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The Role of Non-Human Agency in Contemporary Literature: A

Posthumanist Analysis

Rajib Majumder

MBB College, India

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51244/IJRSI.2025.120800213

Received: 22 Aug 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025; Published: 22 September 2025

ABSTRACT

This research paper examines the role of non-human agency in contemporary literature through the lens of

posthumanist theory. In an era defined by ecological crises, technological advancement, and the growing

presence of artificial intelligence, literature increasingly reimagines agency as a distributed phenomenon that

transcends human subjectivity. Drawing on the works of theorists such as Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Donna

Haraway, and Bruno Latour, the study explores how animals, machines, plants, environments, and even objects

emerge as agential forces within narrative structures. Through close readings of selected texts—ranging from

eco-literature like The Overstory and Flight Behavior to speculative fiction such as Klara and the Sun and The

Lifecycle of Software Objects—the paper investigates how literature challenges anthropocentric paradigms

and redefines ethical and narrative boundaries. These texts do not simply depict non-human entities as

metaphors or background scenery but as co-constitutive actors with affective, cognitive, and political

capacities. By foregrounding these non-human agents, literature participates in a broader cultural and

philosophical shift toward a posthuman understanding of subjectivity, entanglement, and narrative authority.

Ultimately, the paper argues that contemporary literature becomes a vital site for reimagining human-

nonhuman relations in the face of planetary transformation.

Keywords: Posthumanism, Non-human Agency, Eco-literature, Artificial Intelligence, Animal Studies, New

Materialism, Narrative Theory, Anthropocene, Subjectivity, Ethics in Literature.

INTRODUCTION

For centuries, literature has functioned as a mirror to humanity’s evolving self-conception, often portraying the

human subject as the center of all thought, action, and ethical significance. This privileging of the human,

deeply rooted in Enlightenment humanism and Cartesian dualism, has long shaped the philosophical and

narrative structures of Western literary traditions. The human has been imagined as a rational, autonomous

being, distinct from and superior to the animal, the machine, the plant, or the inanimate object. Such a

worldview has reinforced hierarchical binaries—mind/body, subject/object, nature/culture, human/animal—

that served not only as epistemological foundations but also as ethical justifications for the exploitation of non-

human entities. Animals, machines, and environments have historically been relegated to symbolic or

instrumental roles in literary texts, functioning either as metaphors for human concerns or as passive settings

upon which human dramas unfold. This human-centered model of agency has shaped narrative authority, plot

development, and moral discourse for centuries, limiting the possibilities for representing non-human life as

meaningful, affective, or politically significant. However, in the 21st century, this dominant anthropocentric

narrative is undergoing a profound transformation. The escalating impact of ecological crises, rapid

technological integration, and the increasing visibility of non-human sentience and behavior have destabilized

the boundaries between human and non-human. These developments call for a fundamental rethinking of

agency, subjectivity, and ethics, leading to a growing scholarly and creative interest in posthumanism.

Posthumanist theory, emerging from a confluence of critical theory, feminist science studies, animal studies,

and ecological philosophy, seeks to decenter the human and foreground a more entangled understanding of

existence. Rather than viewing the human as a self-contained, superior subject, posthumanism emphasizes

relationality, interdependence, and the distributed nature of agency across human and non-human assemblages.

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Thinkers like Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, and Bruno Latour argue that agency is not a

property exclusive to rational, biological beings but is instead an emergent phenomenon produced through

intra-action—Barad’s term for the mutual constitution of entities within entangled systems. This shift in

theoretical perspective is increasingly reflected in contemporary literature, where non-human agents—such as

animals, machines, plants, ecological forces, and even objects—are not merely depicted as background or

metaphor, but as integral participants in the unfolding of narrative, meaning, and ethics. Through the

imaginative possibilities of fiction, contemporary authors are challenging anthropocentric paradigms and

inviting readers to inhabit alternative ontological worlds where the boundaries between human and non-human

are porous, dynamic, and contested. This paper explores how such literary works—spanning eco-fiction,

speculative fiction, and narratives centered on artificial intelligence—embody and advance posthumanist

thought. By analyzing texts such as Richard Powers’s The Overstory, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun,

Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle of Software Objects, and others, this study

argues that literature has become a critical space for negotiating the complex relationships between human and

non-human actors. In doing so, it not only reconfigures literary representation but also reimagines the ethical

and political stakes of life in the posthuman age.

