Storied matter and literary creativity in Ahmed Alhokail’s Roads and Cities

Abstract

Literary stories as a means of communication highlight the deep connection between human and non-human entities and the association of matter and mind. Ahmad Alhokail’s Turq wa Mudan/Roads and Cities, a contemporary Saudi novel published in 2019, elucidates the idea of “storied matter” and the creative and narrative agency of non-human entities. This work draws a narrative map of stories that trace the physical map of Riyadh and the neighboring villages of northern Najd. This map aims to connect culture to nature and thus gives insights to the dynamic relationship between places (non-humans) and their inhabitants (humans). Drawing on material ecocriticism, Barad’s agential realism and the question of creativity, this study attempts to investigate the human and non-human “intra-actions” and highlight the narrative agency of places encountered throughout the novel as well as the storied bodies of traditional poetry and storytelling. It maintains that places and nature are vibrant, agentic matter that have the capacity to embody the history, memories and traditions of the inhabitants of Najd region.

Keywords:

• culture
• material ecocriticism
• Najd
• Nabati poetry
• nature
• Pre-Islamic poetry
• trans-corporeality

1. Introduction

Literature as a manifestation of the interconnectedness between cultural and natural elements, the intra-action between the human and the non-human, and the entanglement of matter and mind is widely discussed in the field of ecocriticism, particularly material ecocriticism which is a pivotal “method for literary and cultural interpretation” (Raipola, 2020, p. 265). Iovino and Oppermann (2016) define material ecocriticism as “the study of the way material forms—bodies, things, elements, toxic substances, chemicals, organic and inorganic matter, landscapes, and biological entities—intra-act with each other and with the human dimension” (Material Ecocriticism 7). Matter, then, is a “site of narrativity,” here giving agency and discursive power to non-human forms of life, suggesting that they as David Abram has argued “have the ability to communicate something of themselves to other beings” (Abram cited in Material Ecocriticism 6). Material ecocriticism, then, probes matter “both in texts and as a text” in order to illuminate the “way bodily natures and discursive forces express their interaction” (Material Ecocriticism 2; emphasis from source). From this perspective, the human body is trans-corporeal as Stacy Alaimo has argued, which means that the human body is “intermeshed” with the non-human world. The human entity, then, is “always engaged with networks that formulate the world” and therefore, “cannot be viewed as separate from everything that surrounds it” (Nolan 89). This suggests that “the material self cannot be disentangled from networks that are simultaneously economic, political, cultural, scientific and substantial” (Alaimo 20). This inseparability or interconnectedness is further explored in Karan Barad’s theory of agential realism, elucidating the concept of intra-action which “signifies the mutual constitution of entangled agencies” (Barad, 2007). In this regard, “discursive practices and material phenomena” are interconnected and “mutually implicated” (140) and are most evident in literary texts. As Cheryll Glotfelty (1996) has argued “literature does not float above the material world … but plays a part in an immensely complex global system in which energy, matter and ideas interact” (xix).

As Iovino and Oppermann (2014) have suggested, literature reveals the interconnectedness of material agencies and allows readers to decipher the concept of “storied matter” since “literary stories emerge from the intra-action of human creativity and the narrative agency of matter” (Material Ecocriticism 8–9). In addition, literary stories give humans the opportunity to understand “the creative experience that characterizes both humans and nonhuman natures” (Material Ecocriticism 30). Ahmad Alhokail’s Turq wa Mudan/Roads and Cities, a contemporary Saudi novel published in 2019, elucidates the idea of “storied matter” and the narrative agency of non-human entities. This work draws a narrative map of stories that trace the physical map of Riyadh and the neighboring villages of northern Najd. This map aims to connect culture to nature and thus gives insights to the dynamic relationship between places (non-humans) and their inhabitants (humans). The events of the novel take place in multiple villages and cities of the region narrated by the protagonist in a style similar to a journalist report, which happens to be his occupation. In 17 chapters, the protagonist tells a collection of stories which are familiar to Saudis, especially the Najdi natives, in a true, raw, and unpolished manner, shedding light on the neglected parts of the society and documenting the hidden lives of those individuals. As the narration proceeds, the novelist begins to move towards more contemporary stories and youthful experiences than those narrated at the beginning. He explores the gap which time creates between generations in the same geographical area, as if the environment itself is a living entity that gradually changes as the time passes. In this sense, human beings as Ursula Heise argues “are bound together by a global ecosystem whose functioning transcends humanmade borders” (25).

