Introduction

As an ambitious interdisciplinary project using a range of media (textual, visual, and aural) and diverse authorial voices to explore the dynamics between naming practices, identity formation, and knowledge systems, this chapter grounds this work in the relevant theoretical and methodological scholarship, highlighting where new pathways were forged as a result of the creative and generative nature of the To Be—Named project. It presents the volume's themes, including personal names and their potential as a methodology for self-exploration, names as world generators, as well as ordering the world through names and naming. Lastly, it considers the relationship between naming practices, political structures, and the legal apparatus of control, looking at lines of activism and resistance as a means to reshape identities and places.