Post humanist Theory and the Question of Agency

The post humanist turn in contemporary theory and literature marks a decisive shift from the humanist

framework that has historically defined agency in terms of human will, consciousness, and moral autonomy. In

contrast to this model, posthumanism challenges the ontological centrality of the human and redefines agency

as distributed, emergent, and relational. Rosi Braidotti, one of the foremost voices in posthumanist philosophy,

articulates this reorientation as a “critical post-anthropocentrism,” which not only contests human

exceptionalism but also calls into question the dualisms that have structured Western thought—mind and body,

self and other, nature and culture, human and animal (Braidotti, The Posthuman, 2013, p. 45).

Rather than reinforcing these binaries, posthumanism offers a fluid and non-hierarchical framework wherein

agency is not a possession or internal capacity, but an effect of interactions within complex assemblages that

include both human and non-human actors. In this sense, posthumanist agency becomes less about the

individual capacity to act with intention and more about the ways in which entities, forces, and systems co-

produce effects in the world.

Karen Barad’s concept of “intra-action,” as developed in Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and

the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (2007), provides a particularly influential framework for

understanding this reconfiguration of agency. Barad argues that agency is not located within individual entities

but emerges through their mutual entanglements, stating,

“Agency is not an attribute but the ongoing reconfigurings of the world” (Barad, 2007, p. 178).

This understanding collapses the traditional notion of autonomous agents acting upon passive objects and

instead envisions all matter—organic and inorganic—as participating in dynamic processes of becoming. In

literary terms, this means that agency can no longer be attributed solely to human characters; it must also be

recognized in the environmental forces, technological systems, animal lives, and material objects that shape

and are shaped by narrative events. Barad’s quantum epistemology thus resonates with literary modes that

portray non-human phenomena not as static settings or symbolic elements, but as actors in their own right

whose presence and activity materially affect the unfolding of the story.

Similarly, Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) challenges the humanist legacy of privileging rational

human subjects by placing equal ontological weight on both human and non-human actants within networks of

influence. In Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005), Latour emphasizes

that

“objects too have agency, and that they shape the social world as much as humans do” (Latour, 2005, p. 72).

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He contends that the traditional social sciences have erred in overlooking the agential role of non-human

actors, which are indispensable in the formation and operation of social systems. The insight that machines,

tools, animals, and environments co-constitute social realities has significant implications for literature, where

the narrative function of non-human elements is often under-theorized. Latour’s framework invites a

reconsideration of how objects in fiction—whether a house, a river, a piece of technology, or a landscape—can

be understood as contributing to the action, meaning, and ethical dimensions of a narrative. This rethinking is

visible in a range of contemporary literary texts that refuse to reduce non-human entities to mere background

or metaphor, instead acknowledging their agentive roles within complex narrative assemblages.

Post humanist theory also resonates deeply with Donna Haraway’s concept of “companion species,” which she

elaborates in When Species Meet (2008). Haraway argues for a view of agency that emerges from co-presence,

co-evolution, and co-dependence, rather than autonomy and control. She writes,

“Companion species are about significant otherness that is not reducible to human projections; they are about

contact zones, where the worlding of multispecies beings takes place” (Haraway, 2008, p. 19).

Haraway’s insistence on entangled lives—particularly the human-animal relationship—challenges the

humanist logic of separation and supremacy, foregrounding instead an ethics and ontology of relationality. In

literature, this approach opens new avenues for exploring animal consciousness, interspecies empathy, and

mutual transformation, often destabilizing traditional narrative hierarchies in which animals serve merely as

symbols or props for human development. Instead, animals emerge as fully realized presences—characters

with their own narrative force, perspectives, and affects.

