Every natural language is afflicted and privileged with polysemy. In English, pleasure is synonymous with more than twenty-four words, from delight and satisfaction to ecstasy, from euphoria, amusement, and sensuality to opulence. These synonyms can be categorized into five main classes: general, casual, sensory, hedonistic, and intellectual/aesthetic. In my primary language, Malinke, diya (pleasure) enjoys at least six synonyms, from the most informal to the most formal, díyanye, hínɛ, nídɔgɔn, nídɔngɔ, nídungɔ, and ɲàɲa. This panel welcomes propositions and provocations about how African and diasporic languages experience, express, articulate, and conceptualize pleasure and its varieties. The exploration hinges on suspending formerly colonial languages (French, English, Spanish, Portuguese) and foregrounding African languages as sites of meaning-making, affective negotiation, and embodied knowledge production. Holding those languages under scrutiny may help uncover figurative constructions, tonal schemas, grammatical features, and syntactical formulas speakers use to articulate pleasure. Further investigation must extend into etymologies, historical developments, synonyms, antonyms, variants, and cognates of diya. By framing pleasure as an instrument, this panel highlights the contributions of “African” languages to the affective turn in critical theory, which foregrounds embodiment as central to understanding and regenerating the world.
Panelists are invited to choose from Africa and its diaspora’s 3,000 languages and dialects to explore pleasure, although the panel’s language will be English or French.
Key questions to consider
• What unique affective registers and idiomatic expressions emerge in different linguistic traditions?
• How do tonal, grammatical, and syntactical features shape the articulation of pleasure?
• In what ways do regional, national, and international linguistic influences shape the notion of pleasure in local languages?
• How do language and embodiment intersect in cultural and artistic expressions (e.g., music, literature, oral traditions, digital media, film, performance)?
• What methodological challenges arise in studying pleasure across languages, and how might we address them?
Submissions are encouraged from diverse disciplines, including but not limited to:
• Media Studies
• Literary Studies
• Sexuality and Gender Studies
• Philosophy
• Visual & Performing Arts
• Artificial Intelligence & Technology Studies
• History
• Sociology
• Medical & Cultural Anthropology
• Linguistics
To be considered for the panel, please submit an abstract of 200 words and a brief bio (150 words) to Naminata Diabate (Cornell University) [nd326@cornell.edu] by [Saturday, March 15, 2025].
Language and Varieties of Pleasure
