Page 362 PoLAR: Vol. 42, No. 2 Vivian Solana Carleton University Hospitality’s Prowess: Performing Sahr¯ aw¯ ı Sovereignty in Refugee Camps The Sahr¯ aw¯ ı movement for national liberation—known as the Polisario Front—has been organizing into the Sahr¯ aw¯ ı Arab Democratic Republic in refugee camps since 1976. This article describes rhetorical and administrative strategies that muster the labor of hospitality carried out in Sahr¯ aw¯ ı households to advance the legitimacy of the Polisario Front. The khayma (tent, household, or family), a customary domain of female power and symbol of hospitality among the Sahr¯ aw¯ ı (and beyond), bears a metonymic relationship with the project of a Sahr¯ aw¯ ı revolutionary nationalism. Examining how hospitality serves as a nexus of articulation between different orders of the political, it argues that practices of hospitality among Sahr¯ aw¯ ı refugees constitute the expression of a form of popular sovereignty and revolutionary practice. [sovereignty, revolution, hospitality, gender, refugees, Western Sahara] “The Sahr¯ aw¯ ı people are characterized by their karam [hospitality, generosity, dignity]. In the old times, someone who was known to have received guests and not fed them properly could no longer serve as a witness in court: that person could no longer be trusted in the eyes of a judge.” — Bachir Ali 1 The International Art Festival known as ArtTifariti is hosted annually in the Sahr¯ aw¯ ı refugee camps near the Algerian city of Tindouf. It is in these refugee camps where the Sahr¯ aw¯ ı movement for national liberation—known as the Polisario Front (Popular Front for the liberation of saqiya al- hamraʿ wa wadi al-dhahab (the red ravine and the golden river)— organizes into the Sahr¯ aw¯ ı Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Since its declaration in 1976, the exiled SADR anticipates state power over the Western Sahara, a territory currently annexed by Morocco and pending formal decolonization from Spain. In 2012, ArtTifariti’s inaugural ceremony was hosted in B¯ ujd¯ ur, one of the SADR’s six administrative provinces in exile; each province is named after a region left behind in the territory of the Western Sahara. Placards with slogans in thick black, blue, and red ink covered the walls of B¯ ujd¯ ur’s theatre-salon with messages such as: “The Sahr¯ aw¯ ı Independent State is the only solution”; “There is no other solution than self-determination”; and “We educate our children to follow the path of heroes.” I had taken a seat near the back of the theatre with a group of young women from the National Union of Sahr¯ aw¯ ı Women. We chatted, observing the group of international artists who had arrived to participate in the festival, before the master of ceremony announced their nationalities. The salon fell silent as soon as the Sahr¯ aw¯ ı Minister of Culture Khadija Hamdi took the floor to officially inaugurate the event. She addressed the audience to affirm her gratitude toward its foreign funders, and expressed her desire that all participating guests PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Vol. 42, Number 2, pp. 362–379. ISSN 1081-6976, electronic ISSN 1555-2934. C  2019 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/plar.12312.