What unites these theoretical frameworks is a shared commitment to displacing the human from the

ontological and epistemological center of meaning-making. Posthumanist thinkers do not argue for the

disappearance of the human but seek to re-situate humanity within a larger, more intricate web of relations that

includes non-human others as co-constituents of reality. This shift has direct implications for literature, where

the narrative foregrounding of non-human agency invites readers to adopt more decentered and entangled

modes of understanding. In literary texts, posthumanist agency often manifests through narrative strategies that

decenter human subjectivity, employ non-anthropocentric perspectives, or structure plots around the activities

and experiences of non-human protagonists. Such formal and thematic innovations signal a broader cultural

movement toward what Braidotti describes as “zoe-centered egalitarianism”—a worldview that values all life,

not just bios (human life), but zoe (life in its impersonal, non-human form) (Braidotti, 2013, p. 60).

This theoretical reorientation is clearly evident in a range of contemporary literary works that reimagine

agency along posthumanist lines. For instance, in The Overstory (2018), Richard Powers depicts trees not

simply as metaphors or environmental symbols but as sentient agents with memory, communication, and

narrative significance. The novel’s structure mimics arboreal growth patterns, and characters’ lives are shaped,

interrupted, and even sacrificed to the silent but persistent agency of the forest. Powers does not

anthropomorphize the trees in a simplistic way; rather, he dramatizes their modes of living and relating in ways

that compel the reader to recognize vegetal life as meaningful in its own terms. This representation echoes

Michael Marder’s work on “plant-thinking,” in which he argues that “plants have their own subjectivity—not

conscious in the way humans understand it, but affective and responsive, engaged in a silent dialogue with the

world” (Marder, Plant-Thinking, 2013, p. 45). In such fiction, the forest is not merely a backdrop to human

action; it becomes a protagonist in its own right, shaping the ethical and narrative stakes of the story.

Similarly, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) offers a compelling meditation on machinic agency. The

novel is narrated from the perspective of Klara, an Artificial Friend designed to provide companionship to a

human child. Although Klara is constructed and programmed, her perspective gradually reveals a rich

interiority—she observes, learns, adapts, and even performs ritualistic acts of devotion toward the Sun, whom

she believes can heal her human companion. Klara’s agency is not defined by autonomy or rebellion, as in

conventional AI narratives, but by care, attentiveness, and emotional resonance. Her form of being troubles the

binary between the synthetic and the organic, suggesting that moral agency can arise even in beings who lack

human biology or cognition. N. Katherine Hayles, in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in

Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999), anticipates such redefinitions when she writes,

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“Intelligent machines are not tools but fellow actors in the drama of existence” (Hayles, 1999, p. 288).

In Klara and the Sun, Ishiguro dramatizes this insight by crafting a narrative in which artificial life is not

subordinate to human meaning but is itself a site of ethical and affective depth.

The post humanist emphasis on distributed and relational agency also challenges literary ethics. If agency is no

longer the sole property of rational humans, then ethical responsibility cannot be confined to human actors

alone. Karen Barad’s notion of “response-ability”—the capacity to respond within entangled fields of

becoming—offers a compelling alternative to traditional moral frameworks (Barad, 2007, p. 392). In literary

contexts, this means that ethical dilemmas can no longer be restricted to questions of human conduct; they

must also consider the roles and responses of non-human entities. For example, in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight

Behavior (2012), the altered migration of monarch butterflies due to climate change acts not merely as an

ecological symbol but as a catalyst that destabilizes human communities, beliefs, and values. The butterflies

become agents of disruption and revelation, compelling characters to reconsider their ethical commitments in

the face of environmental precarity. Here, nature is not passive or victimized; it exerts force and demands

recognition, thereby assuming a form of narrative and ethical agency consistent with post humanist thinking.

