Topics:

SAME AS G57.2707

Translation is “a process in which our entire relation to the Other is played out,” says Antoine Berman. While the very aim of translation is to open up a certain relation, however, translation is often represented as articulating different entities of languages to facilitate the construction of one’s Own through the mediation of the ambiguous Foreign. Cases include the Lutheran translation of the Bible from Latin into local German vernacular of the sixteenth-century; Japanese translation of the Chinese classics and ancient texts into colloquialisms in the eighteenth-century; and modern Korean translation of the recent past and Western canons into han’gŭl in the early twentieth-century. This seminar will examine the mediation of the Other/Foreign by extending questions involved in translation, such as the mediality of language, transmediality of (hi)stories, and transversality of cultural spheres as well as that of the subject in transit, through transcritical readings of the East-West. Borrowed from Karatani Kojin, the term “transcritique” is used to stress a critical approach to dissect transcendental structures that substitute for the relation to the real Other. No prior knowledge of Korean is required, and both MA and PhD students from other disciplines are welcome.