Comment by GJim
4 days ago
So Americans/Irish/English/Scots/Welsh/Australians are all being "colonialist" when they refer to Wien as 'Vienna', Čechy as 'Bohemia', Abertawe as 'Swansea' and La Manche as 'The English Channel'?
Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
Sadly, this kind of illogical and undiscerning paranoia has invaded school curricula and universities as an overreaction to imperialism. It's part of the "hermeneutic of suspicion"; behind everything lurks an insidious evil intent, whether it is self-serving power and a will to dominate others, racism, colonialism, misogyny, or whatever. Those things exist, absolutely, but minds steeped in the hermeneutic of suspicion have one track minds. They read this threat into nearly everything.
Curiously, they don't seem to notice it in the workings of the very hermeneutic itself.
> Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
Do you? Has Vienna or Swansea asked you to change how you refer to them? If they did, would you? If not, why not?