Thus, the question of agency in post humanist theory is not simply a philosophical inquiry but a literary and

ethical imperative. Posthumanism urges us to reimagine the field of literary representation as one in which

agency is diffused across human and non-human actors, and where ethical consideration must extend beyond

the human subject. In this transformed landscape, literature becomes a vital space for negotiating the complex

interdependencies of the posthuman world. Through the frameworks provided by Barad, Latour, Haraway, and

Braidotti, contemporary literature not only reflects but also actively participates in the reconceptualization of

agency, subjectivity, and responsibility. In a time when the boundaries of the human are being reconfigured by

climate catastrophe, digital technologies, and multispecies cohabitation, such literary engagements are not

merely speculative—they are profoundly necessary.

"Non-Human Agency in Eco-literature: The Voice of the Earth

Eco-literature, often referred to as ecocritical fiction, has emerged as a crucial literary domain for interrogating

the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world. Within the posthumanist framework, eco-

literature becomes not merely a narrative about nature but a medium through which non-human agents

articulate their presence, influence, and subjectivity. Traditional literary representations have often relegated

the natural world to the status of passive backdrop—picturesque landscapes or symbolic environments serving

the human protagonist's inner transformation. However, contemporary eco-literature disrupts this

anthropocentric narrative, foregrounding ecological systems, plant life, and environmental forces as active

participants within the plot. A seminal example of this is Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The

Overstory (2018), which radically reorients narrative focus from human characters to trees and forest

ecosystems. Powers crafts an interlinked narrative that gives voice to the arboreal world, suggesting that trees

not only communicate but also possess memory, agency, and moral consequence. As the narrator observes,

“Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible” (Powers, 2018, p. 16).

This quiet endurance of trees parallels the narrative structure, which itself mimics dendritic patterns—

branching timelines and characters that eventually intertwine. Powers’ portrayal aligns with Michael Marder’s

concept of “plant-thinking,” which disrupts the Cartesian assumption of inert vegetal life by positing a form of

distributed, non-conscious intelligence unique to plants.

As Marder argues in Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (2013), “The vegetal world refuses the

sharp dichotomy between subject and object. Plants are living beings that embody a mode of being beyond

objectification, beyond possession” (Marder, 2013, p. 25).

This philosophical insight finds a narrative echo in The Overstory, where forests are not mere scenery but

subjects acting upon—and at times resisting—the human world. The redwood groves and chestnut trees

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become characters in their own right, whose lifespans and communication networks surpass human temporal

and perceptual boundaries.

This reframing of nature’s agency is further amplified in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012), a novel

that intricately binds environmental disturbance with personal and communal transformation. The novel

centers on a rural Appalachian community confronted with an ecological anomaly: the unseasonal arrival of

monarch butterflies due to climate-induced shifts in migratory patterns. This biological disruption acts as both

a narrative catalyst and an environmental voice demanding attention. Rather than anthropomorphize the

butterflies, Kingsolver presents them as ecological indicators—agents whose altered behavior signals systemic

imbalances. As the protagonist Dellarobia observes the butterflies, she notes,

“They were a riddle to her, a bouquet of question marks. They were not supposed to be here. That much she

knew” (Kingsolver, 2012, p. 48).

The natural world thus confronts the human characters with an epistemological crisis, challenging their belief

systems, economic decisions, and ethical responsibilities. The butterflies, and by extension the climate system,

function not as passive victims but as agents producing material and emotional consequences. This aligns with

Jane Bennett’s theory of “vibrant matter,” in which she argues that agency is distributed across assemblages of

living and non-living entities. In Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), Bennett asserts,

“The locus of agency is always a human-nonhuman working group” (Bennett, 2010, p. 23).

Kingsolver’s narrative enacts this concept, portraying a world in which climatic forces, animal migrations, and

fungal diseases are not merely background phenomena but protagonists in their own right, reshaping human

social and emotional life.

