Dismantling cyborg politics
Decolonial hope in Chinese science fiction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8134352 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xiaohui Liang (0000-0001-6351-2538, University of Science and Technology Beijing, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-16 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449855.2025.2602750 |
| OpenAlex | W7135064246 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
This article critiques the western-centric limitations of Donna Haraway’s cyborg politics, a discourse long hailed as a beacon of hope in feminist and posthumanist critical theories, through a reading of two Chinese science fiction works, namely Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide and Lu Ban’s “Themis”. It argues that the cyborg’s liberatory potential is circumscribed by its entanglement with global capitalist and local patriarchal systems. While techno-hybridity promises transcendence, these narratives show that it instead reinforces oppression. The narratives further reveal that this co-option stems from the western epistemological framework that prioritizes technological domination and extraction, leading to ecological and social ruin. In response, decolonial hope emerges through radical refusal of the capitalist-patriarchal logic and epistemic disobedience. Ultimately, the novels envision planetary sustainability by turning to indigenous animist world views, reframing hope from technological transcendence to a collective praxis of co-belonging as a mode of introducing healing to a damaged Earth.
China · Chinese literature · Postcolonial literature · Postcolonialism (international relations · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction
Centering Hope As a Sustainable Decolonial Practice
Designs for the Pluriverse
Wasteocene
China's Trapped Transition
Posthuman Capital and Biotechnology in Contemporary Novels
Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
From Posthumanism to Posthuman Ecocriticim
Incontinence of the Void
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Ecofeminism and the Cyborg
Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Oil Exploitation and Marine Pollution
An Indigenous Feminist's Take On The Ontological Turn
Cyborg and Ecofeminist Interventions
Decolonial Queer Feminism in Donna Haraway's 'A Cyborg Manifesto' (1985)
Necropolitics
Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom
Decolonial hope and planetary solidarity
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |