A Glossary of [naturetechnologies]
old/new words, new/old meanings
Martina Denegri
audio versions
Read along with this text.introduction
Naturetechnologies
Nature
Technology
Bug
Cultivating
Interdependence
Body
Intimacies
Empathy
Science
Knowledge
Techno-ecosystem
Attunement
Imagination
if you ever question the cost of your digital possibilities, of your creativity,
if you ever think “this device was not built for me”,
if you ever wonder about what could have been
if only we remembered those who think capital letters are not just for [H]umans,
who learn from the body and from the soil,
who never consider themselves masters of the world we live in,
i offer you de-/re-constructed words
to imagine the digital space as an ecosystem
where categories crumble and boundaries blur,
where a diversity of bodies [of people, of animals, of land, of objects, of knowledge] thrives,
where science is magical,
where nature, culture and technology become one.
A glossary is a collection of explanations of words, or glosses. It is a word of ancient roots from the Latin glossarium and the Greek glossarion. if you ever think “this device was not built for me”,
if you ever wonder about what could have been
if only we remembered those who think capital letters are not just for [H]umans,
who learn from the body and from the soil,
who never consider themselves masters of the world we live in,
i offer you de-/re-constructed words
to imagine the digital space as an ecosystem
where categories crumble and boundaries blur,
where a diversity of bodies [of people, of animals, of land, of objects, of knowledge] thrives,
where science is magical,
where nature, culture and technology become one.
A gloss can have different meanings. As a noun, [1] it is an explanation, a definition, or a translation of a word; but also [2] “glistening smoothness, lustre” or “glow”. This rather neutral definition [1] hides layers of meanings that have sedimented through history. In Late Latin glossa meant ‘obsolete or foreign word,’ one that requires explanation. Glōssa, from Greek, referred to “language” or “word of mouth”, but also to “obscure word”.
As a verb, to gloss is [1] to “insert a word as an explanation” and to “interpret”; [2] “to add lustre, make smooth and shining”; but also [3] to “use fair words”, “speak smoothly”, or “flatter”.
Before the gloss became an explanation, a definition, a clarification [1], it was something obsolete and obscure. The apparent transparency and shininess [2] of the gloss is merely superficial.
// What lies underneath its polished surface?
The act of glossing as explaining and interpreting [1] is an ambiguous one: it sheds light on a meaning whilst casting shadow on many other possibilities. The apparent smoothness of the gloss [2,3] becomes deceitful, coating the violence of the erasure of other meanings, worldviews, knowledges.// Glosses are words that soothe while holding the knife.
The glossary is a battleground. It classifies words and the bodies, territories, knowledges, and cultures they signify. Its normativity is disguised as law of nature and its violence as necessity. The glossary carries a great absence: all the meanings, narratives, languages, worldviews, sciences that did not conform with the monocultural and anthropocentric canon. A canon that is inscribed in the legacies of colonialism, of liberalism, and serves the interests of global capitalism. The glossary is a collection of severed words. The threads connecting meanings that generated alternative narratives and worldviews have been cut. The “civilised we” had to amputate the “indigenous them” to assert its dominance. The equality, interdependencies and harmony between different meanings, species and sciences have been glossed over.I propose a glossary of naturetechnologies. An alternative glossary, a living collection of de-/re-constructed glosses, of untamed glosses. Assemblages, hybrid words existing by virtue of their connections with each other. To compile the glossary becomes an act of resistance and opposition to an anthropo-/ethno-centric language. It is an attempt at developing a language of hybrids that mends the divide between nature and culture, and nature and technology. Far from “smoothing”, this process introduces multiplicity and ambiguity in the defining of words. It is also a methodology for un-/re-covering what has been hidden or “glossed over” by hegemonic discourses, disciplinary boundaries, and the (mono)cultural canon.
1. etymonline.com/word/glossary
