POST-HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY AND THE DISSOLUTION OF FIXED IDENTITIES IN MOHSIN HAMID'S THE LAST WHITE MAN
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/45xyrf15Keywords:
Dissolution, Identity, Post-humanism, Racialism, SubjectivityAbstract
Mohsin Hamid’s (2022) novel, The Last White Man converts racial transformation into a test case for the instability of the human subject and subjectivity. While the novel has been read primarily as a fable of whiteness, racial anxiety, and social panic, this article argues that its deeper intervention lies in its post-human reconfiguration of identity as embodied, relational, and mutable. Drawing on Rosi Braidotti's (2013) views on post-human subjectivity and Cary Wolfe‘s (2010) critique of human exceptionalism, with support from critical race theory and new materialist thought, the article employs close textual analysis to examine Anders's metamorphosis, Oona's relational becoming, the father's dying body, and the community's collapse of racial certainty. The argument shows that Hamid does not imagine transformation as liberation from race but as exposure of the racialized humanist order. In this way, the novel reimagines humanity not as essence or possession, but as a shared condition of vulnerable becoming.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Dr. Malik Mujeeb-ur Rahman, Fiza Ashfaq (Author)
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