Scholarly authors as self-translators : tracing Hasan Hanafi’s philosophical back-and-forth translations

Abstract

This paper examines traces of (self-)translation in the work of the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi (1935–2021), whose academic career reflects the increasing globality of the academic field. The paper analyses Hanafi’s academic migration to France to complete his doctorate, his self-translational efforts to adapt to the French academic tradition, and the influence of his (physical and linguistic) migration on his later philosophical texts in Arabic. Hanafi was convinced that the ‘archaic’ Arabic language alienated Muslims from their own heritage, and in his later philosophical texts he thus sought to renew the Arabic language and to re-express fundamental concepts of the classical Islamic teachings. The concepts he aimed to re-express were already translated into French in his doctoral thesis. This article addresses these terminological translations into French and back into Arabic, and discusses the conceptual transformations that occurred on the way, inspired by Hanafi’s reading of Husserl and the German Idealists.