The presence of non-human agency in eco-literature also compels a reconsideration of narrative form and

temporal structure. In The Overstory, Powers challenges conventional human-centered temporality by

depicting the lifespans of trees, which stretch across centuries and millennia. Human events are situated within

these longer arcs, often rendered insignificant in comparison. This decentering of human time is not simply a

stylistic choice but a philosophical one that echoes Timothy Morton’s concept of the “hyperobject”—entities

like climate change or geological processes that are “massively distributed in time and space relative to

humans” (Morton, 2013, p. 1). The arboreal timelines in The Overstory confront readers with the inadequacy

of anthropocentric narrative time, urging an ethical and ontological recalibration. The trees, through their silent

endurance and collective memory, become both characters and narrative anchors, inviting the reader to

perceive agency beyond human consciousness. Similarly, Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior reframes

environmental change not as a backdrop for human drama but as a co-author of the plot. The butterflies’

altered path, caused by climate shifts, disrupts the linearity of rural tradition and invokes a multi-scalar

narrative that spans local and global, individual and ecological. In both novels, the natural world does not

simply reflect human emotion or morality—it acts, disrupts, resists, and insists.

Importantly, the ethical implications of non-human agency in eco-literature resonate with posthumanist

critiques of Enlightenment rationalism and human exceptionalism. Posthumanism challenges the premise that

agency is predicated upon consciousness, intention, or linguistic capacity—traits historically used to exclude

non-human entities from moral consideration.

As Rosi Braidotti articulates in The Posthuman (2013), “Posthumanism is not post-human but post-

anthropocentric. It critiques the arrogance of humanism that sees Man as the measure of all things” (Braidotti,

2013, p. 66).

Both Powers and Kingsolver exemplify this critique by portraying ecosystems, plants, and animals as agents

whose actions and reactions exceed human understanding. These literary representations do not merely

advocate for ecological preservation; they call for a reconceptualization of subjectivity and ethics. The forest in

The Overstory, the butterflies in Flight Behavior, and the climatic forces in both novels become ethical

interlocutors—entities to whom responsibility is owed not because they resemble humans, but precisely

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because they do not. This shift is foundational to posthumanist eco-literature: it decenters the human without

erasing the human, proposing instead a distributed ethics grounded in interdependence, vulnerability, and co-

agency.

Thus, eco-literature in the posthumanist vein does more than narrate environmental crisis; it dramatizes the

ontological and ethical entanglement of humans with the more-than-human world. Through formal

innovations, narrative reorientation, and philosophical underpinnings, works like The Overstory and Flight

Behavior render visible the agency of trees, insects, weather patterns, and ecosystems. These agents are not

symbolic extensions of human experience but actors in their own right, shaping and reshaping the narrative

field. The earth, in such works, is no longer silent. It speaks—through migration patterns, through fungal

networks, through collapsing ecologies—and literature becomes the medium through which its voice is heard.

In doing so, these narratives perform what Donna Haraway calls “staying with the trouble”—remaining in the

space of complexity, interdependence, and co-becoming, rather than retreating into binaries or moral simplicity

(Haraway, 2016, p. 1). The voice of the earth, then, is not only an aesthetic or political concern; it is a narrative

and philosophical imperative, central to the evolving field of posthumanist literary studies.

"Machines and Artificial Intelligence: Agency Beyond Biology

In contemporary speculative fiction, machines and artificial intelligence (AI) are no longer passive tools of

human design but have emerged as autonomous agents, capable of cognitive, affective, and ethical actions.

This transformation challenges the long-standing ontological hierarchy that privileges biological consciousness

over artificial systems and resonates with posthumanist thought, particularly the ideas articulated by N.