Alhokail is a contemporary Saudi journalist, short story writer and novelist born in the 1980s in Saudi Arabia. In his writings, Alhokail shows a deep interest in the lives of Saudis, specifically Najdi people, those residing in the central region of Saudi Arabia referred to as Najd. As the region is quite distinct in its features such as dialect, geography, and heritage, its characteristics are manifested in the detailed description of Alhokail’s novel. Therefore, the interconnection between those people and their environment is emphasized. The relationship between Najdi people and the place they live in is explored both individually and collectively through narration, exemplifying a pattern of social documentation popular in his works. As Roads and Cities has been recently published, it lacks studies and translations. Thus, the quotations used in this study have been translated by the authors. Drawing on material ecocriticism, Barad’s agential realism and the question of creativity, this paper attempts to investigate the human and non-human “intra-actions” and highlight the narrative agency of places encountered throughout the novel as well as the storied bodies of traditional poetry and storytelling.

2. Reflection on Arabic and Saudi literature

The Arabian Peninsula has a long history and a rich literary heritage, including poetry, both classical and vernacular (Nabati), and prose in its various forms. However, “[o]nly in the second half of the twentieth century did prose writing, especially novels, become the leading genre”, whereas, before that, poetry was “the leading Arabic literary genre” (Halevi & Zachs, 2007, p. 416). In “The Canterbury Tales and the Arabic Frame Tradition” Katharine Slater Gittes notes that “[i]n spite of cultural interchange between the Greek, Byzantine, and Arab worlds, the Arabs never embraced the epic, the novel, or the drama as Western cultures did.” In fact, “the Arabs restricted their fictive literature to the frame structure.” Gittes (1983) argues further that the frame narrative was “invented by the Arabs” (237). Consequently, works such as The Arabian Nights and Kalilah wa Dimnah are prominent examples of narrative traditions in the region. Even though novels have appeared in Arabic literature, as Fakhreddine (2018) has mentioned, “literary scholars are often concerned with Arabic novels as historical and cultural records regardless of their merits as novels” (820).

Saudi literature falls within the category of Middle Eastern Literature or what is called literature of the Arabian Peninsula. More specifically, it belongs to literature of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), an area which has been given less attention than those produced in for example Lebanon and Egypt. This could be due to their short “literary lifeline” (Gohar & Hambuch, 2013, p. 149). Saudi literature as an area of study is not recognized globally as it is a new area which emerged with the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. In fact, “celebrated Saudi authors have sought a wider audience for their fiction as their works have been largely ignored despite receiving accolades” (Albalawi, 2022). Nonetheless, Saudi literature is slowly coming into recognition in World literature. The Saudi writer Abdo Khal won the Arabic Booker Prize in 2010 and he noted that “this award represents a milestone for literature in the Gulf region, writing that has long been virtually ignored by the rest of the Arab world” (Gohar & Hambuch, 2013, p. 149).

Even though Saudi literary works are considered to be part of Arabic literature, it embodies some distinctive features. Saudi writings are loaded with various literary genres and themes, the main themes discussed are usually social issues that are quite important to Saudi society. Thus, novels reflect a deep sense of the involvement of the individual in society as they often provide a social critique. As Saudi Arabia has encountered an unusual socioeconomic growth after the discovery of oil, the lives of its people have changed drastically. These sudden changes as Gohar and Hambuch have noted presented difficult circumstances “which captured the imagination of Gulf Country writers who came to occupy the literary scene at a critical moment in the modern history of the Arabian Gulf region” (Gohar & Hambuch, 2013, p. 150). The writers of this region deployed stories that depicted the “confrontation between the culture of the sea and desert, at the same that they represent the culture of the new urbanized city in their texts” (Gohar & Hambuch, 2013, p. 151). Abdelrahman Munif is one of the greatest names in Saudi literature who as Andrew Long has argued has painted “the literary scene” of Saudi Arabia for the West with his notable Cities of Salt trilogy (Albalawi 6). Munif showed great concern regarding oil discovery and its consequences on the region and its people. Oil discovery is certainly a dominant theme in Saudi literary works. Additionally, remarkable works in the region include topics pertaining to religious and social conflicts, and more recently, feminist issues. The recognition of such characteristics is essential in order to understand the works of an area that has confronted a fast-paced growth of its own, shaping unique literary productions.

