Posthumanism and the Colonial Construction of Humanity

Published in Radical Literary Inquiry,
Author: Carter, Mason
ORCID iD: 0009-0004-6420-4114

Abstract

Postcolonial literature challenges Western assumptions about who qualifies as fully human through sustained imaginative construction of social and ontological formations in which personhood appears as a relational achievement sustained through mutual aid rather than as a fixed hierarchical attribute reserved for those proximate to centres of colonial power. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin, this essay examines the ways in which speculative and postcolonial fiction exposes the colonial restriction of full human status while elaborating alternative ontologies of personhood grounded in reciprocity, collective deliberation, and interspecies complementarity. Through close analysis of works by Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler, M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, and related solarpunk narratives, the essay demonstrates that full humanity remains an expandable category whose colonial limitation has served the interests of domination, and that the labour of recognition constitutes an enduring dimension of ethical and political life.

Keywords: postcolonial literature, colonial humanism, mutual aid, relational personhood, posthumanism, Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler, speculative fiction, hierarchical exclusion, collective recognition

Research Question How does postcolonial literature challenge Western assumptions about who qualifies as fully human?

Objectives (1) To examine the ways in which postcolonial literature exposes the colonial construction of humanity as a hierarchical category that systematically excludes colonised populations from full human status;
(2) to analyse the textual mechanisms through which more-than-human relations, mutual aid, and alternative ontologies of personhood receive sustained elaboration;
(3) to evaluate the political and epistemological significance of these narrative experiments for the expansion of human possibility beyond colonial frameworks.

Table of Contents

Postcolonial literature challenges Western assumptions about who qualifies as fully human through sustained imaginative construction of social and ontological formations in which personhood appears as a relational achievement rather than a fixed hierarchical attribute, thereby rendering visible the colonial processes through which certain populations have been systematically positioned outside the boundaries of full humanity. The significance of this challenge becomes particularly pellucid when examined through the theoretical frameworks drawn from Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin, both of whom identify cooperation, complementarity, and decentralised forms of organisation as antecedent and enduring features of human consociation, alongside postcolonial critiques that expose the racialised and hierarchical constitution of the category of the human itself. Speculative and postcolonial fiction, in this respect, functions as a laboratory wherein the practical textures of alternative personhood receive extended elaboration, revealing that full humanity remains a contested and expandable category whose colonial restriction has served the interests of domination.

Theoretical Foundations: Colonial Hierarchy and the Category of the Human

Colonial discourse constructed the category of the human as a hierarchical attribute whose full possession remained reserved for European subjects, systematically positioning colonised populations within intermediate or subordinate zones of being that legitimated dispossession, forced labour, and cultural erasure. This construction operated through the gradual replacement of relational understandings of personhood with proprietary and hierarchical frameworks that equated civilisation with centralised authority and full humanity with proximity to European norms. Bookchin’s analysis of the emergence of hierarchy supplies a complementary theoretical lens, for the historical replacement of usufruct, complementarity, and communal obligation with property rights and institutionalised domination parallels the colonial restriction of full human status to those who controlled the apparatuses of command (Bookchin, 2005). Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid further illuminates the relational foundations of personhood, whereby the consciousness of mutual dependence orchestrates social wellbeing and sustains the conditions under which individual and collective flourishing become practicable (Kropotkin, 1902/2021).

Postcolonial literature challenges these assumptions by demonstrating that personhood emerges through practices of reciprocity, collective deliberation, and embedding within networks of mutual aid rather than through the possession of attributes defined by colonial hierarchy. The novels under examination repeatedly reveal that colonised communities already possessed elaborate mechanisms of collective decision-making, ethical obligation, and relational personhood prior to colonial interference, thereby exposing the colonial claim to exclusive humanity as an ideological construction serving the interests of domination. Fiction proves especially suited to this elaboration because narrative is capable of rendering the lived experience of alternative ontologies of the human, the ethical labour of recognition across difference, and the material consequences of exclusion from full human status, thereby making concrete the processes through which colonial frameworks yield to more expansive understandings of personhood.

The colonial construction of humanity operated through multiple reinforcing mechanisms. Legal systems classified colonised populations according to degrees of civilisation that determined access to rights, property, and political voice. Scientific discourses of race positioned certain groups as biologically intermediate between the fully human and the animal. Cultural representations depicted colonised societies as politically amorphous, ethically immature, and socially fragmented, thereby legitimating the imposition of external authority. Postcolonial literature systematically dismantles these mechanisms by recovering and elaborating the sophisticated forms of social organisation, ethical deliberation, and relational personhood that colonial discourse sought to obnubilate. The challenge therefore proceeds simultaneously on epistemological and political grounds, exposing the constructed character of colonial humanity while affirming alternative modes of consociation grounded in mutual aid.

