Notes on On Rocks, Walks, and Talks in West Africa: Cultural Categories and an Anthropology of the Senses
Context and Fieldwork
Article investigates seselelame within Anlo-Ewe communities in the southeastern corner of Ghana, along the Keta Lagoon, which is the Anlo homeland.
Anlo is a dialect of the Ewe language and also a subset of Ewe speakers in the Volta Region; many Anlo-Ewe live in Accra and migrate elsewhere (Europe, North America).
The heart of Anlo-land is the coastal stretch from Anyanui to Keta or Kedzi, north of the lagoon to Anyako.
Fieldwork details:
Approximately of ethnographic fieldwork in the Anlo-Ewe areas during the period 1992–1995.
After the initial field period, ongoing communication with Anlo-Ewe informants in Europe and the U.S. about seselelame.
The author emphasizes listening to insights from multilingual, multicultural informants who bridge Anlo-Ewe and Western contexts.
Central focus: seselelame (feeling in the body, flesh, or skin) as an indigenous category linking sensation, emotion, disposition, and vocation, and its role in Anlo epistemologies and everyday life.
The author’s methodological stance:
Acknowledges countertransference and embodied knowledge as informative for understanding social realities (counterpart to observer-subjectivity debates).
Uses personal experience (e.g., driving over a rock) alongside Anlo voices to illuminate how sensory experience fits into Anlo cultural models of knowing.
The broader aim: unpack how sensory experience fits into Anlo-Ewe ways of knowing and how cultural variation shapes sensory orders and embodied knowledge.
Core Concept: seselelame
seselelame literally translates roughly as “feeling in the body” (feel-feel-at-flesh-inside).
It is a culturally elaborated system in which inner states are read through bodily experiences and relate to objects, environment, and others.
It functions across multiple domains, not confined to a single sense:
Can refer to physical sensations (tingling, pain), emotional states (happiness, sorrow), inspirations (dance, speech), intuition, and even generalized dispositions.
Used as an umbrella term for sensation, emotion, imagination, perception, and cognition in Anlo-Ewe accounts of immediate bodily experience.
Seselelame is seen as bridging cognitive and affective domains; it resists the Western dichotomy between sensation and emotion and offers a more integrated model of knowing.
The concept aligns with Csordas’s notion of somatic modes of attention: culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s own body and the bodies of others in intersubjective spaces.
Four analytic tools used to explore seselelame (per Csordas): intuition, imagination, perception, and sensation.
Seselelame as a way of attending to messages that arise from bodily experience—messages that must be analyzed for their implications for self and others in the house or community.
Language, Categories, and the Problem of Translation
Western notion of “the senses” (sensation vs. perception) relies on five discrete modalities; Anlo-Ewe language does not have a single term equivalent to this five-senses model.
The term sidzenu (Westermann, Ewe-German dictionary) was initially used but proved inadequate: it means roughly “thing recognized,” implying cognitive/observational processing rather than embodied experience.
In interviews, scholars and informants offered multiple lexical options for sensing and feeling, illustrating a lack of a single native term for the Western sense category:
nusenuwo (nus-: thing; se: to hear, feel; nuwo: things) – roughly, “things with which you can hear or feel.”
nutila nusenuwo (nuti- exterior; la: flesh; nu: thing; se: to hear) – “bodily phenomena with which you can hear or feel.”
sensing generally described as nusiwo kpena de mia nuti hafi mienyaa nusi le dzodzom de mia dzi – “things that help us to know what is happening to us.”
aleke nese le lame – “how you feel within yourself” or within your body.
The crucial term: seselelame, a polysemous and culturally saturated term for a broad spectrum of inner states tied to body, emotion, and social being.
The absence of a single, unified native term for five senses underscores a broader point: Anlo-Ewe conceptualizes experience through a continuum that blends sensation, affect, disposition, and vocation.
Linguistic anatomy of perception and related domains:
The Ewe lexicon often bundles sensation, emotion, and related states in kinesthetic and somatic terms with nu- prefix words across senses and affective states (e.g., nu-sese, nu-le, nu-kpokpo, etc.), indicating a social-interpretive organization rather than a simple sensory taxonomy.
Philosophical implication: The seselelame framework challenges the universality of the five-senses model and supports a view in which bodily experiences are inseparable from moral, vocational, and social dispositions.
Seselelame and the Way We Walk (Kinesthetics, Morality, and Style)
Walking and movement are culturally loaded with sensorium:
Azolizozo denotes kinesthetic movement; azolime denotes moral disposition linked to movement.
