Speaker: Judy Lok Ying WU (MPhil student in Gender Studies & Literary Studies, CUHK)

Chairperson: Eli Park SORENSEN (Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, CUHK)

Language: English

Registration: goo.gl/iGRiwq

Abstract: While society is encountering multiple cases of student suicide, and statistical number of mental patients is continually on the rise, “youthfulness”, “madness”, and “suicide” have become popular, self-explanatory terms in recent years. However, in Foucauldian terms, such perceptions are but a social construct to control mindset and behaviour of individuals. Through the lens of the Foucauldian portrayal of madness and Franco Moretti’s framework of modern youthfulness, the idea of “mad-youth” – the yet-to-be-socialized ‘other’ with infinite possibilities in life – is a fluid social construction without a solid essence. This seminar approaches the concept with a different perspective: rather than oversimplifying the idea “mad-youth” into “teenagers with mental illnesses”, “madness” and “youthfulness” could be both a state of being, and a strategy for an individual to struggle through social constraints and gradually achieve a desirable social position. Foucault claims that madness is a category power creates for the unconforming, unproductive ‘other’; while the ‘other’ is deprived of discursive power, true voices from madness can only be channelled through art and literature. The seminar hence opens a discussion on the notion of “mad-youth” using Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel A Pale View of Hills as a case study, as an attempt to elaborate on how the label of “mad-youth” can be a tool of empowerment for the oppressed individuals, while it remains at the same time tool for power to oppress the unconforming.

Speaker’s Biography: After graduating from the English B.A. programme in The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Judy continue with her academic studies with an MPhil. degree in Gender Studies (Literary Studies). Her current project is a dissertation concerning portrayal of gender, youth, and madness in Anglophone literature from both Western and Asian cultures, including translated works. She has recently presented parts of her project in international conferences hosted by University of Gdańsk and University College London.