3. Places as vibrant and ‘storied matter’

Roads and Cities elucidates the concept of storied matter by placing emphasis on the non-human narrative agency of places/regions, making it an interesting work for New Materialism. This work encompasses the notion of places and nature as vibrant, agentic matter that embody history, memories and traditions for the inhabitants of Najd region. In his article “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, & the Pathetic Fallacy” (Evernden, 1978), Neil Evernden emphasizes that “there is no such thing as an individual, only an individual-in-context” and that the self is a “component of place, defined by place” (101, 103). Looking through this lens, it seems that in every few meters of land whereby a story representing the place is narrated, the human experience comes closer to the environment as the space separating the two diminishes. As Paul Shepard has argued “knowing who you are is impossible without knowing where you are” and this emphasizes that place can “both reflect and create an inner geography by which we locate the self” (cited by Heise in Sense of Place, 2008, p. 29).

In the first page of the novel a map of an old road is displayed. It is described in the first line: “There is nothing exceptional about this road. It is an almost two-lane crooked highway which links Riyadh city to villages and governorates of northern Najd, cutting through most of them leading you through centers that are parallel to the new highway” (Alhokail 6). From the very beginning, we encounter a storied body, the old highway, that takes us on a narrative trip where different agentic matters emerge such as the appearance of the oil tanker and the star of sehil.

In the first stop at Malham, a village in Huraymila governorate 82 km away from Riyadh city, the narrator introduces an agentic matter, through the story of Hussain bin Hamad. Hussain’s “father, Hamad, traveled east before he was even 17, as many Najdi people did at the time. He worked there in an oil tanker in Kuwait and traveled along the Arabian gulf to the Indian Ocean” (Alhokail 8). The oil tanker articulates a shared narrative, as the poverty and hunger of Najdi residents is not the only story being narrated, but also that of Najdi lands. Both humans and nonhumans shared a history of drought and thirst in the deserts of Najd, such as Al-Nafud and Al-Dahna. Due to the severe scarcity, the people of Najd had to travel East which was the ideal destination, long before the discovery of oil. In “Ecology, Knowledge, and Trade in Central Arabia (Najd) during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries”, Guido Steinberg (2004) explains that “the whole coast of the Persian Gulf … was the region’s center of pearl fishing up to the early 1930s.” When east needed manpower, Najdi men moved to “Bahrain, Kuwait, and the smaller Emirates in order to work as divers and pullers on the pearling boats” (Alhokail 84). Subsequent to the discovery of oil, they continue to travel east in search, not for pearls, but a darker liquid treasure. Overflowing with storied bodies and agentic capacities, Najd and the Eastern region narrate stories of both poverty and wealth.

Several chapters later, the novel takes its readers to a scene where another storied body unfolds. The protagonist is on a camping trip in the midst of the desert. He is surrounded by the darkness of the night, with no source of light but the fire before him and the stars above his head. As he looks into the night sky, he observes the stars spread out in front of his eyes when a thought crosses his mind: “there is something about the star-studded sky that tempts me to travel. Maybe because it is shaped like a map where every star refers to a certain destination or a specific condition” (Alhokail 181). Here, stars are “loquens” and self-expressive, as Iovino et al. (2014) has argued there are diverse ways that nature can be “eloquent, speaking, telling” (Material Ecocriticism 29). Travelers in the past depended greatly on stars to navigate their journeys. Arab travelers, perhaps privileged with clear weather most of the year, developed a deep connection between the view of the stars and the nature of their travels. The protagonist then becomes occupied by the sight of “sihel, or Canopus”, a star of importance especially to Bedouins, the nomads of the Arabian Peninsula, as James P. Mandaville explains in Bedouin Ethnobotany: Plant Concepts and Uses in a Desert Pastoral World:

Throughout much of Arabia, the appearance of sihel marks the end of the severest part of summer and the beginning of the as-sfari season (autumn). In central Arabian latitudes, Canopus is above the predawn horizon before the end of August, but two or three weeks more usually pass before it becomes visible above the haze and obstructions near the horizon. Nothing dramatic happens with the weather at that time. In fact, high heat and in the gulf coast region high humidity continue into October. In everyone’s mind, however, summer heat is now winding “down” and thoughts turn to autumn travels in search of the first rains and early grazing. (57)

For Bedouins who leave their warm summer camps in search for grazing lands, “they suffer more from the cold of winter than from the heat of summer” (Mandaville, 2011, p. 68). Alhokail provides vivid images of the journey, as he includes verses of Bedouin poets that describe their inevitable hardship of constant travel. Despite the benefit their seasonal migration offers, it is accompanied by coldness, hunger, and separation.

