Words Do Things
A reflection by
Laura Nepta Silva
Methodical Dilettante, Artist & Consultant
Special Thanks to
Brett Davidson
Through the Global Messaging Programme this past fall, 25 communicators from around the world devoted three months to rigorous study applied directly to a current narrative project. IRIS sponsored four of those leaders’ attendance and they shared their learnings during a recent webinar.
For more on the report-back we asked Laura Nepta Silva for her reflections:
Las palabras significan cosas.
As palavras significam coisas.
Words mean things. Says Anat Schenker-Osorio.
Words mean things.
It matters which words we use.
How we use them.
When we use them.
Words shape our thoughts.
It matters which thoughts think thoughts. Says Donna Haraway.
It matters which words word thoughts.
Words matter.
They are how we name things,
how we name ourselves.
How we name, even, the unnameable.
What is yet to come.
What is yet to be invented.
Words. The raw material through which 25 communicators from around the world made their explorations in the…
Three words:
Global
Messaging
Programme
Global Messaging Programme.
Four of these communicators as fellows of IRIS.
Iris.
A word with different meanings.
The color in the eye, for instance.
Iris accompanied these four fellows as they brought their own colors into the world.
Four fellows, four people and their collectivities.
Four names.
Gabi Juns
Ntuthuzo Ndzomo
Valerie Caamaño Fondeur
Pamela Adie
Names with different pronunciations.
In different languages.
Español
English
Português
And each language with a context, a culture, a specific story.
Situated.
Because when you listen to them (and you should),
something stands out:
the importance of identifying and listening to the particular context in which words are used.
The word “global” in the Global Messaging Programme
signals an openness to variety and difference, not a single unity.
That is why Gabi, Ntuthuzo, Valerie, and Pamela
experimented with a series of principles
that took on different forms and meanings in each of their contexts.
Principles. Not absolute formulas… Those don't exist.
Principle. Another word. In Spanish, principio, the beginning.
In English, principle, a fundamental idea.
In their case, a series of beginnings: points of departure for their explorations, grounded in fundamental ideas.
Four principles:
Frames. Frames guide our gaze.
Invocation. Invoke what we want, because when we focus on what we oppose, we end up reinforcing it.
Embody-Name. A passive voice is a nameless, bodiless voice.
Metaphors. The metaphors we use daily shape our ideas unconsciously.
Principles, beginnings, ideas carried into practice.
Because words mean things, but they also do things.
And Gabi, Ntuthuzo, Valerie, and Pamela did things with words.
They got their hands in
—the think and the feel—
(el pienso y el siento)
to make things happen.
And to give meaning to what matters to them.
Things they have reflected on, things they act upon in the world.
Things that matter.
For instance,
for Gabi, the full decriminalization of abortion in Brazil matters.
And in this exploração com palavras,
she begins by reframing that story.
Same story, different frame.
Instead of focusing her question on perceptions and discourse around abortion,
she turns it around.
She looks at another word, directly intertwined with abortion:
Pregnancy.
Grávida
A word that also reveals the erasure produced by the passive voice,
the one that speaks of “a something” without a body, without a name.
Because, as Gabi explains, in Portuguese grávida functions as a noun,
as if it named something—
Or, more importantly, someone.
But it doesn't.
What remains is the idea of “a pregnant something,”
stripped of personhood, of specificity.
Of the (unique) words that could narrate a (unique) story.
¿Y entonces?
What does she do?
Gabi puts pregnancy back in the body.
Not only in the body of that woman,
or that trans man,
or that teenager,
or that girl.
She also brings back…
Who is she pregnant by?
Whose is that other body in this story—
the one we so rarely bring into focus?
And in doing so,
she moves us away from “the pregnant” (a grávida) as an abstraction,
and toward real people
—with names, with bodies, with specific lives—
facing real consequences as a result of those pregnancies.
And Gabi doesn't do this alone.
She does it with her colleagues at Lamparina, the organization she leads,
and they invite other peers to put pregnancy back in bodies.
As they also invite Erika Hilton, the congresswoman who is pursuing the full legalization of abortion in Brazil.
An exploration of words
—their meanings, their uses, and their effects on real bodies,
in real lives,
in concrete contexts.
Meanwhile,
on the other side of the Atlantic, in South Africa,
immersed in a similar exploration,
Ntuthuzo and his colleagues observe several reproductions of the same colonial painting across the continent:
In it, a group of American evangelists
lead a conference on so-called
“African family values.”
Three words.
Third word: Values.
Second word: Family.
First word: African.
Three adulterated words used to suffocate something that matters to Ntuthuzo:
African queerness.
¿Y entonces?
What does he do?
Ntuthuzo hangs another painting.
More beautiful, more honest.
He invents the future with a painting titled
The African Renaissance Conference.
In it, we see a conference for Africans by Africans,
where music, dance, visual arts, and African knowledge
come together to reveal what Africanism is.
Two words.
Second word: Is.
First word: Africanism.
A painting yet to come,
a conference yet to come—
to remind the world what Africanism is.
Meanwhile, from Nigeria,
Pamela invokes what matters to her.
In her film Ìfé, she uses love, family, and belonging
to redefine queerness as part of African life.
Five interconnected words,
five words that generate empathy and propel a reality:
Love
Family
Belonging
Queerness
African
African
Love
Family
Belonging
Queerness
African
Queerness
Belonging
Family
Love
Africanism is.
Two explorers of words,
doing things in the world,
reclaiming the meaning and power of words that create realities
—situated in real contexts, with real people, with their own names and real lives.
And meanwhile, from another shore of the world,
in the Dominican Republic, democracy matters to Valerie.
She cares about advancing a new political party,
an alternative to the two dominant ones led by,
as she calls them with full knowledge,
‘the greedy giants’.
And she asks herself how to motivate collective action around this new party,
this new option. As its name says,
Opción Democrática.
And after getting her hands into words
—the think and the feel— (el pienso y el siento)
Valerie identifies five actions with words that open the way to transformation.
Five actions.
Five words to name them.
Post-Blah
Identity
Care
Naming
Belonging
Now, one by one:
Post-Blah.
To stop using blah blah blah words
and find concrete, authentic words
—different from those always used in political discourse.
Identity.
To name parties by what defines them,
rather than by their size, in order to avoid reinforcing dominant hierarchies.
To move, for instance, from big party to corrupt party, and from small party to community party.
Care.
To shift metaphors from the battlefield to the landscape of care.
For example, instead of “defending votes”, “caring for votes”.
Naming.
To name things.
Instead of “the system is unjust,”
“Dominant political parties made the rules to suit themselves so that only they can win.”
That is, to reveal that “the system”
is made up of concrete people doing concrete things.
Belonging.
Instead of speaking of the sacrifices of collective action,
to speak of the joy of being part of it.
Five concrete actions through words
that she and her colleagues now apply daily in their communications.
Five actions that have increased engagement and support
both in social media and in in-person activities.
Five actions that will guide them in workshops for politicians and volunteers,
in the creation of a manifesto,
and in the process of messaging testing with focus groups.
Five actions through words in the Dominican Republic.
In the world.
Four fellows,
four people and their collectivities.
Four explorations with words.
Words that mean things.
Global. Principle. Frames. Invocation. Body. Name. Metaphor. Pregnancy. Abortion. Love. Family. Belonging. Queerness. African. Africanism. Post-Blah. Identity. Care. Naming. Belonging.
Four names.
Gabi Juns
Ntuthuzo Ndzomo
Valerie Caamaño Fondeur
Pamela Adie
Four people doing things (that matter) with words in the world.