Transreading-Workshop "Kafka's Dao: a patience game with Laozi, Goethe and Nietzsche" with Prof. Dr. Huiwen Zhang (external link, opens in a new window)
Friday, May 24th, 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m, room SG.214
Questions and registrations can be directed to the organizer, Prof. Dr. Astrid Ensslin (opens your email program). We would be happy to welcome you.
- “Laotse's sayings are rock hard nuts. I am enchanted by them, but their core remains closed to me.” The fact that the legendary ancient Chinese wise man Lao Tzu found his way to Kafka is astonishing. What is even more astonishing, however, is how, despite his desperation, Kafka plays a game of patience with Lao Tzu to the end, translating the Daodejing, which has been canonized in China and is increasingly influential in the West, into his own writings. In the workshop we take part in this game and also invite Goethe, Nietzsche and Richard Wilhelm to our discussions. -
Biography:
Huiwen Helen Zhang (Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature, University of Bergen; BA/MA, Peking University; PhD, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Postdoc: Yale University) investigates and deciphers transcultural phenomena using “transreading”, a method that she developed in publications such as Cultural Transfer across Epochs and Continents, “An Ethics of Transreading,” “'Desire to Become an Indian' Read Translated in the Light of Kafka's Dao,” “Olav H. Hauge in Dialogue with Laozi and Eckhart,” and “Richard Wilhelm and Alfred Döblin Transread the Chinese Tradition”. Her current book projects expand and deepen the transreading of key moments in cross-cultural intellectual history: Transreading: A Common Language for Cultural Critique, Kafka’s Dao: The Patience Game, and Nordic Modes of Transreading.