The melancholy that seemed to surround the appearance of the star was not only casted among Bedouins, but also the permanent dwellers who shared the same land and settled near the Bedouins’ summer shelters. They also recited verses in grievance of the empty spaces Bedouins left behind. The vast areas which used to be spread with tents are now left unoccupied except for the howling wolves. Interpreted as such, the star of sehil has the capacity of narrating tangible weather changes and consequent human experiences. It emerges as a site of narrative expression where the cultural and physical realms are intermingled and “in this perspective, there is no simple juxtaposition or mirroring between nature and culture, but a combined ‘mesh.’ Here culture and nature become a hybrid compound” (Material Ecocriticism 5). Eventually, this long observation of sehil is soon interrupted by the protagonist’s words as he compares the star of sehil to a monument that commemorates all the lives it has witnessed:

But staring at sehil should suffice, to perceive what the ancients had perceived; from Ibn Arrayb to Bin Zuibn. Feeling a sense of belonging with everything, with the sky, stars, and earth. Tempting you to travel, to abandon everything, and perhaps never come back. (Alhokail 183)

In this sense, the star has become “a site of narrativity, a storied matter, a corporeal palimpsest in which stories are inscribed” (Iovino qtd. in Cohen, 2014). The narrator feels a connection to the stars, suggesting that the “human corporeality, in all its material fleshiness, is inseparable from ‘nature’ and environment” (Alaimo, 2008, p. 238). In addition, this connection shows the “material vibrancy” of the human body as the political theorist Jane Bennett has argued. Since the human body is comprised of a “composite of many different in-bodies” (Neugebauer, 2023, p. 2), it is in constant engagement with the “more-than-human world” (Alaimo, 2010).

4. Literary traditions as a site of narrativity and evolutionary memory

This novel as a “literary stor[y]” that “emerge[s] from the intra-action of human creativity and the narrative agency of matter” highlights the significance of places and nature to the creativity of the mind and literary production (Material Ecocriticism 8). In “Creative Matter and Creative Mind: Cultural Ecology and Literary Creativity” Hubert Zapf discusses the question of creativity within the framework of material ecocriticism. In his work, Zapf argues that:

Electromagnetic forces, chemical substances, geological processes, atmospheric conditions constantly interact across different scales in processes between chaos and order, stabilizing and destabilizing effects, entropy and emergence. In this wider meaning, creativity is a feature not only of cultural evolution or of the biotic sphere of living nature, but of the world of nonliving matter itself, which is not merely inert or passive but dynamic and agentive. (52)

On this basis, this section will investigate creativity of matter and mind/nature and culture in the novel from a new materialist perspective.

Alhokail makes great use of the region’s literary traditions in his narrative to reinforce the notion of places as vibrant and agentic matter. In his review “Riwayat Turq wa Mudun . Riwayah Saudia bi Imtyaz”/Roads and Cities… a Saudi Novel with Excellence (Alhokail, 2019), Thamer Al-Harbi (2019) remarks how Alhokail “includes Nabati poetic heritage which makes the novel appear closer to the local environment.” Furthermore, Alhokail incorporates “poetic references that are highly intimate to the natives such as Bandar bin Suror, Mohammad Al Qadi, and other Nabati poets” (translated by authors). Also, there is reference to classical poetry in other instances, which has equal value as discussed later in this section. The significance of the reference to Nabati poetry is not realized until establishing that Nabati poetry is “the popular vernacular poetry of Arabia” as stated by Saad Sowayan (1985) in Nabati Poetry: The Oral Poetry of Arabia. It has great importance within the local community of Saudi Arabia, and Najd in particular, as it is considered to be its “indigenous home” (1). In such context, Nabati poetry is a storied body. Its agentic capacity reaches a wide range of local audiences, surpassing the formality and complexity of classical forms.