Movement styles (zo- roots meaning “to move” or “to walk”) encode character and moral qualities.
Lugulugu (an onomatopoetic term) describes a lugubrious, non-straightforward way of walking; it is tied to a person’s character (irresponsibility or lack of seriousness) in social judgment.
Field observations of Kobla and Aaron:
Their mother scolds them for lugulugu behavior as they fetch water, interpreting it as a sign of character and potential future dispositions.
The argument: if you move lugulugu, you will think lugulugu and become a lugulugu person; vice versa, repeated lugulugu thoughts shape body and behavior.
The logic links kinesthetic sensation, cognition, and moral/personality development; walking style serves as a visible index of inner states.
Onomatopeia and reduplication:
Lugulugu and other movement terms are often reduplicated (e.g., zo-kodzakadza, zo-lumolumo) and appear as ideophones, capturing sensory impressions through sound.
Ewe’s heavy use of reduplication is linked to heightened sensory experience and performative emphasis; Westermann (1930) documents many such movement terms; Ansre (1963) notes reduplication is common in Ewe.
Kinesthetics and moral sense are integrated in seselelame; movement becomes a sensorium that conveys dispositions and social judgments beyond mere physical action.
Speech-centered kinesthetics:
The arts of movement and speech are tied to social sensibility and embodied knowledge; reduplication and ideophones contribute to the sensory texture of daily life.
Speech as a Sensory Field: Sesetonume and Nufofo
Speech, like movement, is seen as a sensory field within sesetonume—“feeling in the mouth.”
Nufofo (“speech”) contains the morpheme fo, meaning to strike or beat, symbolizing the power and transferential force of words beyond mere referential meaning.
Enu (mouth) and enu-like spiritual illness (bogbemedo) illustrate how speech can carry social power and spiritual effects:
Enu also refers to opening/edge, contents, quantity, and effect; enu is believed to be a vector for spiritual sicknesses in pregnant women or vulnerable individuals when uttered malefic words or hostile discourse.
Bad will and enmity, transmitted through speech, may cause illness via sesetonume and seselelame, affecting mother and fetus or young children.
The transferential power of speech is widely recognized: words carry social and psychodynamic force that can affect bodies and states of well-being.
The social mechanism: spoken animus penetrates bodies, especially of vulnerable groups like pregnant women and children, through the sensory force of speech itself, not solely through meaning understood by the ear.
The cultural logic rejects the proverb “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” as inadequate here; words are tangible, active forces capable of transference and bodily impact.
Implication for Western comparison: while Western models focus on content and cognitive processing of speech, Anlo-Ewe perspectives foreground the audible force and bodily resonance of speech as part of a holistic sensory economy.
Theoretical Frame and Counterpoints
Cultural psychology and the senses:
The article engages questions raised in cultural psychology about how meaning systems define experiences as sensory, and how discourse shapes somatic meanings (Shweder 1993).
Markus, Kitayama, and Heiman argue that psychological processes are culturally constituted and vary with sociocultural context; seselelame offers a competing model to Western five-sense psychology.
Csordas’s “somatic modes of attention”:
Seselelame aligns with Csordas’s idea of culturally elaborated attention to and with the body within intersubjective surroundings.
Csordas notes the poverty of anthropological categories in capturing embodied, intersubjective experiences; seselelame represents such a phenomenology.
Four analytic categories used to explore seselelame: intuition, imagination, perception, sensation (in addition to cognition and affect).
The broader aim: to show how sensation, emotion, disposition, and vocation are interconnected through bodily experience rather than separated into discrete five senses, especially within Anlo-Ewe worlds.
Nu-lexicon and the Semantic Web of Senses, Feelings, and Vocations
A pattern emerges where many sensation terms and emotional/dispositional terms begin with nu- (nu- means “object” or “thing”):
nusese (hearing), nulele (touching), nukpokpo (seeing), nudodokpo (tasting), nuvevesese (smelling).
Emotions or affective states: nuxaxa (grief/sorrow), nugbenugbe (pain/rage/joy), nublanuikpokpo (compassion), nudzodzro (longing).
Dispositional states: nuvowola (evil person), nuvela (economical/miserly), nubiala (begging), nunyala (wise), nublanuito (deplorable/misfortunate).
Vocational descriptors: nufiala (teacher), nutula (blacksmith), nutola (tailor), numela (potter).
