What are the political promises and pitfalls of the practice conceptual translation? I will first revisit my excavation of the histories of the 1960s Arab Marxist Left before moving to think with diasporic Arab intellectuals (Edward Said and Leila Ahmed) and the question of Palestine. In thinking about both the translation of politics and the politics of translation, what I am after is to move beyond translation’s preoccupation with the question of meaning and towards transfiguration – the repurposing of concepts in, and for, different sites – and towards thinking the practice’s entanglement with recognition and solidarity.
Fadi A. Bardawil is Associate Professor of Contemporary Arab Cultures in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University.
Date: May 26, 2026 (Tue)
Time: 17:30-19:00
Venue: Building 3-405, Waseda University Main Campus
To register, please go to: https://forms.gle/e7KDfPS26qkMwDQm8