In light of Al-Harbi’s review, the use of Nabati poetry as a storied matter that constitutes creativity can be uncovered in the novel. In the story of Hussain bin Hamad in the first chapter of the novel, his father tells him about an incident which Hussain describes as hard to believe. Hamad, Hussain’s father, claims that when he traveled east to work in the oil transportation, he met Bandar bin Suror, one of the most popular poets of the vernacular Nabati poetry. During that meeting Hamad tells Bandar bin Suror stories about his hardships working in oil tankers; the poet responds by chanting verses of Nabati poetry in a sorrowful manner: “Curse the Christian who discovered oil; Would that the gushing of oil blind his eyes” as translated by Al Fahad et al. (2015) in “Raiders and Traders: A Poet’s Lament on the End of the Bedouin Heroic Age.” These verses embody the stories of the natives’ anger towards the changes that have affected their daily lives and their environment due to the discovery of oil. These verses could be examined through a trans-corporeal perspective, as Alaimo notes in Bodily Natures that “[b]y emphasizing the movement across bodies, trans-corporeality reveals the interchanges and interconnections between various bodily natures” (2). In that sense, the hardship is transmitted from the land itself to the inhabitants of the land. In other words, these verses embody a sense of “movement across bodies” where trans-corporeal interchange of hardship is revealed.

Along with Nabati poetry, classical poetry had its share in the novel. In fact, the use of both poetic genres denotes a deep connection between the two. Saad Sowayan (1985) argues that “the two traditions” being classical and vernacular Nabati poetry “are in fact the two ends of one continuous poetic tradition which extends over a long period and which reflects the same sociocultural realities” (168). Moreover, Zapf argues that “literature always remains aware of the former stages of its own evolution and of the deep history of culture-nature-coevolution”, thus, “this evolutionary memory remains present in the symbolic forms and codes of literary creativity” (57). The use of classical poetry is evidence of evolutionary memory as it is clearly echoed in the novel. In an idyllic peaceful night, the protagonist of the novel participates in reciting poetry at a family gathering in a farm. After his mother has recited few verses of Nabati poetry, he follows with the opening verses of the classical Mu’allaqah of Terfah bin Al Abd, one of the ten Pre-Islamic Arabic golden odes named as Mu’allaqat. In The Muʿallaqāt for Millennials: Pre-Islamic Arabic Golden Odes (2020), Mu’allaqat are described as “masterpieces of both Arabic and world literature.” These 10 poems are believed to “comprise the roots of Arabic poetry” (9). The protagonist recites the opening of Al Abd’s ode, as translated by Huda Fakhreddine:

1. Traces of Khawlah loom

at Burqat Thahmad

like the hints of a tattoo

on the back of a hand.

2. My companions halted

their mounts above me and said:

Toughen up, don’t let this grief

do you in.

3. And the departing caravans

of the tribe of Mālik appeared

at dawn like ships

sailing the valley of Dadi.

4. A ship of ‘Adawl or Yemen,

its sailor now floating astray

and now coming back

to course.

5. Its forepeak

parts the water as it pushes forth

like a child’s hand plowing

through soil. (Ithra 2020 105;1-5)

As the protagonist recited these verses in anticipation of his family members’ reaction, he was, surprisingly, met with attentive responses. They seemed to not only fully comprehend the complex verses, but also acted like the transition from vernacular to classical dialect was natural to them. In Al-Nakhla wa Al-Jamal: A’laqat Al-Sh’er Al-Nabati bi Al-Sh’er Al-Jaheli/The Palm and the Camel: Relations Between Nabati and Pre-Islamic Poetry (2012), Mersel Alajmi illustrates the associations between Nabati and Pre-Islamic poetry. Alajmi looks into the connection from different angles, such as the spatial relation that links the two: “this relation refers to the place where Pre-Islamic and Nabati poetry have spread. In this relationship, a notable remark is perceived, as the geographical borders of both genres correspond” (as translated by authors 27). As the two genres share the same environment, they continue to share similar themes and features regardless of their different time periods. Furthermore, Sowayan (1985) states that “[l]iterate Nabati poets drew consciously and deliberately from the classical tradition” and “invented new genres which reflect the conditions of their environment”, thus, evolving their poetry to suit their needs (182). In this respect, the use of classical and vernacular Nabati poetry in the novel manifests an “evolutionary memory” that narrates stories of coevolution of both creative matter and creative mind, a “culture-nature-coevolution” (Zapf 57).

