The name ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ weaponizes the dead through spatial naming.

Evidence

De Certeau observes the power of proper names in shaping space—here reflected in the use of the soubriquet “Ground Zero Mosque” instead of the official name, “Park 51.” Crucially, names not only “make habitable or believable the place that they clothe with a word” but also “recall or suggest phantoms (the dead who are supposed to have disappeared) that still move about, concealed in gestures and bodies in motion.” It seems hardly necessary to point out the relevance of this description to the Ground Zero situation, in which the dead are made to live on through the right of ownership staked by relatives. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 278

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how naming a space summons the dead as implied owners, a mechanism the reader can transfer to how Islamophobic labels operate.
• XREF: connects to: The Ground Zero Mosque label erased the dead’s multiracial and multinational character.