I mentioned some interesting work around empathy the other evening. Poet Natalie Diaz on a podcast speaks of empathy in very interesting ways. You can listen and or read here: https://tinhouse.com/transcript/between-the-covers-natalie-diaz-interview/
DN: Yes, and with South Korea being a neo colony of the US for 70 years, it’s impossible for the two languages or the two sides of a hybrid identity to be relating to each other in equal ways. It feels like the ritual that you do before each reading is reminding us of that. You start with Mojave, you then go to Spanish, then you go to English but the subsequent talk is going to just be in English and that is not by accident, that’s a product of power and erasure and reminds us again of the way these languages are in relationship to each other. Before we hear some poems, I just wanted to stay on this notion one more beat around love in relationship to empathy. It’s something that you said—I remember you saying a long time ago but I was unable to find it so I don’t know if my memory is totally off so I might be saying this incorrectly—it made me think of how empathy is usually put forth as an inherent good, that the ability to know and to understand the other is something to strive for. But another way to look at empathy, which feels related to your model of translation is that, unlike sympathy, empathy is presumptuous. It presumes that we could know the other. In this talk that you gave, at least in my memory of this talk you gave, you were talking about empathy as a hunting technique from Scandinavia as a way to intuit and know the moves of your prey. In a sense, a technique of a predator—and I don’t know if I’m getting that right, does it provoke any recollection on your part?