Aabawe: with gratitude to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s translations from Anishinaabemowin, aabawe derives from “abaab”: a key, to open with something, release, or loosen. When written as “aabawe wendamoowin,” the term takes on meaning as “to forgive, to warm up to or loosen one’s mind, to loosen or unlock one’s feelings” (Simpson, Islands of Decolonial Love, 2015 [Winnipeg: Arp Books], 46–47). In Simpson’s Theory of Ice, aabawe evokes land-body relations between the coming of spring, and openness to new ideas.
Anonymity: being anonymous, unknown, unidentified; a way to refuse identification in order to counter surveillance, data mining, and policing (see Dignity Images). Anonymity also enables individuals to speak candidly with reduced personal risk (see Mèn and Leung); or can be a method to represent oneself otherwise, as in the Neurocultures Collective’s murals, which visualize neurodiversity through collaborative work that eschews individual attribution.
Archive: A collection of things, often describing collections of documents rooted in Eurocentric knowledge systems. However, archives pre-date colonial eras, as groupings of materials and objects have been found throughout history. Many forms of archiving exist, historically and contemporaneously, such as through mapping, oral tradition, counter-archiving, and community-driven archiving (see Mark V. Campbell; Simpson; Simmons).
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to computer programs designed to simulate aspects of human intelligence, often to provide a function (i.e. translation, playing strategy games, chatting, driving, screening job applications). AIs that perform such tasks are described as weak AI, whereas some researchers aspire to develop strong AI—computers capable of learning like humans. AI and machine learning often raise ethical questions: How do the underlying datasets reproduce existing biases? How much decision-making power should be given to AI? What are the consequences of aspiring to create sentient beings? For various approaches to working with AI, see Mèn & Leung, Running with Concepts: The Mediatic Edition, Other Life-formings, Broussard, Coleman and Kantayya and Roxanne in SDUK08.
A cloud is a wispy formation of water vapour (see Moore, and Sobecka in SDUK02). Cloud computing refers to files stored on remote servers, rather than a local computer. Critics of technology have characterized cloud computing as a misnomer, considering the immense physical infrastructures and energy demands of the internet (see Diamanti in SDUK03); or highlighted tech giants’ monopolies over “the cloud,” which diminish its utility as an open file repository (such as Mark V. Campbell). Because of their mutability, clouds remain a persistent metaphor for thought (see the Neurocultures Collective’s diagrams).
Code is a system, program, or set of instructions. In computing, code determines how software behaves. Despite its assumed neutrality, code can reinforce programmers’ biases (see Broussard, Coleman and Kantayya, SDUK08). For others, communicating in code is a way of eliding surveillance or comprehension (see El-Hadi et al).
Cripping: To enact, embody, or highlight how disability and neurodiversity disrupt “normality,” and in turn are both subversive and generative (see The Neurocultures Collective). Cripping often involves questioning “normal” social expectations of how individuals think, move, and occupy space, and their relationships to time. As an active verb, “cripping” reclaims harmful language to reflect a practice rooted in disability justice, where disability isn’t seen as a deficit. Instead, it strives to undo ableism in all facets of life (see McArthur and Zavitsanos in Take Care broadsheet).
An encampment is a site where an individual or group sets up temporary accommodation, consisting of physical structures (i.e. tents, huts, shelters built with found materials). Circumstances dictating their formation include military operations, or refuge from environmental disaster or political persecution (see Emmelhainz). A lack of affordable housing and limited shelter capacity in many cities has increased encampment occupancy. These communities are frequently confronted by law enforcement, who forcibly displace occupants. Anti-displacement and mutual aid organizers mobilize communities in support of accessible housing and policy change (see Xiang).
Often defined scientifically as a biological or engineered system for separating solids from liquids or gases using a filter medium, filtration has distinct meanings within optics (transmission of light through a lens), computing (sorting and processing data), and mathematics (an algebraic formula). The filtering of pollutants from water (see Ball) or dust from air (see McCallum in SDUK05) may provide alternative models for reducing hazardous waste, and repurposing filtered byproducts in beneficial ways.
The gut typically refers to the digestive system (the gastrointestinal tract and the organs that support it), which is responsible for breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and expelling waste from the body. Far from a discrete system (see Emmelhainz), the gut is also responsible for supporting the body’s immune responses, and is connected to the brain via neurotransmitters, making it also a sensing and regulatory organ.
Incendiary: flammable, extremely hot, or designed to cause fires (see Combustion; Hobler in SDUK06). With connotations of destruction or replenishment, “incendiary” is often used metaphorically to describe polemical speech, writing, action, music (or “the dawn,” see Howard; also see Wren).
A land trust is a legal entity that has been given jurisdiction over a property of land by its owner. As a collective and legal measure used for preservation and/or affordability, land trusts employ conservation and stewardship tools to hold federally protected lands in trust for future generations (see also Trust). Working on behalf of communities, non-profit corporations that form community land trusts serve as long-term stewards for affordable housing, public and commercial spaces, and other community holdings (see Xiang).
Mestizaje, at its most basic, is a term that describes racial mixing in Latin America—in Mexico (see Emmelhainz), it refers most commonly to mixed Indigenous and European ancestry. In a contemporary context, the term is often used to celebrate cultural hybridity—however, across former Spanish and Portuguese colonies, “mestizaje” has also been mobilized to serve various nationalist and caste-based rhetorics, and the term’s connotations vary geographically.
Coined by sociologist Judy Singer in 1998, neurodiversity refers to the range of differences in individual brain function and behavioural traits. Neurodiversity strays from the hierarchical understanding of cognitive capacity latent in the popular autism “spectrum”; instead, it reflects a non-linear understanding of neuro-capacities (see the Neurocultures Collective, whose research challenges the notion of a neurotypical cinematic form).
Opacity can refer to both the physical, optical quality of being impenetrable by light (see Emmelhainz on the opaque screens of media technologies), and the state of impenetrability, unknowability, or untranslatability of an idea. As put forward by the Martinican writer Édouard Glissant, opacity describes how some knowledges, stories, experiences, and modes of communication must not be made comprehensible to all, as a way of resisting colonial knowledge systems that seek to measure and delineate in order to enable domination. Opacity can include “speaking in code,” or refusal to make aspects of one’s experience available to those seeking to instrumentalize it (see El-Hadi et al). A major strategy in contemporary Black thought and cultural production, opacity has been taken up by numerous writers, thinkers, and artists (see MICE Magazine Issue 04: Opacities for further detail).
Toxic: may refer to the condition of being poisonous, or in a harmful situation that develops immediately or cumulatively. Toxicity may describe how hazardous something is to humans or other living organisms, whether a chemical substance or an ideological system (capitalism and colonialism, per Emmelhainz). Industrial activities such as mining and oil extraction release toxicants that have detrimental environmental and societal impacts, disproportionately affecting Indigenous communities (see Wool & Jaworski, Halpern in SDUK06; see also environmental racism).