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 e…