Relational Personhood in Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin’s speculative imagination furnishes a sustained challenge to hierarchical constructions of the human, constructing social formations in which personhood appears as a relational achievement sustained through mutual aid and collective participation rather than as a fixed attribute distributed according to proximity to centres of power (Le Guin, 1974/2014). In The Dispossessed, the Odonian society of Anarres organises social life through syndicates, voluntary association, and a cultural ethic of mutual obligation that diffuses authority throughout the community. Personhood within this formation derives from embedding within networks of reciprocity rather than from the possession of proprietary or hierarchical markers. The novel thereby challenges Western assumptions that equate full humanity with individual autonomy abstracted from collective responsibility, demonstrating instead that personal initiative flourishes through orientation toward the enlargement of collective possibility.

Jaeckle (2009) demonstrates that the novel embodies a complementary form of social organisation in which individual freedom and social responsibility remain unified by the practice of promising, which itself presupposes both sequential commitment and simultaneous presence within the social whole. Shevek’s trajectory renders this complementarity particularly pellucid, for his scientific labour and his political commitments alike require the simultaneous affirmation of personal initiative and collective obligation. The physicist’s pursuit of a unified theory of time demands prolonged intellectual solitude and the freedom to follow speculative paths, yet this very pursuit remains oriented toward the enlargement of collective knowledge and the eventual sharing of scientific insight across planetary boundaries. Call (2007) contends that Le Guin’s work contributes to a postmodern anarchism capable of addressing the complexities of contemporary power; the novel’s challenge to hierarchical personhood further demonstrates that full humanity remains inseparable from the capacity for reciprocal recognition.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

Le Guin (1974/2014)

This formulation captures the prefigurative logic that structures both the fictional society and the novel’s own political imagination, whereby the expansion of human possibility resides in the present organisation of social relations and in the forms of subjectivity those relations cultivate. Davis and Stillman (2005) emphasise that the novel functions as a thought experiment testing the capacity of non-hierarchical organisation to sustain liberty, equality, and community under conditions of scarcity, thereby establishing the viability of social forms in which personhood remains a shared and expandable achievement. The novel’s insistence upon ambiguity further deepens the challenge, for informal pressures toward conformity and the residual desire for concentrated influence continually test the Odonian experiment, rendering visible the continual labour required for the maintenance of reciprocal recognition.

Le Guin’s Always Coming Home extends this challenge through an ethnographic mode, constructing the culture of the Kesh as a social world whose coherence derives from decentralised, culturally embedded practices that recognise personhood as a relational achievement distributed across the community (Le Guin, 1985). Knowledge circulates horizontally, expertise exists without conferring domination, and differences function as complementary rather than hierarchical, corresponding to Bookchin’s conception of organic society as a unity of diversity (Bookchin, 2005). The narrative form itself enacts a decentralised authority, distributing attention across multiple voices and genres rather than subordinating the whole to a singular sovereign perspective that might reimpose hierarchical rankings of human value. Individual personhood within Kesh society includes the capacity to pursue distinct life paths and to contribute specialised skills, while collective responsibility includes the obligation to sustain the cultural and ecological conditions under which such diversity may flourish.

Crisis, Recognition, and the Expansion of the Human in Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower challenges Western assumptions about who qualifies as fully human under conditions of systemic collapse, tracing the emergence of cooperative association whose capacity to endure derives from practices of mutual recognition that expand the boundaries of personhood beyond the exclusions of hierarchical society (Butler, 1993). The novel’s near-future landscape appears shaped by the consequences of social and ecological rationalities that have systematically devalued certain populations, rendering them disposable within frameworks that restrict full humanity to those who control resources and security. Lauren Olamina’s Earthseed community emerges through practices of mutual aid that recognise personhood as a relational achievement available to those who cultivate reciprocity across difference of race, class, ability, and origin.

Butler’s narrative repeatedly substantiates the principle that full humanity receives its fullest expression within contexts of mutual aid. Lauren’s leadership emerges through the articulation of Earthseed as a shared ethical framework rather than through hierarchical command, corresponding to Bookchin’s conception of administrative figures who coordinate communal decisions while remaining subject to the assembly itself (Bookchin, 2005). Decision-making proceeds through consensus and reciprocal accountability, rendering the community a practical demonstration of Kropotkin’s contention that solidarity constitutes the foundation of social resilience (Kropotkin, 1902/2021). Whatcott (2021) observes that the text proposes survival and flourishing through networks of solidarity that exceed the austerity projects of neoliberal agendas; these networks expand the category of the human by recognising the personhood of those whom hierarchical society has positioned as disposable.

