Abstract:
Aims. This paper presents a critical analysis of the symbolic violence produced by way of the names of the institutions that are emblazoned on even the most critical and socially just work that we do. Drawing on theories of critical toponymy (eg. Alderman, 2022) and public memory (eg. Roediger, 2021), I explore how university naming across Australia crystallises white settler-colonial memory and reproduces said memory in everyday institutional and community practice. To demonstrate this, I analyse the namesakes of Australia’s universities and draw into critical consideration the settler public memory represented through the naming practices of universities.
Design and Findings. Initial analysis has yielded two principle non mutually exclusive themes developed out of a critical toponymic analysis (reading place-naming as narrative (see Author, 2024) of university naming:
Some institutions are unabashedly named for historically significant figures in settler public memory including James Cook and Mathew Flinders. These namesakes also reproduce the normative place not just of Europeans but Australian settler-national figures such as Prime Ministers and politicians (eg. Edith Cowan, John Curtin, and Alfred Deakin).
Others inherit their name from their locale – local, state, and national – which serves to normalise the imposed colonial toponymic order and echo key features of colonial mythology (eg. universities with Queensland or New South Wales in their name reproducing colonial naming practices).
Other universities in Australia are powerfully connected to the colonial project of normalising invasion while being loosely connected thematically. The remaining universities are named, for instance, for businesspeople (eg. Bond), war heroes (eg. Monash) and the prominence of Christianity in the Australian religious imaginary (eg. ACU, University of Notre Dame). Continued analysis is being undertaken to thematise those that don’t fit neatly into the prominent principle themes.
Implications. The project has two pedagogical implications, one for scholarship and one for pre-service education. With respect to scholarship, this project highlights the ways in which we need to consider how to more carefully attend to the tensions at work between the critical nature of our work and the inescapable language attached to it. For pre-service education, such a project highlights the possibilities of turning our classrooms into “toponymic workspaces” (Alderman & Rose-Redwood, 2020) in support of fostering a critical reading of the socio-cultural production of colonised place and the need to teach the “banal colonialism” (Stanley, 2009) of place more carefully to learners.
Design and Findings. Initial analysis has yielded two principle non mutually exclusive themes developed out of a critical toponymic analysis (reading place-naming as narrative (see Author, 2024) of university naming:
Some institutions are unabashedly named for historically significant figures in settler public memory including James Cook and Mathew Flinders. These namesakes also reproduce the normative place not just of Europeans but Australian settler-national figures such as Prime Ministers and politicians (eg. Edith Cowan, John Curtin, and Alfred Deakin).
Others inherit their name from their locale – local, state, and national – which serves to normalise the imposed colonial toponymic order and echo key features of colonial mythology (eg. universities with Queensland or New South Wales in their name reproducing colonial naming practices).
Other universities in Australia are powerfully connected to the colonial project of normalising invasion while being loosely connected thematically. The remaining universities are named, for instance, for businesspeople (eg. Bond), war heroes (eg. Monash) and the prominence of Christianity in the Australian religious imaginary (eg. ACU, University of Notre Dame). Continued analysis is being undertaken to thematise those that don’t fit neatly into the prominent principle themes.
Implications. The project has two pedagogical implications, one for scholarship and one for pre-service education. With respect to scholarship, this project highlights the ways in which we need to consider how to more carefully attend to the tensions at work between the critical nature of our work and the inescapable language attached to it. For pre-service education, such a project highlights the possibilities of turning our classrooms into “toponymic workspaces” (Alderman & Rose-Redwood, 2020) in support of fostering a critical reading of the socio-cultural production of colonised place and the need to teach the “banal colonialism” (Stanley, 2009) of place more carefully to learners.