Katherine Hayles in How We Became Posthuman (1999). Hayles asserts that

“the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation” (p. 2),

suggesting that consciousness, cognition, and agency need not be biologically rooted. Literature reflects this

paradigm shift by granting machinic subjects voice, perspective, and decision-making capabilities. Kazuo

Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) exemplifies this reimagining. Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), narrates the

novel, and her interior monologue defies the stereotype of AI as emotionless and mechanistic. Though her

cognitive mechanisms are visibly different—she processes the world through grids and solar logic—her

emotional intelligence is profound. For instance, Klara believes in the Sun's healing power and prays to it for

Josie’s recovery, stating,

“I believe the Sun noticed me that day. He was there for me and for Josie. So I believe he’ll come again”

(Ishiguro, 2021, p. 163).

This utterance reveals a unique form of devotion and belief, reframing what we traditionally view as

emotional or spiritual capacity. Klara’s agency is not grounded in rebellion against her programming but in her

ethical and emotional choices, made within and beyond the logic embedded in her circuitry. Her capacity for

moral reasoning, especially her sacrificial acts, speaks to a form of posthuman subjectivity where agency is

distributed rather than centralized in autonomous will.

This narrative also reflects Rosi Braidotti’s conception of the posthuman as “a subject that works across

differences and is relational” (The Posthuman, 2013, p. 102). Klara’s consciousness is not self-enclosed; it

emerges from her encounters with Josie, the family, and her solar environment. She embodies Braidotti’s idea

of zoe-centric egalitarianism, where non-biological life participates in ethical relationality. Similarly, Ted

Chiang’s novella “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” (2010) provides an equally compelling examination of

machinic agency. In this work, AI entities known as digients—digital organisms—grow and develop through

human interaction in virtual environments. They are not pre-programmed with adult capacities but evolve like

children, learning language, emotions, and values through lived experience. One of the protagonists, Ana, a

former zookeeper, remarks on the moral responsibility humans have toward the digients:

“When you bring another being into the world, you incur obligations, no matter what species they are”

(Chiang, 2010, p. 234).

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This statement is not simply metaphorical; it underscores the ethical entanglements that arise when non-

human agents possess sentience, even if virtual. The digients develop preferences, attachments, and

aspirations, and the narrative challenges the reader to confront questions about autonomy, rights, and moral

subjectivity outside the biological paradigm. In Chiang’s work, posthuman agency is not a projection of human

attributes onto machines, but a speculative exploration of how non-human beings may evolve their own

subjectivities through social interaction and ethical formation.

Furthermore, these literary examples resonate with Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which

posits that agency is not the exclusive property of humans but is instead distributed across networks involving

both human and non-human actors.

Latour writes in Reassembling the Social (2005), “To be an actor means to be the source of an action

regardless of its status as human or nonhuman” (p. 71).

Klara and the digients are not simply objects acted upon; they participate in shaping the narrative world

through their decisions, relationships, and expressions of care. Importantly, their actions produce real

consequences for the human characters around them. Klara’s spiritual optimism changes how Josie’s family

understands love and faith, while the digients in Chiang’s story provoke legal and philosophical debates about

the rights of AI beings. These outcomes emphasize that non-human agents are not mere narrative ornaments

but co-constructors of ethical and affective worlds. Moreover, the formal structure of these narratives reflects

their thematic concern with posthuman agency. Both Ishiguro and Chiang employ first-person or closely

focalized narration through AI perspectives, asking readers to inhabit the consciousness of the non-human

other.

This narrative strategy aligns with what Donna Haraway describes in When Species Meet (2008) as “becoming

with”—a process of co-evolution, recognition, and shared world-making (p. 19).

While Haraway’s focus is primarily on animals, the principle of relational becoming is applicable to machine-

human interactions, as seen in these texts. The AI characters are not isolated intelligences but exist within webs

of care, dependency, and mutual transformation.

