Roundup of Submissions | February 2024 Carnival of Aros | The Meaning of “Romance” Across Time and Place

This is the roundup of the February 2024 Carnival of Aros on the theme ‘The Meaning of “Romance” Across Time and Place’ which I hosted on this blog in collaboration with with the Asian Network of Ace Queer Activists (ANOAQA). Thanks to ANOAQA for distributing the call for submissions among ace and aro groups from various Asian countries. From my blog stats, I could see that the call reached a lot of folks all over the world, although sadly, we did not manage to recruit any new contributors to the carnival.

That being said, a big thank you to our regular contributors who have get the carnival going! I received a number of very interesting and insightful submissions. I apologize for the delay in posting. I became very caught up with a number of things going on in my life.

UPDATE (3/21): I had regrettably missed a post by bedlaminthebigtop. I am updating the whole post to take this missed submission into account.

List of Submissions (chronological)

1. “Personal Understanding of Romance and Marriage in Slovenia” by Sara Jakša
2. “Wedding Traditions They Don’t Have in China” by Perfect Number
3. “Thinking about “romance” in Bengali” and its companion piece ““Asexual” and “Aromantic” in Bengali” by me
4. “Romance across place” by Roboticanary
5. “Defining Romance and Aromanticism in Chinese” by bedlaminthebigtop
6. “Love in Medieval Romance” by Blue Ice-Tea

Themes in the Submissions

Romance Across Place

This carnival received submissions that discussed romance in Slovenia, China, Bangladesh, and the U.K. (#1, #2, #3, #4, and #5), so we have a nice diversity of different places across the world!

Romance Across Time

Blue Ice-Tea discussed how romance was viewed in medieval times, or more accurately how love was portrayed in medieval romance literature (#6).

Marriage

Two of the submissions (#1 and #2) discussed marriage traditions (in Slovenia and China respectively). This highlights how modern society views marriage as an integral part of romance, or vice versa, how society views romance to be the foundation of a marriage. However, Sara Jakša’s post discusses how the traditional (or historical, if you will) transactional view of marriage is still present in Slovenian marriage traditions.

Sentimentality

Two of the submissions alluded to the sentimental value we (as a society) attach to certain romantic traditions (#2 and #4).

After two whole years of forum running I find these repeated questioning of ‘am I aro’ that focuses on not being interested in the fluff of romance. not liking valentines day, that sort of thing.

Roboticanary

So if you’re aromantic and don’t care about romantic traditions, well, whatever, billions of other people don’t care about those specific traditions either. And even if you have romantic feelings, that doesn’t mean you have to care about roses or diamond rings or whatever. All these things are just cultural symbols- there’s no intrinsic reason they need to be viewed as “romantic.”

Perfect Number

I bring this up because in November 2022 I hosted a carnival on the theme of “Sentimentality” (call for submissions, roundup), which sadly didn’t get a lot of participation, but the discussions above fit perfectly with what I was trying to go for in that carnival!

Discussion of “Romance” in Other Languages

Sara Jakša’s, mine, and bedlaminthebigtop’s submissions (#1, #3, and #5) discussed the use of romance in other languages (Slovenian, Bengali, and Chinese respectively). Sara Jakša provided context around different forms of the words romantika and romántičen, the uses of which don’t necessarily have direct parallels to English. I discussed how Bengali doesn’t have a word for romance, but the word that is evoked in the context of romance can actually have a lot to do with limerence. (Speaking of which, back in November 2021, I had hosted a carnival on the theme “Limerence”; call for submissions; roundup.) bedlaminthebigtop’s submission discusses several terms in Chinese that can be associated with love, romantic feelings, yearning, etc. Throughout this article, it is very clear that the context is key regarding which characters are combined together to convey different meanings. But the translations from English are not straightforward. In fact, bedlaminthebigtop reminds us of something important to keep in mind as we seek solidarity across the globe:

I don’t believe aromantic terminology should be translated into other languages. Translating the English-speaking aromantic community’s terms into other languages makes the English-speaking aromantic community the gatekeepers of aromantic community and knowledge in other languages and cultures. It divorces the terminology from native understanding and sociocultural context, making it useless for communication or comprehension. It is epistemic injustice, injustice done by anglocentrism to us as knowers of ourselves, and hermeneutical injustice, by rendering our experiences unintelligible and dispossessing us of the ability to understand or describe our experiences within our own cultural and linguistic frameworks.

bedlaminthebigtop

This carnival was in honor of International Mother Language Day (IMLD), which is a little known holiday across the world, but it is a big deal in Bangladesh. It was adopted by the UN in 1999 to celebrate language diversity across the world and the day chosen for it, February 21, commemorates the language movement in present day Bangladesh.

So, I was hoping to get more submissions on the language theme specifically, with more discussion of how “romance” is used in other languages: Is there a direct translation? If not, what words are typically used to talk about romance? If you speak a language other than English, I still invite you to write in the comments below! We would love to get some multilingual input!