Beyond refugeeness: complex subjectivities in Palestinian refugee camps

Abstract

This article explores Palestinian refugeeness to argue for a more complex understanding of refugee subjectivity. The subjectivities of Palestinian refugees–and especially of those from the refugee camps–have been informed by their participation in national politics. Therefore, Palestinian refugees, while embodying experiences of violence, displacement and exclusion much like other refugee communities, have also been emphatically seen through their political agencies. In this article, I aim to complicate the emphasis on political subjectivity and explore Palestinian refugee subjectivity as complex, multidimensional, and contradictory. By narrating ethnographic encounters with two of my interlocutors, I demonstrate that subjectivities emerge not only from their politicized position as Palestinian refugees nor from the camp spaces they dwell in but from their complex and mundane relationalities that are neither static nor coherent. By emphasizing this fluid complexity, the aim is to acknowledge refugee subjectivities as multidimensional and fragile formations imbued with internal tensions that emerge from multiple and contradictory desires and from a sense of self that is not reducible to refugeeness.