Material Agency in the Writings of Shadab Zeest Hashmi: A Transcorporeal Sherbet

Abstract

This paper examines the manifestations of material agency and its disanthropocentric hues in the writings of Pakistani anglophone writer Shadab Zeest Hashmi. While many other writers and thinkers in the Islamic world have produced works that articulate the embeddedness of the human within a semiotically active material world, including IbneSina, Al-Razi, Mahmoud Darwish and Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, to name but a few, the reason why we chose Hashmi’s texts is because they abound with palpable instances of nonhuman material agency articulating itself across centuries. These instances are useful for us in drawing inferences regarding disanthropocentric conceptions of nonhuman agency, as evinced in Islamic epistemologies. Taking cue from the theories of material agency by Karen Barad, Jeremy Cohen and Timo Maran, we argue the ways in which Hashmi’s works operate as textual fossils since they incorporate the stories of the material world in conjunction with those of the human world. Through a close reading of her texts, we foreground how her writings are textured with the Islamic conceptions of the natural world, its material agency and the narratives this agency yields in conjunction with the human.