Top authors discuss globalization, literature
By Chung Ah-young
In a rapidly globalizing world, conventional borders are blurred in every sphere of daily life such as trade, multinational corporations, regional economies, cultures and technology.
Globalization has brought both positive and negative effects but it is true that there is an increasing concern of dehumanization alongside homogenization of cultures and commoditization of values in an ever expanding global market economy.
To tackle such issues in the context of literature, world renowned authors such as Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Gao Xingjian and Andrew Motion are gathering at the 3rd Seoul International Forum for Literature 2011.
The forum kicks off today and will continue through Thursday at the Kyobo Convention Hall and Seminar Room in Gwanghwamun under the theme of “The Globalizing World and the Human Community.”
The Daesan Foundation hosted the forum in 2000 and 2005 under the themes “Writing Across Boundaries” and “Writing for Peace,” which may be said to fall in the categories of the problems of globalization, with many distinguished writers participating from all over the world.
This year’s event consists of five sessions — “The Self and the Other in the Age of Multiculturalism,” “Writing in the Globalizing World,” “Literature in the Age of Post-Ideology,” “Writing for the World Market and the Multimedia Environment” and “Literature and Eco-Criticism.”
Over the three days, 14 overseas participants including Liu Zaifu, Amiya Dev, Ben Okri, Ingo Schulze and Shimada Masahiko and 21 Korean writers such as Park Bum-shin, Yi Mun-yol and Kim U-chang will discuss ideas.
On the opening day, Le Clezio delivered a keynote speech on the main theme and talked about it with Han Kang.
“Globalization, like good and evil, is nothing in itself,” Le Clezio said in the speech. “As Hamlet expressed, ‘but thinking makes it so,’ literature, in particular this wonderful hybrid which is the novel — a mixture of poetry, of confession, and of voyeuristic cynicism — is indeed the place of cross-fertilization. It is an art which is absolutely opposed to every loss of identity and all projects of a universal cultural ectoplasm.
“Every author, every reader, is a human being at the same time close and different and only art can give us hope that this difficult contradiction may be resolved.”
Chinese author Xingjian will give a keynote speech titled “Ideology and Literature” on May 25 and will discuss it with panel members Zaifu and Doh Jung-il.
“A man becomes real only by facing solitude. And this solitary individual is a thinking being. People have never questioned the meaning of existence with greater self-awareness and been more desperate to understand what freedom means,” he writes in his speech.
“More People are devoting themselves to writing than ever before. It is my hope that literature will become a haven in this era of spiritual poverty and leave some evidence of life, even if it is a small one. It gives us hope that literature today will not decline.
“Only accidents of history will decide when there will be a revival of art and literature. Each literary work like a life is a unique event that comes into being by accident,”
Kim U-chang will present “Life Told, Life Theorized: Ideology, Authenticity, the Free Market” and discuss the topic with panel guests Masahiko and Eun Hee-kyung on Thursday.