Is global literature possible?

Slought is pleased to announce "Is global literature possible?," a public conversation with renowned Chinese scholar Wang Ning on world literature and the politics of translation on Tuesday May 3, 2011 from 7-9pm. Wang Ning will briefly present on his work, followed by a conversation with Paula Marantz Cohen, Distinguished Professor of English, Drexel University, and Jean-Michel Rabate, Senior Curator for Discursive Projects at Slought.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's utopian conjecture over a hundred and eighty years ago of "world literature" is no longer prescriptive, but rather speaks to our present aesthetic reality. Today, translation has played a crucial role in introducing world literatures to different cultural backgrounds. Walter Benjamin, in dealing with the task of the translator, pertinently points out that translation endows a literary work with "continued life" or "afterlife," without which many literary works of world significance will remain dead or marginalized.

This conversation begins from Wang Ning's proposal for the further translation of Chinese literature into other major world languages. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's thinking on translation and David Damrosch's emphasis on the role played by translation in constructing world literature, Wang Ning's work argues that increased translation of Chinese literature into English is an urgent task, since world literature is itself constituted by works in different languages.