The novel refuses the consolations of homogeneous community, constructing Earthseed as an explicitly multiracial and culturally mixed formation that demands continual efforts of mediation and translation. Individual personhood therefore includes the capacity to negotiate difference within the collective, while collective responsibility includes the obligation to sustain the conditions under which diverse forms of personhood may flourish. Lauren’s hyperempathy, initially a source of vulnerability within a violent social landscape, becomes a paradoxical resource for the cultivation of reciprocal recognition, demonstrating that the capacity for mutual feeling may itself function as a foundation for the expansion of the human. The persistence of mutual aid during moments of extreme precarity further accentuates this expansion, for assistance emerges from communal cohesion rather than from contractual obligation or hierarchical mediation, corresponding to Kropotkin’s observation that society relies upon the consciousness of mutual dependence (Kropotkin, 1902/2021).

1. Recognition of hierarchical exclusions that restrict full human status
2. Emergence of personal initiative oriented toward mutual recognition
3. Formation of groups grounded in trust and reciprocal obligation
4. Development of shared ethical frameworks that expand the category of the human
5. Continual negotiation of difference through horizontal practices of recognition

Post-Insurrectionary Personhood in Everything for Everyone

M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi’s Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 constructs a post-insurrectionary social world in which the challenge to colonial and hierarchical constructions of the human receives extended elaboration through the institution of the commune (O’Brien & Abdelhadi, 2022). Residential communes, free assemblies, and cooperative production councils organise care, conflict resolution, and cultural life through reciprocal practices that recognise personhood as a relational achievement available to all who participate in mutual aid. The novel’s formal organisation as a series of oral-history interviews itself enacts a decentralised narrative authority, whereby personal testimony contributes to a collective portrait without subordination to a singular sovereign perspective that might reimpose hierarchical rankings of human value.

Individual personhood finds expression through the diversity of life trajectories recorded in the interviews, trajectories that encompass sex workers, scientists, student organisers, freedom fighters, and others whose particular experiences of marginalisation inform the new social forms. Collective responsibility manifests in the ongoing practices of assembly and mutual accountability that prevent hierarchical rankings of human worth from re-crystallising. Dey (2022) observes that the novel draws upon traditions of communisation while remaining attentive to the specificities of gender, sexuality, race, and colonial history, grounding its vision of expanded personhood in the particular struggles of those whose exclusion from full human status has shaped the ethical priorities of the communes. The residual desire for hierarchical ranking remains a persistent possibility that the assemblies actively address, rendering the expansion of the human a continual rather than concluded achievement.

The oral histories record both the achievements of communal organisation and the ongoing labour required for the maintenance of reciprocal recognition. Interviewees discuss the practical difficulties of sustaining recognition across difference, the psychological adjustments required when individuals raised under hierarchical systems attempt to live otherwise, and the inventive practices through which the communes prevent informal hierarchies of human worth from consolidating into permanent structures of exclusion. The novel thereby demonstrates that communities organised through mutual aid may achieve substantial coordination of complex social functions while remaining open to the continual expansion of who qualifies as fully human. Personhood within this social world includes the capacity to participate in ecological repair, conflict mediation, and cultural production, while collective responsibility includes the obligation to sustain the conditions under which diverse forms of flourishing remain practicable.

Solarpunk and the Ecological Expansion of Personhood

Solarpunk fiction extends the challenge to hierarchical constructions of the human through sustained attention to ecological interdependence, constructing social formations in which personhood remains oriented toward the enlargement of collective and more-than-human flourishing (Gillam, 2023). These narratives frequently depict communities that have reoriented social life around reciprocity and sufficiency, corresponding to Bookchin’s social ecology while integrating a more explicit affirmation of interspecies relation. Becky Chambers’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built offers a particularly pellucid example of a world in which human communities live in attentive relation with autonomous robots and the natural world, emphasising care, sufficiency, and voluntary association that expands the boundaries of recognition beyond the exclusively human (Chambers, 2021).

