The Sentinel Philosophy: The Philosophy of Donald Trump Renaming Things

Pierre Bourdieu

Donald Trump has passed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America due to the ongoing tariff wars with Canada, and it's become a political battleground. Those who use "Lake America" are seen as being Trump supporters, while those who don't use it are seen as the resistance. This is an example of what Pierre Bourdieu called a classification struggle.

Bourdieu argued that language is not simply a raw form of communication or passing of facts. It can be an act of power and authority. When you force somebody to say "the Persian Gulf" or "the Arabic Gulf", "Kyiv" or "Kiev", "Lake Ontario" or "Lake America", you are forcing them to adopt a certain set of wider political assumptions that come attached to that name. Names do matter.

But the issue is deeper than this, because many philosophers and psychologists agree that the words we use reflect and define how we experience the world. And so, if you force somebody to use certain words, you are forcing them to create a certain social reality. You are forcing them to carve up what they see according to you.

So, if you can control somebody's language, you can control somebody's thoughts. And there is no greater power than that.

So, while you might roll your eyes at these spats or debates about names, they are more important than we might think because the names we use, the labels we use, define how far we accept or resist what's going on.