lead into thinking about nature since the power of language in meaning making and understanding surroundings can not be underestimated. By naming these objects in the work as peacemakers rather than protection from the environment, Peace with Identification links “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” Ursula Le Guin defines in her book. She argues that “We will not ‘beat’ climate change, nor is ‘nature’ our adversary”. This perspective of seeing oven gloves and winter gloves as objects with peacemaking purposes via touching rather than looking at heat and cold as enemies. Such mindset also emphasizes the importance of kinship as it suggests positive relationships between beings. A possible consequence of this kinship might bring a better awareness of surroundings and may lead to a more Ecocentric standpoint. The last image however concentrates on a more recent issue the world is currently facing. By taking one of the “protectors” from the recent COVID-19 virus and naming it as a peacemaker between humans and viruses, the name Peace with Virus makes the realization of the virus a part of people’s lives and possibly leads to an easier acceptance.