The anthropocentism that is embedded in so many of our languages, and the ways in which that s our attitudes towards things like climate crisis. I mean, just imagining right now, i'm sitting in an office and looking out there into ig nine cambridge, and i'm looking out o the front yard of thi department. And there's a tree, but it's quite alone asn it's surrounded by a little fence. So there are no other trees close by. And for some reason, we do think we give life and we do allow things to be there, when in fact, sometimes we don't. We quite e do the opposite.
Language is expressive, a way of opening doors or a tool for creating new dialogue. But a tool so powerful can also take us to unforeseen or unintended places. It can create narratives that become fixed, unhelpful, or exclusionary. Kübra Gümüsay is a writer and activist focusing on social justice and public discourse. Her new book is Speaking and Being, which looks at the power of words, asking whether language creates freeing new spaces or plays a part in walling them off. Our host for the discussion is Danielle Sands, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway University in London, where she works across disciplines bridging philosophy, literary studies and critical theory.
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