“Tamkeen” is an Arabic word that is often translated by “empowerment”. This translation is not only insufficient, it is misleading. “Em-power-ment” etymologically presumes a dialectics of power, someone empowers another and power is transferred, granted, or claimed. Tamkeen neither presupposes a lack to be filled nor a hierarchy of power to be reversed.
Tamkeen’s root-verb (M-K-N) is defined as the root of Tamkeen signalling a gesture, a return to the source, a circle. It also points to a self-revealing nature; in a similar way a mirror does.
Tamkeen’s root suffuses into meaning: to enable (makana), possible (momkeen), possibility (imkania), potential (imkan), the safe and nurturing place-time or womb (makan makeen), self-realised potential (istimkan) and metamorphic niche (Makanah Tahawol Istimkani). The words derived from the root of Tamkeen weave a resonant ecology of meaning in which Tamkeen signifies the realisation of the possibilities of the potential of a seed finding rest in the potential of the conditions of a love-nurturing and nurtured womb, and in blossoming, transforming itself with its conditions for blossoming.
In other words, Tamkeen’s semantic field reveals inter-referenced and mutually generative meanings that enact Tahawol Istimkani (metamorphic transformation). Tamkeen refers simultaneously to transformation from immanent potential and to the co-suscitated transformation of the conditions that make transformation possible.
