This panel explores the “ludic subject” created through play, humor, and formal experiments in global literature. Jennifer Nash theorizes “beautiful writing” as the merging of language and physical reality, serving as a space of resistance to hegemony and a “reconciliation of loss” (2024). Similarly, to play with language is to break its inherent hegemonic boundaries, acknowledge the affective nature of writing, and highlight the interpersonal and intra-personal aspects of subjectivity. From the use of queer vernaculars in contemporary India to the creation of feminist sci-fi languages, the fractured syntax of Black American poetics, and the playfulness in 18th-century Chinese women’s writing, this panel examines how “linguistic misbehavior” serves as a tool for dismantling colonial, patriarchal, and nationalist hierarchies. Verbal ludicity is not just play; instead, it is a creative mode of self-creation that allows marginalized voices to navigate and reshape restrictive emotional and political terrains. This panel argues that the ludic subject, whether in 18th-century China or a speculative intergalactic future, uses linguistic misbehavior to challenge what Nelson Flores calls a “monoglossic language” norm (2016) and to reimagine a self against systemic erasure. This panel invites its presenters and audience to consider how linguistic misbehavior functions not just as a reaction to power, but as a trans-historical infrastructure for the survival of the gendered and racialized self.

Tuli Chatterji examines how the novels of Indian queer writer and activist R. Raj Rao—Madam, Give Me My Sex (2019) and Mahmud and Ayaz (2024)—employ linguistic codes to challenge colonial ideologies and critique postcolonial nationalism. Published after the Supreme Court’s 2018 repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial law that criminalized homosexuality for 158 years, Rao’s work unapologetically employs a spectacular range of dialects, slang, and “Rotten English” (Ahmad, 2007) to destabilize hegemonic institutions of culture and power. Queering the form of the novel serves a dual liberatory purpose: it unsettles the exclusionary politics of the nation-state and provides a reflective “model” (Kachru, 1992) that challenges codified prerequisites of standard language. Drawing on South Asian queer theorists Ruth Vanita and Nayan Shah, Chatterji analyzes how mixing languages creates vital spaces for gendered identities that have been historically silenced or rendered invisible.

Carolina González explores the use of "linguistic deception" and humor in Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue (1984) and The Judas Rose (1987). In the dystopian future depicted, women are second-class citizens who secretly construct a female-centered language (Láadan) to encode nuanced expressions of feeling. González argues that these nested linguistic games utilize a shallow, ever-changing language called “Langlish” to distract male linguists from the women’s true revolutionary goals. Through the figure of a linguist-nun who sabotages religious translations by making them intentionally ugly and unmelodic, González suggests that Langlish/Láadan and the literal versus non-literal translation projects in The Judas Rose can be seen as nested linguistic games involving humor and deception.

Sara L. Borga interprets linguistic pressure—puns, syntactic disruptions, and polyvocal structures—as formal strategies through which contemporary Black American women poets renegotiate the lyric “I.” Focusing on Harmony Holiday’s fracturing of "sin/tax," Borga contends that syntax becomes a rule, a cost, and a transgression simultaneously. Utilizing recent scholarship in lyric studies and Black poetics, Borga argues that what might be dismissed as mere wordplay is, in fact, a generative mode of self-making. By analyzing the "discrepant" subjectivities in the works of Holiday, Evie Shockley, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Borga demonstrates how linguistic misbehavior performs a refusal of the socio-political legibility that has historically overdetermined the reception of Black women's poetry in the U.S.

Haihong Yang examines the intersection of humor, desire, and gentility in the work of Shen Cai (1752-?), a poet, calligrapher, connoisseur, and amanuensis from eighteenth-century China. Despite cultural constructions that viewed humor as incompatible with gentle femininity, Shen Cai utilized playfulness in her pseudo-biographies and essays to craft a desiring self and gain social influence. Yang analyzes how Shen Cai redefined her poetic self by dissolving gender, class, and literary norms, particularly in her pseudo-biography of Mr. Writing Brush and in her statement on the carved-out embroidery blueprints. By probing sensual pleasure in her lyric poetry, Shen Cai fostered a unique intersubjectivity that broadened the female subjectivity of the late imperial era. Yang’s analysis reveals how humor served as a vital tool for self-expression and social connection within restrictive gender norms.

Format: Each presentation will be limited to 12 minutes, leaving 25–27 minutes for interactive Q&A.