Doing Things with Lists-Enumeration in Arabic Prose

Abstract

This article discusses the performative function of enumeration in Arabic prose. Bringing together a great variety of word lists from classical to modern prose (including the 1001 Nights, al-Tawidi, al-Suyui, al-Shidyaq, and Darwish), it unveils their often neglected importance to literature by drawing from an emerging scholarship on enumeration. Focusing on "enumerative games" (Mainberger), the article does not ask what the enumerated elements mean, but how the act of enumerating produces meaning. In the first part, the article discusses elements central to the poetics of the enumerative (including items, length, arrangement, and frame). In the second part it deals with the politics of enumeration in the example of al-Shidyaq's al-Saq ala al-saq fi ma huwa al-Fariyaq (1855). The article seeks to provide a basic approach to enumeration and argues that enumerative games in literature perform acts of cultural politics.