https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i4.044
Fluid Histories and Porous Selves: A Blue Humanities Reading of Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky
SANAM NS
Postgraduate Student
PG & Research Department of English
TKM College of Arts and Science
Affiliated to the University of Kerala
CAPT. LIBY KS
Assistant Professor
PG & Research Department of English
TKM College of Arts and Science
Affiliated to the University of Kerala
Abstract: This paper examines Elif Shafak’s multi-temporal and water-centered novel – There Are Rivers in the Sky (2024) through the interdisciplinary framework of Blue Humanities, with particular emphasis on the complementary theories of Tidalectics and Hydrofeminism. The novel traces the journey of a single drop of water across ancient Mesopotamia, Victorian London, and the contemporary world, connecting multiple geographies, temporalities and human lives through the hydrological cycle. Drawing on Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of Tidalectics, the study argues that the novel challenges Western landcentered and teleological models of history by presenting time as cyclical, recursive, and fluid rather than linear and progressive. Water functions as a living archive through which submerged memories, traumas, and silenced histories continually resurface across generations. The study further employs Astrida Neimanis’s theory of Hydrofeminism to explore how the novel reimagines human identity as porous, relational and materially interconnected with ecological systems. Through close textual analysis of the characters, Arthur Smyth, Narin, Besma and Zaleekhah, the paper demonstrates how bodies and waterways participate in shared networks of memory, vulnerability, and survival. Ultimately, the study contends that Shafak’s novel reconceptualizes history and identity as fluid processes of circulation and interdependence, rejecting Western land-centered, teleological and anthropocentric frameworks in favour of an ecologically informed, posthuman and fluid understanding of a more-thanhuman world.
Keywords: Blue Humanities, Tidalectics, Hydrofeminism, Water Narratives, Hydrological Cycle, Memory Studies, Posthumanism
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