Abstract

As the ranks of first-generation Palestinian refugees continues to thin and hope of return appears remote, the symbolic value placed on 1948, as the key date in Palestinian history, continues to rise. This article critically reconsiders the role a politics of memory plays in the production of national belonging in Shateela camp, Lebanon. It argues that institutionalized commemorative practices, and academic studies that look back with a compulsive nostalgia to 1948, and an idealized past, as the national core, make it harder for subsequent generations of refugees to articulate a sense of identity and belonging in terms of present realities in the diaspora. In addition it explores what forms of everyday suffering and experience in the camp are being elided by this model of political practice in which calling for recognition and rights is often confused with the imperative of not forgetting.