Death of Hachem Foda, professor of classical Arabic literature

Specialist in classical Arabic literature, Maître de Conférences in the Department of Arabic Studies at our institution since 2012-2013, then Professor since 2018-2019, Hachem Foda is one of the few researchers in France to have dealt with what is known as medieval adab literature, one of whose jewels is pre-Islamic and classical poetry. Trained at the Jesuit College and then at Cairo University, where he obtained a Master's degree in Modern Letters in 1975, Hachem Foda arrived in France in 1979, and in 1980 brilliantly defended a thesis in textual semiotics on the "Status of the event in the literary text". On his jury was a professor of classical Arabic literature, Jamal Eddine BenCheikh, head of the Arabic Department at Paris 8. He immediately hired the brilliant young researcher for a series of vacancies on Arabic rhetoric at Paris 8, in a department where very young researchers from diverse backgrounds were also present, determined to dust off Arabic studies that had been somewhat bogged down for decades.

Forged by a long association with Derrida's seminars and an assiduous reading of the works of Blanchot and Genette, at the crossroads of the philosophical-speculative critical current and the formalist critical school, Hachem Foda's eye knows how to interrogate texts where they let their stakes be heard. This adab, which is not easily circumscribed in our modern disciplinary fields and which hesitates between banter and 'science', between the theological and the profane, between rhetoric and ethics, is a key element in understanding the classical worldview, and above all in understanding the shared values and representations on which the Arab peoples live today. Yet this collection of texts, whose language and archaisms are numerous and which comes to us without context, has been progressively neglected by research in France, a victim of the positivist vision of the last century or stuck in an interpretation - often misunderstood - that comes from the Arab tradition, currently delighted by fundamentalist currents. Since the work of Blachère and Vadet, in the fifties and sixties of the last century, few significant works have appeared in France in this field. Few new visions, few great texts explored or reread, indeed few published works at all. What is the relationship between "literature" and adab? What is the function and status of the poet and the adīb? What secret and multiple links bind the arcana of the modern Arab world to pre-Islamic poetry, to poetry tout court, and more generally to adab literature?
It is undoubtedly to answer questions of this kind, firmly resolved to erode surfaces, that Hachem Foda, article after article, text after text, builds a new vision in this field, in a career spanning almost forty years, a vision capped by important, as yet unpublished, works in recent years.

And it is, from the outset, in a highly demanding training activity that this reflection was elaborated. At the start of his career, Hachem Foda was a teaching assistant in the Department of Modern Letters at Cairo University (1974-1977), then Teaching Assistant in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA) (1977-1978). From 1983 to 1985, he took part in the adventure of the Collège International de Philosophie, then became a lecturer at the Université Paris 8 before joining our institution. He has made these courses, which he has been teaching for some thirty years, a place for reflection on classical literature, where many researchers have been trained. His unrivalled knowledge of pre-Islamic and classical poetry, which few know how to decipher but to which he knows how to bring life, and the fresh questioning to which he subjects the texts, have not failed to attract the best students wishing to train in this field, and have been a great asset to our establishment. The doctoral seminar he co-directs on the rereading of the classical heritage is a highly productive forum for exchange between researchers and doctoral students. Alongside other students, young researchers whom he has trained and supervised, and who will go on to play an important role in the future, meet there. A pioneer, he blazed a trail. Others will follow.

Simple and discreet despite being a great scholar, Hachem Foda had an endearing presence that radiated and commanded the respect of all. Surprised by the illness that came too soon, he was determined to die on his feet. He fought long and hard, never giving in to his illness, determined to pursue his research and teaching activities to the very last second, refusing to miss a single class. His rigor and integrity are lessons in life. He still had much to say. Several publication projects were in progress. His career was that of a meteor, stopped in mid-flight. Our company will miss him dearly. His family will miss him dearly, and we offer them our deepest condolences.