Stateless Literature of the Gulf - Culture, Politics and the Bidun in Kuwait

The "Bidun" ("without nationality") are a stateless community based across the Arab Gulf. There are an estimated 100,000 or so Bidun in Kuwait, a heterogeneous group made up of tribes people who failed to register for citizenship between 1959 and 1963, former residents of Iraq, Saudi and other Arab countries who joined the Kuwait security services in ''60s and ''70s and the children of Kuwaiti women and Bidun men. They are considered illegal residents by the Kuwaiti government and as such denied access to many services of the oil-rich state, often living in slums on the outskirts of Kuwait''s cities. There are few existing works on the Bidun community and what little research there is is grounded in an Area Studies/Social Sciences approach. This book is the first to explore the Bidun from a literary/cultural perspective, offering both the first study of the literature of the Bidun in Kuwait, and in the process a corrective to some of the pitfalls of a descriptive, approach to research on the Bidun and the region. The author explores the historical and political context of the Bidun, their position in Kuwaiti and Arabic literary history, comparisons between the Bidun and other stateless writers and analysis of the key themes in Bidun literature and their relationship to the Bidun struggle for recognition and citizenship.>

List of contents

Note on Transliteration

Introduction
Chapter 1: The 'Bidun'.
Chapter 2: A Literary Community's Struggle for Presence
Chapter 3: The Cameleers of the National Spirit: Bidun poets and Kuwaiti
Literary History
Chapter 4: The Desert Apocalypse: the last Bedouin, the first Bidun
Chapter 5: Representations of the 'Ashish in the Bidun Novel
Chapter 6: 'Crossing Borders': Bidun Writers in the Diaspora

Bibliography
Index

About the author

Tareq Alrabei

Product details

• Authors: Tareq Alrabei, Alrabei Tareq
• Publisher: Tauris, I.B.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.04.2019
• EAN: 9781788314572
• ISBN: 978-1-78831-457-2
• No. of pages: 200
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; HISTORY / Middle East / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics & Citizenship, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Islamic Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern history, Literary studies: post-colonial literature, Civil rights & citizenship, Relating to Islamic / Muslim people and groups, Civics and citizenship, Social groups: religious groups and communities, Literary studies: postcolonial literature, HISTORY / Islamic