The chapter “The Meaning of Revolution” from Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution (1963) featured prominently in the 2012 special issue on the Egyptian uprising in the Cairene literary journal Fusul. Fusul had not been a place for translating Hannah Arendt’s works during President Mubarak’s long rule. So why did Khayri Hammad’s 1964 translation of On Revolution get pride of place in this seminal issue over other classics on revolution? “On revolution” was translated into Arabic even before she translated it into her native German in 1965. Starting with a comparison of a key passage in “The Meaning of Revolution” in the English, Arabic and German versions, this lecture offers some reflections on translation as a metaphor and method of doing modern Arab intellectual history fifty years after Hammad’s memorable interpretation of Arendt’s book. Some broader themes for Arendt’s place in contemporary Arab political culture have been discussed here.
Jens Hanssen is an Associate Professor of Arab and Mediterranean History. He received his D.Phil in Modern History from Oxford University in 2001 and joined the University of Toronto the following year. His Dissertation has been published by Clarendon Press as Fin de Siècle Beirut in 2005. His writings have appeared in The New Cambridge History of Islam, Critical Inquiry, and the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. His current research interests include the intersections between urban culture and intellectual production in 19th- and 20th-century Arab history, the global fin de siècle, and German-Jewish echoes in modern Arab thought. The paper Kafka and Arabs is one of his many publications.
