From Revolutionaries to Muslims: Liminal Becomings across Palestinian Generations in Denmark

The Palestinians who fled to Denmark in the wake of the Lebanese Civil War were known as the generation of the Revolution and were members of the PLO. This article explores generational changes and continuities among Palestinian families in Denmark, and addresses the question of why the children of the fedayeen (fighters) have turned their back on secular politics and instead have embraced Islam. Extending Karl Mannheim’s approach to generation, I argue that in order to explain the movement from Revolutionaries to Muslims we can rely on neither genealogy nor historical context alone, but need to pay equal attention to the structural continuities that crosscut the actualization of distinct generations. I suggest that rather than conceive of Revolutionaries and Muslims as oppositions, we should think of them as substitutions, as liminal becomings, that are repeated across historical generations.