You can find more info on the meme here:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wastes
https://medium.com/@sukosuko1/our-blessed-homeland-0218f41bb51a
https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2015/mar/11/a-life-in-letters-with-tom-gauld-in-pictures
Quote by Doug Stanhope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=QsPDT5qHtZ4


To relight is to stop using one word and start using another word.
It plays on the idea that we can be enlightened about something like nationalism, but that we reckognize that this enlightenment is miscoloring our world, and so we ought to remove this word from our language. However, oftentimes it is not possible to simply remove a word, because it is a word that is used to refer to real world phenomenas, and so we have to find another word that can replace the miscoloring word.
In this deem, we have unlighted nation and enlightened root, thus relighting away from nation towards root. Think of it like a spotlight that is moved from one word to the other.
Okay…thats helpful. Now do “root” and “upholding the heart of walldoms”. If you don’t mind
The “we” are those who are part of an conversational process in determining whether a word is appropriate or not. I’m mainly working in the norwegian language, but experimenting with transferring these images into english.
With regards to language, I’m sprouted by esperanto which is a language that makes it very easy to understand and make our own words. I’m also sprouted by nynorsk, ivar Aasen and høgnorsk which are traditions within norwegian to make words more poetic.
One of the guiding beliefs behind my work is that words changes how we relate to our world.
The goodness of a word
The way I’m determining whether a word is good is twofold, that which makes it poetic, and that which makes it healthy.
poetic
The reason why poetic words are valued by me is for several reasons. They makes learning easier, makes the words easier to spread, makes emotions come accross much more easily, and encourages guardianship for the language.
Here are the points I follow to make sure the words becomes poetic:
Healthiness
This is about understanding how a word is coloring our world, and to what degree it steers us towards our dezired societies. This process is painted by subjectivity, and so what might seem like a compelling argument for some may not be for others.
A few guiding points to understand whether a word is healthy or not:
On the flip side we can express these points as their opposites, whether a word is following:
https://slrpnk.net/post/36226957
Thanks for the detailed run-down! You have a very practical application of language construction, and I appreciate your work with this, it’s interesting to me, since I write quite a bit, often trying to communicate social theory to people without a background in social theory. This leads me to do a lot of stuff like taking a passage from late 19th, early 20th c. and then rewriting it in easier language, concisely explain core concepts, demystify clunky philosophy words like “epistemology”, etc., so I’m def familiar with some aspects of “relighting” I think. I don’t usually make up new words for things, but i see some similar considerations between our processes. Just maybe where you start recontexualizing other words into new practical application, I’ll break it up conceptually, using simpler words.
I’m happy to share my thoughts :)
Yes, recontextualization, or I would personally use the term reframing.
When somebody claims authority over an geographic area; The authorities and that which it subjugates is the walldom. The heart of the walldom is where the authorities lies.
Roots are our sense of origin. The roots are unlike nations not connected to walldoms. One may regard their roots as from where their parents are from. So one could say that a person has roots in Norway and Germany for instance.
Thanks. Where are you getting this from? Or is this your own set of theories? Do you have writing somewhere?
I edited my comment and then it got kinda long and took a while to finish and now I forget what my original post was. Probably just the first paragraph.
The source
I am not the user you where interacting with, but these ideas can be found in Carl Schmitt in his work The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum.
This is because The Nomos of the Earth provides his most comprehensive exploration of how sovereign authority and geographic space are legally and historically intertwined. The previous comments are about authority’s spatial claim, and this book is precisely where Schmitt develops that idea at length.
An important fact to know about Carl Schmitt follows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt
A counterpoint
Perhaps the most pointed philosophical counterpoint to the text’s use of “roots” comes from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, which was later applied to national identity by the philosopher Édouard Glissant. His seminal work Poetics of Relation has been used by scholars across the world to understand the rapid transformation of a multicultural world.
They critique the root as a metaphor for a singular, vertical, and exclusionary origin. Glissant argues that nations shouldn’t speak of having “roots,” as this implies one unique ancestral heritage.
Instead, he champions the image of the rhizome (a plant with a network of interconnected, horizontal roots) because it better captures a multicultural reality where identity is not fixed but is a dynamic, relational, and non-hierarchical network.
Where the text’s concept of “roots” traces a lineage back to a point of origin, the rhizome celebrates the connections made in the present.
Thank you! I’ve read a little Deleuze, and I have a comrade who bases a lot of their views on Anti-Oedipus and ATP. I’m familiar with the rhizome, but its role as a criticism of “the root” is new, compelling.
Def appreciate the references, I’ll try and find these sources and acquaint myself with them.
Ill look into that! Thank you for critique!