Columbus’s renaming of land exemplified incorporating difference into the empire of same

Evidence

The colonising self does not interact with or encounter the other as independent other, but only in the image of its own desires or needs, which it imposes upon them. An example of this process is Columbus’ imposition of names on the land he first sights, names which rarely record any of its features or any real encounter with it, but merely register its conquest, its incorporation into the empire of same (Turner 1986:131). — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 592

Categorization

• XREF: Ties directly to settler-colonial naming/erasure as terra nullius — relevant to environmental racism and decolonial threads across the polyad. — connects to: The instrumentalizing self cannot hold alikeness and difference together at once — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 590; Archaeology and renaming manufacture an originary claim to contested land; Cartographic naming or omitting names legitimizes colonial claims to inhabited land — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1405 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: The Columbus naming example could support an article angle on how colonial re-naming is an act of symbolic land acquisition, resonant with settler-colonial analysis.

Broader Connections

• Cartographic naming or omitting names legitimizes colonial claims to inhabited land #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1405
• Archaeology and renaming manufacture an originary claim to contested land #expands (0.80)
• Renaming colonized subjects is a political act that declares a new epoch #expands (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 723