Bidūn Poets and Kuwaiti Literary History

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Bidūn (stateless) poets negotiate and contest their placement within dominant narratives of national literary history in Kuwait. The article offers an analytical overview of the dominant modalities in which national literary history in Kuwait has been conceived as it relates to questions of national beginnings, periodization and the placement of stateless poets. Read against the existing modalities, the article analyzes the Bidūn poet Saʿdiyya Mufarriḥ’s The Cameleers of Clouds and Estrangement (2007) as a revisionist account of national literary history that opposes the exclusion of Bidūn writers. This is achieved by an emphasis on the inclusivity of literary and cultural affiliation over the exclusivity of limiting notions of official national belonging. A critical analysis of the arena of national literary history writing in Kuwait aims to offer a novel perspective on how notions of national belonging are being renegotiated from the margins.