"For not having been born entirely at the same time"

a conversation with Safaa Fathy

Abstract

Safaa Fathy was born in Egypt. She is a poet, film maker, essayist, philosopher and translator living in Paris for thirty-five years now. She is currently a Director at the International College of Philosophy. She obtained her PhD from the University of Paris IV, Sorbonne (1993), and translated The ‘concept’ of September 11 by Jacques Derrida into Arabic. Her most recent films are Mohammed saved from the waters, Derrida’s elsewhere, the film-poems Nom à la mer and Hidden Valley, and one film in progress, Tahrir, raise, raise your voice. Her plays Terror and Ordeal were prefaced by Jacques Derrida, with whom she signed a book, Tourner les mots au bord d’un film. Her latest published collection of poems is A name in a bottle at the sea, 2010, and Où ne pas naître, in 2003. Her most recent essays published between 2011 and 2014 are Scream, see and believe, and The secret in the image, “Hijab” est un mot qui en lui-même… and L’écriture Matricide. Some of her poems translated into Portuguese by Fernando Santoro are a part of her last book of poems edited in 2014: Revolution, a wall we cross. She integrated ICORN in 2007 and was a guest at Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl, in Mexico City.