This lexical pattern suggests an archaic linking of sensation with affect, disposition, and vocation—hinting at a broader Anlo logic of personhood, fate, and destiny.
The idea of se (destiny) and Ese (destiny) ties seselelame to religio-social dimensions such as reincarnation and vocation, reinforcing the interconnection between bodily feeling and life path.
Proverbial and social reflections:
Destiny and disposition are embedded in proverbs such as Akaga ledo megbea akoli o (a diseased vulture never parts from the rubbish heap) and Menye tsimalemale tae adexe mumuna do o (The mudfish is odious by nature, but never because he does not bathe), suggesting a culturally shared sense that dispositions and vocations are fused with destiny.
The “nu-” words thereby offer a semiological map of how Anlo-Ewe thinking clusters sensing, feeling, disposition, and vocation into a single semantic field that is intimately tied to personhood and social identity.
When We Move: Lugulugu, Azolizozo, and the Moral Sensorium
Lugulugu as a kinetic category:
Lugulugu refers to the act of moving in a way that is unsteady, non-linear, or indecisive; it is interpreted as a sign of character in social judgments.
Observations of children Kobla and Aaron show how lugulugu behavior is read as a sign of future character, and how caregivers fear lugulugu tendencies might become embodied dispositions.
Kinesthetic styles as sensorium:
A broad repertoire of movement terms (more than 50 kinesthetic styles) exists in Ewe, with many terms being reduplicated or ideophonic (e.g., zo bafobafo, zo bulabula, zo kodzokodzo, zo lumolumo).
The sheer number and the ideophonic character of these terms indicate strong sensory valuation of movement and its social meaning.
The logic of a single domain: Movement and disposition are interwoven—bodily sensations of movement (azolizozo) and corresponding moral feelings (azolime) feed into seselelame as a unified domain.
Integrating theory and practice:
The kinesthetic domain provides a concrete example of how perception, sensation, emotion, cognition, and social identity co-construct a person’s character in a continuous, intersubjective loop.
Analytic takeaway: Seselelame is not just about bodily sensation; it is a synesthetic, cross-domain form of knowing that matches the musculature of movement to moral personality and social potential.
Ideophones, Repetition, and the Sensory Texture of Language
Ideophones (sound-symbolic words) are central to conveying sensory experience in Anlo-Ewe:
They evoke vivid sensory images through sound; reduplication enhances sensory emphasis and perceived intensity.
Westermann (1930) and later scholars document the prevalence of ideophony and reduplication in Ewe, especially for movement terms.
The role of performance and orality:
The sensory character of speech is reinforced by performance contexts; Samarin notes that ideophones are underrepresented in the written texts but become vivid in performance.
Verbal art in African contexts is best understood as living, sensory experiences rather than mere literate texts (Peek 1981).
Speech as a sensory field (revisited): nufofo (speech) and its energizing force contrast with the more analytical approach of simply decoding meaning; the sonic quality of speech can be as impactful as its content.
The Spider Story, Legba, and the Ontology of Stones
The rock in the author’s compound is reframed as legba (a spiritual guardian of thresholds) in Anlo-Ewe worlds, though not always recognizable as such by outsiders.
Trickster tale: Yiyi kple Kadzidoe (Spider and the Squirrel)
Spider (Yiyi) encounters a stone with eyes and uses it to gain food; eventually, the stone yields to perception by the squirrel, revealing that appearances can be deceptive.
This tale illustrates a key ethnographic insight: stones or legbawo may be legba or simply rocks; their identity depends on sociocultural interpretation and spiritual anchoring.
The conceptual parallel with Shweder’s weeds analogy:
Intentional worlds shape reality; what counts as a weed or legba depends on the social context; our identities interpenetrate with other beings and objects through interpretive practices.
Conclusion about rocks and legba:
What outsiders label as merely a rock can be a legba; culturally, the meaning of objects is co-constructed through social and spiritual networks.
The epistemological implication: sensory meaning is not a fixed, universal category but a culturally charged phenomenon that reconfigures how people know and relate to their environments.
Conclusion: The Generic Shape of a Sensory Meaning System in Anlo-Ewe Worlds
Seselelame offers a holistic model where bodily feeling is a primary source of information, not simply a signal for cognitive processing or emotional labeling.
The Anlo-Ewe framework integrates sensation, emotion, disposition, and vocation; these domains are continuous and interwoven within a shared bodily experience rather than neatly separated as in the Western five-sense model.
The process is inherently intersubjective: attending to one’s body involves attending to the embodied presence of others in one’s social world (Csordas’s somatic mode of attention).
