Nonwestern Posthuman Cyborg Ontologies: The Man-Automobile Relationship in Mohsin Hamid’s Fiction

Abstract

The notion of the ‘cyborg’ has now been established as one of the most pertinent identity signifiers to explore subjectivity transformation in the posthuman era. However, scholars have pointed out that these investigations into the changing contours of identities and subjectivities have been limited to the Euro-American academy and there is a rising need to decolonize this field of study. This article intends to contribute to the decolonization of cyborg subjectivity studies and invite debate over possible nonwestern trajectories for exploring new contours of man-automobile enmeshment as depicted in a South Asian Anglophone fiction by Mohsin Hamid. His fiction is about nonwestern people who have been depicted in close connection with their vehicles. Therefore, human characters in these narratives, in relation to their vehicles, are both unconscious and metaphoric cyborgs. The study contends that a nonwestern posthuman cyborg literary critique can be conducted by critically analyzing the roles of vehicles in the plot, character development, and aesthetic structure of Hamid’s novels. In short, this study demonstrates that man-vehicle relationship depicted in Hamid’s fiction yields rich interpretations for literary critiques on the possible nonwestern posthuman cyborg subjectivities emerging in contemporary milieu.