The Pleasure of Cross-Cultural Reading: A Phenomenological Approach to Sukyung Huh’s Global Blues

Abstract

This paper illustrates how a hybrid interpretive process can be deployed to refashion Korean humanities traditions for a global context. Han, a Korean reader-translator, and Chilton, an Anglophone reader, undertake a cross-cultural reading and a phenomenological interpretation of Sukyung Huh’s Global Blues, an English translation of the collection of poems titled 빌어먹을, 차가운 심장 in Korean. The purpose of conducting such a collaborative reading is to bring attention to two main points. First, it is crucial to acknowledge a translator’s role in the authorship of a text since, more than merely making a copy of the original, he/she undertakes important critical judgments and creative interpretations to produce an original translation. Second, it is time for global Korean humanities studies to take on a more active role, rather than being simply a passive object of study. Han thus uses her translation to evaluate the trend toward the ‘globalization’ of Korean literature: she provides only the bare bones of Huh’s biography and poetic themes, and then asks Chilton to read Global Blues and interpret this work by responding to the poems he finds most appealing. The result is exemplified by the title of this paper, “the pleasure of cross-cultural reading”: two readers, originating from starkly contrasting positions, activating multiple viewpoints that transcend straightforward comparison, skimming off the hegemonic weight of Anglocentric interpretive frameworks and expanding their comparative vista toward global humanities studies.