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“The People Are Missing”: Palestinians in Kuwait
Abstract by Dr. Mai Al-Nakib On Session 181  (Kuwait's Irreconcilable Knots)

On Tuesday, November 24 at 8:00 am

2009 Annual Meeting

Abstract
Gilles Deleuze argues that modern political cinema should be based on the premise that “the people no longer exist, or not yet . . . the people are missing” (*Cinema 2* 216). He claims that in the “third world” and within minority cultures, writers, artists, or film-makers are in a position, “in relation to their nation and their personal situation in that nation, to say: the people are what is missing” (217). For Deleuze, this absence is no cause for sorrow but, rather, an opportunity for invention and experimentation: “[T]he missing people are a becoming, they invent themselves, in shanty towns and camps, or in ghettos, in new conditions of struggle to which a necessarily political art must contribute” (217). 1991 is the year the Palestinian community in Kuwait went missing. The causes and circumstances of this disappearance are well documented (Amnesty International, *Five Years of Impunity*, 1996; Lesch, “Palestinians in Kuwait” 1991; Lesch, “No Refuge for Refugees,” 2005; Ghabra, “Palestinians and Kuwaitis,” 1997; Middle East Watch, *Victory Turned Sour*, 1991). But eighteen years on, some of the more subtle consequences of this disappearance have yet to be addressed. While the devastating ramifications of these events on the marginalized and vulnerable Palestinians in Kuwait are easy enough to identify, the effects of this disappearance on Kuwait and its citizens are generally not recognized as worthy of investigation. Notwithstanding Deleuze’s upbeat take on minorities, the approximately 45,000 Palestinians left in Kuwait today (down from 380,000 in 1990) have maintained a low profile. Given the precarious condition of their legal, sociopolitical, and economic status in Kuwait, it’s no wonder. On the flip side, Kuwaitis themselves tend to remain silent regarding the “overlapping yet irreconcilable experiences” of living with and without Palestinians in Kuwait (Said, *Humanism* 143). My paper (informed by Deleuze, Said, and Zizek) reads this silence as a symptom of the greater tendency to brush aside singular histories, cultures, and experiences in the name of the dominant, monovocal narrative of the Islamo-Kuwaiti nation. I argue that the casual disregard of such singularities as well as the highly partisan manipulation of national/historical memory keep Kuwait at a crippling impasse. A move toward the figuration of a less monolithic, less limited community-to-come necessitates remembering those missing singularities, the missing Palestinians not least of all.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Kuwait
Sub Area
Minorities