Venue: Arts West, Arts West
Presenters: Professor Saúl Sosnowski
2016 Walter Mangold Lecture
To learn another language is to create the possibility of a dialogue, though not (necessarily) of understanding ‘the other.’
Other than in mathematics –the only language that does not require mediation or explanation— how are our utterances received when they navigate along and across the edges that define ‘differing cultures’? Are words the same when they move across space or to the other side of the table? How are visual, or written texts received when they travel across cultural divides? At the more intimate level of reading a poem, for instance, at how many simultaneous levels do we read “just words” and obtain different meanings? Aren’t ‘sacred books’ forever reinterpreted without any recourse to an absolute or single version? Do humans produce art and literature to somehow fill the gap of miss-understanding, of that which is almost within our grasp but always beyond it?
These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this presentation: a brief journey from A to B: from Adam to Borges, with a stop at Babel.
Professor Saúl Sosnowski holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and directed the Institute for International Programs from 2000 until 2011.
from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/7510-just-words-and-then-the-tower-crumbled
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