“The lighter that fuels a blaze of change”: Agency and (cyber)spatial (dis)embodiment in Girls of Riyadh

SynopsisAs a novel that portrays the difficulties that Saudi women confront when attempting to become active agents in public and private life, Rajaa Alsanea's Girls of Riyadh (2007) is a valuable text for exploring questions surrounding women's movement within both physical and virtual space. This article seeks to explore the cultural significance of women's movement within these spaces, and pays specific attention to the manner in which empowerment is experienced through both embodiment within transnational space and disembodiment within the online space of the Internet.Exploring the gender liberating possibilities of virtual spaces, this article begins with the contention that young women's experience of agency within transnational spaces is inseparable from what they perceive to be the prescriptions of local cultural tradition and relative freedoms enacted by globalization.