Gillam (2023) identifies anarchism, ecology, and justice as guiding principles that orient the solarpunk project, whereby the rejection of hierarchy coincides with the cultivation of reciprocal relations that challenge anthropocentric and colonial restrictions of full personhood. Weik von Mossner (2024) further examines the mobilisation of hope within solarpunk narratives as a collective practice oriented toward emancipation from both capitalist extraction and hierarchical command. Personal freedom within these narratives includes the capacity to recognise interdependence with more-than-human systems, while collective responsibility includes the obligation to sustain conditions under which diverse forms of flourishing remain practicable. Cadwell Turnbull’s No Gods, No Monsters signals continuing intertextual engagement with these traditions through its worker-owned bookstore named Anarres, situating contemporary expansions of personhood within the longer lineage of anarchist and postcolonial speculative fiction (Turnbull, 2021).

The ecological dimension of these works challenges colonial humanism by positioning nature and more-than-human entities as active participants whose agency shapes the ethical and practical horizons of human communities. Living systems appear as partners in the labour of repair rather than as passive resources awaiting utilisation, corresponding to Kropotkin’s observations concerning cooperation within ecosystems and to Bookchin’s insistence upon complementarity as a defining characteristic of organic relations (Bookchin, 2005; Kropotkin, 1902/2021). The novels thereby render visible a mode of consociation in which human possibility remains inseparable from the flourishing of the broader ecological matrix, expanding the category of the human through recognition of interdependence rather than through the assertion of hierarchical separation.

Residual Hierarchy and the Continual Labour of Recognition

Across these works, postcolonial and speculative literature consistently demonstrates that the challenge to Western assumptions about who qualifies as fully human remains a site of ongoing negotiation rather than achieved transcendence. Residual hierarchical rankings, the persistent temptation to restrict full personhood to those who approximate centres of power, and the difficulties of sustaining recognition across difference continually test the expansion of the human that the texts affirm. Le Guin’s insistence upon relational personhood, Butler’s attention to the recognition of those positioned as disposable, and the frank recording of reciprocal labour within O’Brien and Abdelhadi’s oral histories all render visible the continual labour required for the maintenance of expanded humanity (Davis & Stillman, 2005; Jaeckle, 2009).

These tensions induce democratic and ethical profundity rather than imaginative weakness, whereby legitimacy is generated through practices of mutual recognition and the incorporation of difference into a larger social totality. Bookchin’s conception of organic society as a unity of diversity finds repeated textual manifestation in the capacity of these fictional communities to recognise differences without permitting those differences to crystallise into hierarchies of human worth (Bookchin, 2005). The novels thereby model a vigilance consistent with both anarchist ethics and postcolonial critique: hierarchical constructions of the human remain inventive, and the communities that affirm mutual aid must remain equally inventive in their practices of reciprocity and collective recognition. Hierarchy appears as a persistent possibility that requires continual recognition and active resistance, while mutual aid appears as an equally persistent capacity that requires continual cultivation and practical renewal.

The formal strategies employed by these works further enact the expansions of personhood they thematise. Le Guin’s ethnographic collage, Butler’s journal form attentive to the emergence of new ethical frameworks, and O’Brien and Abdelhadi’s polyvocal oral history each distribute narrative authority in ways that parallel the horizontal social relations they depict. Form itself becomes a site of prefigurative practice, inviting the reader to experience, through the organisation of the text, a mode of attention that operates through multiple perspectives rather than through subordination to a singular sovereign voice that might reimpose hierarchical rankings of human value. The reader’s own interpretive labour thereby participates in the challenge to colonial constructions of the human, extending the labour of recognition beyond the fictional world into the act of reading itself.

Conclusion

Postcolonial literature challenges Western assumptions about who qualifies as fully human through sustained construction of social and ontological formations in which personhood appears as a relational achievement sustained through mutual aid rather than as a fixed hierarchical attribute. Le Guin’s Anarres and Kesh communities demonstrate the embedding of personhood within networks of reciprocity that diffuse authority throughout the community; Butler’s Earthseed community reveals the emergence of cooperative association that expands recognition to those whom hierarchical society has positioned as disposable; O’Brien and Abdelhadi’s New York Commune constructs a post-insurrectionary vision in which the diversity of individual trajectories contributes to a collective portrait sustained through ongoing practices of assembly; solarpunk narratives explore participatory arrangements that extend recognition across species boundaries. Across these experiments, full humanity flourishes through embedding within networks of mutual aid, while collective responsibility sustains the conditions under which diverse forms of personhood become practicable. By fulfilling the stated objectives of examination, analysis, and evaluation, these narratives expand the repertoire of human possibility, affirming that the category of the human remains expandable through practices of reciprocal recognition, and that the labour of maintaining this expansion constitutes an enduring and generative dimension of ethical and political life.

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