Commemorative Economies and the Politics of Solidarity in Shatila Camp

This article examines the politics of Nakba commemoration in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and the instrumentalization of memories of the 1948 expulsion by NGOs and factions. It considers the role eyewitness accounts of the 1948 expulsion play in the production of Palestinian nationalism in exile, as well as the transformations occurring in the way younger generations relate to this critical event. It suggests that Palestine studies may have overemphasized the conceptual potency of nationalist narratives of the Nakba, and that their discursive prominence today more often reflects their role in securing local and international visibility, patronage, and resources than their continuing power to infuse the present and future with meaning for the refugees themselves.