- Language: English
- Room 201, 2/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong
- February 13, 2018 12:00 nn – 1:00 pm
- (Tel) (852) 3917-5772
- Enquiry: ihss@hku.hk
ABSTRACT
From Odysseus narrating his story to the Phaeacians to expediate his return to Ithaca, to Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights telling tales to receive a perverted and perilous form of hospitality, storytelling operates as a central element within the exchange between guest and host. But what happens when we knock on a door and we don’t share a language? What role does translation — its possibility and impossibility — play in the dynamic between hospitality and storytelling? Drawing on examples from literature (Homer’s The Odyssey, Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers) and travel (a 16,500km cycle journey from the UK to Thailand) Dr. Hulme explores the precarious but powerful relationship between hospitality, storytelling, silence and speech.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Harriet Hulme is a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at The University of Hong Kong. She completed her PhD in Comparative Literature in 2016 at University College London: the monograph arising from her thesis, entitled Ethics and Aesthetics of Translation: Exploring the Work of Atxaga, Kundera and Semprùn (under contract with UCL Press), explores the ethical theories of translation offered by Benjamin, Deleuze, Derrida and Ricœur as part of an interrogation of ethical as well as political thought within the work of three bilingual European authors. Her current research project at HKU draws on examples from contemporary literature and the work of Levinas and Derrida to investigate the ways in which the tension between home and homelessness informs our contemporary response towards hospitality.
