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Paper short abstract

If eco-possession explores how natural environments possess the human, The Stormlight Archive asks us to consider how that possession might be consensual and even multi-directional. Depicting a pathogenic turned executive possession, the text argues for co-agential approaches to the world in crisis.

Paper long abstract

If eco-possession explores how natural environments possess and speak through human beings, the Stormfather and The Stormlight Archive ask us to consider how that possession might be consensual and even multi-directional. In The Stormlight Archive series (2010-) by Brandon Sanderson, the Stormfather is the consciousness of the planet’s recurring highstorms who forms a unique bond with one of its central protagonists, Dalinar Kholin. In doing so, the so-called Stormfather is choosing to possess and be possessed by Dalinar.

Drawing on Emma Cohen’s anthropological distinction between pathogenic and executive possession, I illuminate how Dalinar and the Stormfather’s relationship begins as an invasive, overwhelming pathogenic possession and shifts to a negotiated, oath-bound form of executive eco-possession - what the series calls the Nahel bond. In doing so, The Stormlight Archives demonstrates how co-agentic relations with ecological forces might be negotiated in a world under threat to accommodate the demands of both the human and nonhuman. Ultimately, the text confirms that both agents are required to change together in order to provide sustainable futures - but suggests a cataclysmic start may be necessary for a world in crisis.