Another instance of evolutionary memory can be extracted from the novel which is the narrative technique. Examining the novel’s structure, where short stories are embodied within a larger frame, the use of frame narrative tradition is evident. Earlier in the reflection on Arabic and Saudi literature, it has been discussed that the frame narrative is a prominent tradition in Arabic fiction. Moreover, in his review “Turq wa Mudun le Ahmad Alhokail: Riwayah Takhleq Qare’aha”/Ahmed Alhokail’s Roads and Cities: A Novel that Creates its Reader 2019, Yazn ElHaj provides a broad view of the novel that places it within a literary context. He notes that “Alhokail borrows the vividness of narration from classical works … as in the overlap of short stories in The Arabian Nights”. ElHajj (2019) further emphasizes that the novel “is as much of a fruit of the classical Arabic narratives as it is an offspring of the present day. It is both an Arabic and a local Saudi work” (translated by the authors). The use of the frame narrative takes place in the novel as the narrator reports multiple short stories of residents at each stop along the highway. The physical map found on the first page sets the main frame of narration, and readers recognize that the novel is about this old highway. Within this larger frame, readers then are met with a sequence of short stories that take place at each stop starting from Malham. Here, evolutionary memory unfolds easily to those who are familiar with Arabic narrative traditions. Since Roads and Cities narrates stories of Najdi nature and culture, it is most suitable to use a literary form, the frame narrative, that is associated with the region’s “creative ecosystem” where circulation of cultural creativity is enabled (Harrington qtd. in Zapf 59). Hence, it is illustrated that “[h]uman creativity is not an ahistorical autonomous property” but an artifact of “a complex field of factors involving cultural conditions, intersubjective networks of collaboration and communication, media—and genre-specific codes and repertoires” (Zapf 59). Therefore, this evolutionary memory sets ground for literary creativity as the use of the frame narrative aids the highway to emerge as a storied body and a site of narrativity. In this regard, place (a nonhuman entity) is given more attention as it grows from its basic literary function as a setting into a more vital and vibrant role as an agentic matter. In such context, the setting (the highway) is treated as a main character of the novel and the author describes it in great detail along the course of the narrative. As a consequence, the narrative agency of humans seems to decrease while the nonhuman agency increases. In short, the sequence of short stories creates a medium that embody the larger narrative of the highway. Zapf intricately highlights this capacity of literature:

From its beginnings in mythical storytelling and oral narratives, literature has been a medium of cultural ecology in the sense that literature has symbolically expressed the fundamental interconnectedness between culture and nature in tales of human genesis, of metamorphosis, of symbiotic coevolution between different life forms. (57)

5. Conclusion

The agentic matter of Najd region and traditional poetry incorporates the notion that “material objects … have agency or even a voice (or several voices) of their own.” This places the human agency in “an ecological field of more-than-human forces and substances, which often merge with the life of our bodies and environments” (Raipola, 2020, p. 263). The novel, as previously discussed, collects actual instances of the way people of Najd act in their daily lives as their human stories are stretched into stories of matter. The vibrant and agentic matter of Najd region in the novel extend from the role it plays as a setting into a more crucial role as it interconnects with characters themselves, defining their identity, their behaviors and their intentions. In addition, specific places embody history, memories and traditions for the inhabitants of the region. Nabati poetry, classical poetry and the frame tale narrative as literary traditions of the region are highlighted in the novel as vital and vibrant matter that drive the narrative forward. From a new materialist perspective, matter and mind manifested in the concepts of nature and culture are intermingled and become prominent in literary stories. Material ecocriticism, then, “traces the trajectories of natural-cultural intersections by reading them as material narratives” (Iovino & Oppermann, 2014 cited in James & Morel, 2018, p. 360). These material narratives become “a means of understanding the creative experience that characterizes both human and nonhuman natures” (30). The interconnectedness between the cultural world and the natural world is embedded in literature symbolically since it functions as the voice of the ecological world (Zapf 57). The human experience and the narrativity of matter intermesh in the world of art and literature since they enable “all sorts of creative processes, which are needed everywhere in cultural systems for the renewal of their dynamics and continued evolutionary force” (Finke 272, cited in Zapf 56). It is within literary stories that the companionship of human bodies and nonhuman entities can be represented.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nourah AlSuhaibani

Nourah Al Suhaibani is an English Language and Literature graduate. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University. She is currently an English teacher and is interested in Arabic literature, literary theory and cultural studies.

Sitah AlQahtani

Sitah AlQahtani is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and English Literature at Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University. She received her PhD from George Mason University. Her main research interests include visual culture, biopolitics/biopower, film studies and literary theory.