Article published In:
Translation in Society: Online-First ArticlesBourdieu’s trajectory concept as an approach to microhistorical research in translation
This article explores the potential of Bourdieu’s trajectory concept as an approach to microhistorical research, using the life history of Egypt’s late Minister of Culture Tharwat Okasha as a case study. The focus throughout is on Okasha’s multipositionality throughout his trajectory as a military officer and then as a military attaché in France between 1939 and 1956. Through a close reading of memoirs, translations and writings, the article investigates how he traversed different fields (the military, psychology, history and journalism) and the effect of this movement on his translation practices. In so doing, the article integrates this analysis into a sociological examination of the politics of the Free Officers, who led the 1952 coup, and argues that the relational concept of trajectory allows the reconstruction of history at the intersection between the lived experience of an individual and the network of agents engaged in the same fields.
Keywords: Bourdieu’s sociology, field, habitus, microhistory, Tharwat Okasha, trajectory, translation
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Trajectory as a methodological and conceptual tool
- 3.Promoting a military science of war
- 4.The turn to psychology and history
- 5.Journalism as a field of power
- 6.The move to Europe
- 7.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].
Published online: 19 July 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.23023.ali
https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.23023.ali
References (51)
Atefmehr, Zahra, and Farzaneh Farahzad. 2022. “Microhistorical Research in Translator Studies: An Archival Methodology.” The Translator 28 (3): 251–62.
Ahram Online. Accessed 23 July 2023. [URL]
Al-Bayan. Accessed 3 August 2023. [URL]
Al-Ḥināwī, Kamāl al-Dīn. 1950. Al-ʾIstrātījiyyah fī al-Ḥarb al-ʾAhliyyah al-ʾAmrīkiyyah. Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍah al-Miṣriyyah.
Bekkelund, Christian. 2014. J.F.C. Fuller: Military Theory and the Use of Power. MA diss. Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986a. “L’illusion Biographique.” Actes de La Recherché En Sciences Sociales 62–631: 69–73.
. 1986b. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. Richardson, translated by Richard Nice, 241–258. New York: Greenwood.
. 1996a. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
. 1996b. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Translated by Susan Emanuel. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.
. 2002. “Habitus.” In Habitus: A Sense of Place, edited by J. Hillier and E. Rooksby, 27–34. Burlington: Ashgate.
. 2020. “The Field of Power and the Division of the Labour of Domination.” In Researching Elites and Power: Theory, Methods, Analyses, edited by Francois Denord, Mikael Palme, and Bertrand Réau, 33–44. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Boushaba, Safia. 1988. An Analytical Study of Some Problems of Literary Translation: A Study of Two Arabic Translations of K. Gibran’s The Prophet. PhD diss. University of Salford.
Buzelin, Hélène. 2018. “Sociological Models and Translation History.” In A History of Modern Translation Knowledge: Sources, Concepts, Effects, edited by Lieven D’hulst, and Yves Gambier, 337–346. Amesterdam: John Benjamins.
Cook, Steven A. 2011. The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
D’hulst, Lieven. 1995. “Pour une historiographie des théories de la traduction : questions de méthode.” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction 8 (1): 13–33.
El Shakry, Omnia S. 2017. The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fahmy, Ziad. 2011. Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.
Freeth, Peter Jonathan. 2023. “Peripheral Vision and Challenging Invisibilities: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections on the ‘Digitized Turn’ and ‘Born-Digital’ Sources in Archives of Translation and Translators.” Translation in Society 2 (2): 213–234.
Fuller, John Frederick Charles. 1933. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
. 1942. Machine Warfare: An Inquiry into the Influence of Mechanics on the Art of War. Translated by Tharwat Okasha. Cairo: Department of Military Publishing.
Guderian, Heinz. 1952. Panzer Leader: General Heinz Guderian. Translated by Tharwat Okasha. Cairo: Department of Military Publishing.
Ḥamūdah, Ḥusayn. 1985. Asrār Ḥarakat Al-Ḍubāṭ al-ʾAḥrār Wa al-ʾIkhwān al-Muslimīn. Cairo: Al-Zahrāʾ Li-iʿlām al-ʿArabī.
Hanna, Sameh. 2016. Bourdieu in Translation Studies: The Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Shakespeare Translation in Egypt. New York: Routledge.
. 2014. “Remapping Habitus: Norms, Habitus and the Theorisation of Agency in Translation Practice and Translation Scholarship.” In Remapping Habitus in Translation Studies, edited by Gisella M. Vorderobermeier, 57–71. Leiden: Brill.
Holm, Nicholas. 2020. “Critical Capital: Cultural Studies, the Critical Disposition and Critical Reading as Elite Practice.” Cultural Studies 34 (1): 143–166.
ʻĪsá, Ṣalāḥ. 2017. Al-Ayam. Accessed 13 May 2023. [URL]
Jacquemond, Richard. 2008. Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
Kamuntavičienė, Vaida. 2021. “Microhistorical Approach to Church History: Secret Life of the Sisters of St. Catherine in Soviet Lithuania (1948–1988).” In Penser l’histoire Religieuse Au Xxie Siècle, edited by Yves Krumenacker, and Raymond A. Mentzer, 19–30. Lyon: LARHRA.
Link, Henry C. 1948. The Return to Religion: Developing Personality and Finding Happiness in Life. Translated by Tharwat Okasha. Cairo: Dār Jarīdat al-Maṣry.
Mander, William. 2022. “Pantheism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford (CA): Metaphysics Research Lab. [URL]
Mauriac, François. 1955. “La Torture.” L’Express, 15 January 1955. [URL]
Meylaerts, Reine. 2013. “The Multiple Lives of Translators.” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction 26 (2): 103–128.
Muḥyī al-Dīn, Khālid. 1992. Wa Alān Atakalam. Cairo: Al-Ahram Center for Translation and Publishing.
Naṣr, Ṣalāḥ, and Kamāl al-Dīn Al-Ḥināwī. 1949. Al-Sharq al-ʾAwṣaṭ Fī Mahab al-Rīḥ. Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍah al-Miṣriyyah.
Okasha, Tharwat, and Kamāl al-Dīn Al-Ḥināwī. 1945. ʿIlm al-nafs fī khidmatik. Cairo: Dār al-Jawharī lil-ṭabʿ wa al-Nashr.
Pick, Daniel. 1993. War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Reed-Danahay, Deborah. 2020. Bourdieu and Social Space: Mobilities, Trajectories, Emplacements. New York: Berghahn Books.
Rundle, Christopher. 2012. “Translation as an Approach to History.” Translation Studies 5 (2): 232–240.
Sapiro, Gisèle. 2015. “Translation and Symbolic Capital in the Era of Globalization: French Literature in the United States.” Cultural Sociology 9 (3): 320–346.