On Sunday, during the opening of the “Arab Narrative Forum” in Kuwait, Moroccan critic Said Benkrad was honored.

The forum, organized by the General Secretariat of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters of Kuwait, runs until October 14 and features a distinguished group of writers and thinkers from the Gulf countries, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. Several dialogue sessions, lectures, and intellectual meetings on various issues of narrative and literature will be held.

The “Arab Narrative Forum” is part of the celebration of “Kuwait, the Capital of Arab Culture and Media for 2025,” which began its cultural activities in February 2025 and will conclude with a grand celebration hosting Arab culture ministers and heads of major cultural institutions worldwide at the end of January 2026.

During the opening ceremony, Professor Benkrad delivered an inaugural lecture titled “Narrative and Identity,” in which he emphasized that identity is not formed outside of narrative.

He described narrative as everything in people’s lives, noting that time in our lives differs from time in other beings; adding, “The human being is a temporal being, and time penetrates him from beginning to end, and we cannot perceive time unless it is revealed by narrative.”

He stated that narrative goes beyond story and novel and is linked to daily life and undocumented oral traditions.

Regarding his interest in the works of Paul Ricoeur, Umberto Eco, and Michel Foucault, Benkrad confirmed that they share a concern with the question of human existence because humans are inherently concerned with deficiency and their relationship with time is central. He stressed that language is the foundation of identity formation and that language is not neutral.

He considered that identity is always linked to recalling the past rather than projecting onto the future, affirming that identity cannot be understood through formulating indicative concepts. Benkrad has authored dozens of literary and critical books and translations, notably “The Glow of Meanings: The Semiotics of Cultural Man,” “The Advertising Image: Mechanisms of Persuasion and Signification,” “Narrative Writing Mechanisms: Umberto Eco,” and “Narrative Fiction and the Experience of Meaning.”

The National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters in Kuwait chose the “Arab Narrative Forum” as a main event within the “Arab Capital of Culture” celebration. A number of intellectual discussions and lectures addressing various forms of narrative, especially narrative in short stories, poetry, novels, and modern narrative mechanisms related to writing science fiction literature, among others, are scheduled. The forum also includes accompanying workshops and training on different writing techniques.