People often feel a sense of annoyance with neologizing intellectuals. This sense of annoyance is justifies, and is one I share, when the neologizing is undertaken in the service of pomposity. That is to say that academics who play too cute with words deserve all the eye rolls they garner.

This, of course, begs the question how cute is too cute? When is neologizing useful as opposed to off-putting?

As a neologizing academic myself I naturally find all of my uses of neologism to fall on the useful end of the spectrum. (Self-evaluation is, however, difficult and I always welcome your feedback, dear reader). This is because I strive for precision. I coin terms when and only when the existing lexis isn’t precise enough to communicate my point well or efficiently.

Let’s imagine, for the sake of example, that the word argument didn’t exist. How would you describe a verbal disagreement and subsequent confrontation between two or more people? You would have to recur to bellicose terminology, certainly. War wouldn’t work though, it’s too scorched earth, too bloody, to full of actual violence to provide a clear picture of the phenomenon you with to describe. You could add some qualifiers. A war-like verbal encounter, for instance. Say that three times fast. Now imagine filling a book with it. You’ll find terms laden with qualifiers quickly become unwieldy.

So what are you left with, spar, joust, battle; a sense of confrontation without the extremes of war which must be combined with a sense of message transmission or communication. Again you’re faced with the same dilemma, use clumsy qualifiers or neologize. A verbal joust almost works, but it’s a bit too fanciful – conjuring colorful banderoles and tinny fanfares. Word spar sounds a bit too much like off-brand Scrabble. The choice to neologize is therefore made by default, taken as the least-bad option, the election which allows for the clearest communication with a minimum of clunkiness.

Luckily for concepts as quotidian as arguments we have an established and agreed upon terminology in place. However, when it comes to cutting edge sociology and philosophy of science our luck runs thin.

Take my concept of the interject, a term I use to describe the phenomena in which something acts as both subject and object. I derived the term using the prefix intra (between), used in the same way Karen Barad deploys it in agential realism, and the suffix ject from the latin jacere, to throw. The intraject therefore being something that is thrown between, that is both subject and object.  It is easy to see how repeating this concept definitionally, as opposed to neologizing, would quickly become cumbersome.

I choose to neologize when the phrases used to describe novel concepts are too imprecise or too unmanageable to be useful. In cases when definitinal clarifications are sufficient, I clarify. In every case I strive for precision.

With that in mind, the following words carry a tremendous amount connotative baggage both within and independent of the Theory of Everyone. Therefore, they are to be dealt with carefully.

Agency – The way I use agency, at is most basic level, is to describe the way matter, organic and otherwise, wants to be. If that sounds like Karen Barad’s work to you, that’s because my view of agency draws heavily on their work.

Structure – Odds are you already use this word in the same way I do.

Biology – biology needs to be reclaimed. Needs to be a way to respect the power (causal potency) of biology without making it the basis of an irrational punitive determinism. What does the biological mean as opposed to the social or the environmental? Tom Shakespeare the way Tom Shakespere views disability within the bio-psycho-social model gets used everywhere and underlying it is a set of metaphysical distinctions about what biology is which everyone takes for granted and doesn’t bother to explicate.

Truth – when I talk about truth I am really evaluating the stability of knowledge in any given context. As I see it , to tell the truth (not to be confused with my truth) is to say, whatever propositional statement follows is so much more ontoepysemologically stable relative to the alternative proposition that it can be established as to be taken as true.

Essence –  This is the odd man out. To this point the words on this list comport with general usage needing only clarification. However, when I talk about essence I am not referring to the plutonic concept, which I regard as too narrow. Yet, the concept of essence is stably linked to Plato. So much so that it becomes necessary to neologize. Therefore I submit to you, dear reader:

Es-sense – A hybridization of epiphenomenal and sense. Essence is that which is epiphenomenal to sense-making. That about the phenomena which makes it possible for other phenomena to make sense of it. Unlike plutonic essence es-sense can change, fluctuate and evolve – it is no way immutable – but it does have relational inertia leading to the sense that es-sense is hard to move or change. Given the natural tendency for things to want to stay in a stable relationship to each other, think electron structures, es-sense is resistant to change but not unchangeable.

I hope I haven’t earned any eye-rolls.

Neologism of this kind creates jargon. It is almost impossible to create jargon without being exclusive. In a fundamentally crip project this has an exquisite weight. There are irresponsible academics who try to make the case that they are so good at creating and deploying jargon that their jargon does not exclude – I am not one of them. Anyone who understands capacital semiotics understands that nobody has ever been able to create jargon in this way. That said, I do not neologize to exclude. Rather, I see three compelling reasons to neologize:

1. Specificity, clarity, accuracy.
2. Marketing power. When you neologize you can put your brand on your words and thoughts. There’s prestige. I admit that this is part of my motivation, to say otherwise is a lie. Pursuit of narrow self interest in this way is fine but it should never be a person’s sole motivation nor should it be the determining motivation when neologizing.
3. Neologizing opens up new possibilities of thought. The hardest thing in crip theory to grasp is that one person’s support can be another person’s barrier. One person’s means of empowerment in the face of the same oppression can disempower another. One of the hardest feats of empathy to conceive of that which empowers you as disempowering the other. And vice-versa. We must recognize that this is an essential part of human diversity. For example, someone who spends their life in a wheelchair can’t conceive of the fact that a ramp might disempower. However, for a person with a cortical visual impairment ramps, especially complex ramps might be a barrier.

The takeaway dear reader is that, though neologizing can garner snorts and snark, it is at times necessary. Generally speaking you can follow your gut instinct when interpreting any terminology I use here. I will provide clarification when necessary and apply the principles outlined above when neologizing.