The rock episode serves as a concrete example of seselelame in practice: the sensory jolt, the social prohibition, and the interpretive guidance from Raphael illustrate how embodied messages are produced, interpreted, and acted upon in culturally specific ways.
The article aligns with Antonio Damasio’s view of links among bodily feelings, emotion, and cognition in Western contexts and shows how these links are differently organized in Anlo-Ewe epistemology.
Final takeaway: seselelame represents a comprehensive cultural logic in which knowing, feeling, and becoming are inseparable and situated within bodies, social relations, and moral vocations.
Key Terms and Glossary (selected)
seselelame: feeling in the body; a culturally elaborated sense that integrates sensation, affect, intuition, emotion, and social meaning.
azolizozo: kinesthetic movement; movement-based sense linked to bodily sensation.
azolime: moral disposition linked to movement; embodies character through locomotion.
sesetonume: feeling in the mouth; includes speech, eating, breathing, and related sensations.
nufofo: speech; the act of talking; conveys force and transferential power.
enu: mouth; a category of spiritual sicknesses (bogbomedo) linked to the power of speech and social relations; violence of sound can affect pregnancy and infants.
nusenuwo / nutila nusenuwo: lexical proposals for sensing; “things with which you can hear or feel” (bodily phenomena).
sidzenu: literally a “thing recognized,” the cognitive/perceptual term that Westerners might map to sense; seen as insufficient to capture embodied sensoriality.
sidzedze / sidzedzenu: related concepts of sensing, observation, and realization; higher-level forms of seselelame involving reasoning about sensations.
lugulugu: a particular kinesthetic style, often interpreted as foolish or unserious, with implications for character and social judgment.
legba / legbawo: spiritual guardians of thresholds; a person’s interpretive framework for understanding objects or events as spiritually meaningful.
ideophones: vivid vocal expressions that convey sensory impressions; often reduplicated in Ewe to heighten sensory effect.
Connections to Foundational Theories and Readings
Csordas, Thomas J. (1993): Somatic Modes of Attention. Frames seselelame as a culturally elaborated attention to the body in an intersubjective field.
Shweder, Richard (1993, 1991): Cultural psychology of emotion and sense-making; asks about the shape of meaning systems that define experiences as sensory versus other kinds; relates to how sense is socially constructed.
Stoller, Paul (1989, 1997): Sensuous scholarship; argues for incorporating the agency of the sensuous in ethnography; supports interpreter’s embodied engagement.
Damasio, Antonio (1999): The Feeling of What Happens; resonates with seselelame’s linking of bodily feelings, emotion, and cognition in Western contexts while providing a comparative framework.
Westermann (1930, 1973): Lexical and reduplication patterns in Ewe; relevant to the discussion of movement words, ideophones, and sensory language.
Ameka (1999); Ansre (1963); Cole (1955); Peek (1981); Samarin (1967): Research on ideophones, reduplication, and the performative sensorium of language; foundational to understanding how sensory expression is enacted in speech and performance.
Markus, Kitayama, Heiman (1996): Cultural psychology principles about culturally constituted psychological processes; provide a backdrop for comparing seselelame with Western psychology.
Fieldwork and Textual Notes (Reference Points)
Duration and setting: of fieldwork in the Anlo region; ongoing communication with informants in Europe and the U.S.
Linguistic nuances: diverse translations and terminologies for sensing; the author notes translation challenges and the advantage of native terms for understanding sensory experience.
The essay integrates anecdotal field observations (e.g., the rock episode, lugulugu behavior) with theoretical discussions about sensory categories.
The piece culminates in a synthesis that emphasizes embodied knowledge and cultural variation in sensory orders as central to understanding Anlo-Ewe ways of knowing.
References (selected in-text citations)
Csordas (1993) Somatic Modes of Attention.
Shweder (1993, 1991) on cultural psychology of emotion and meaning systems.
Stoller (1989, 1997) on sensuous scholarship and the agency of the researcher’s body.
Damasio (1999) The Feeling of What Happens.
Westermann (1930); Westermann (1973) on Ewe language and terminology.
Ameka (1999); Ansre (1963) on ideophones and reduplication.
Peek (1981) The Power of Words in African Verbal Arts.
Samarin (1967) on ideophones in performance.
Markus, Kitayama, Heiman (1996) on culture and basic psychological principles.
D'Andrade (1984, 1987) on cultural meaning systems and folk models of the mind.