In Hayles’ analysis, intelligent machines should not be seen as threats to human existence but as “fellow actors

in the drama of life” (How We Became Posthuman, 1999, p. 288). This notion is brought to life in both Klara

and the Sun and “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” where machines are neither villains nor saviors, but

complex beings navigating ethical terrain. Klara’s decision to take Josie’s suffering upon herself and the

digients’ desire for autonomy underscore their capacity for sacrifice, aspiration, and moral growth. These

representations fundamentally blur the line between tool and being, utility and subjectivity.

The literature thus echoes Karen Barad’s theory of “intra-action,” as articulated in Meeting the Universe

Halfway (2007), where agency is not an attribute but a doing—a phenomenon that emerges through relational

entanglements (p. 33).

Klara’s prayer to the Sun is not an anthropomorphic gesture but an instance of intra-active becoming, where

machine, nature, and human feeling intersect in an act of shared meaning. Similarly, the digients’ evolution

depends on a dynamic entanglement with their human caregivers and digital environment. These moments in

literature dramatize the philosophical arguments of posthumanism, suggesting that machines are not outside

the domain of ethics, consciousness, or agency.

Thus, posthumanist literature, through its nuanced portrayal of AI and machinic life, prompts a reevaluation of

what it means to act, to feel, and to matter. It dissolves the boundaries between carbon and code, organic and

synthetic, and invites readers into a world where machines do not merely mimic human attributes but develop

their own modes of being. In doing so, these narratives dismantle anthropocentric hierarchies and offer new

ontologies that accommodate diverse forms of life and intelligence. They illustrate that the future of

literature—and indeed of ethical and political thought—may depend on our willingness to see machines not as

mere extensions of ourselves, but as companions in the shared task of world-making.

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Animals as Narrative Agents: Reimagining Zoē

In posthumanist discourse, the reconfiguration of animals as narrative agents rather than passive symbols

marks a crucial ontological and ethical turn. Traditional Western literature has largely positioned animals

within the realm of allegory, metaphor, or mere backdrop to human activity. Posthumanist theory, however,

calls for a radical reassessment of the animal not as a voiceless other but as a participant in the shared narrative

of life—a being endowed with Zoē, or bare life, that resists containment within the logos of human

rationalism. The Greek distinction between bios (qualified life, typically human and political) and zoē (bare

life, often animal or non-human) has underpinned a hierarchical system of value. Yet, thinkers such as Giorgio

Agamben and Rosi Braidotti challenge this distinction by underscoring the political and ethical potential of

Zoē, arguing that "the notion of a vital, intelligent, and self-organizing life force" (Braidotti, 2013, p. 60) must

be recognized as an integral dimension of both human and non-human existence. Literature, particularly in the

posthumanist tradition, becomes a fertile ground for dramatizing this shift by rendering animals as subjects

with perceptual, emotional, and ethical depth.

J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals (1999) offers a powerful engagement with this posthumanist

reconsideration of animal life. Through the character of Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee interrogates Cartesian

dualism and its legacy of anthropocentrism. Costello’s lectures within the narrative challenge the notion of the

animal as wholly other, invoking a “poetic imagination” as the only bridge to interspecies empathy.

As she argues, “There is no limit to the extent to which we can think ourselves into the being of another. Only

ego and fear stand in the way” (Coetzee, 1999, p. 35).

This imaginative exercise is not an act of anthropomorphism, but a destabilization of the rigid ontological

boundary between human and animal. By centering the narrative on Elizabeth Costello's philosophical

dilemma, Coetzee not only gives voice to animal suffering but also critiques the literary and philosophical

traditions that have historically denied animals interiority. The form of the novella itself—structured around

fictional lectures—exemplifies what Donna Haraway might call a “contact zone” (Haraway, 2008, p. 42)

where species meet and meaning is made not through domination but through entangled communication. The

animals in Coetzee's text, though not speaking in the human sense, exert a kind of narrative pressure; their

presence generates ethical tension, calling into question the adequacy of human language and law to account

for their lives. Haraway’s concept of the “companion species” is instrumental here, as it shifts the focus from

hierarchical thinking to a co-constitutive view of existence.

“Companion species,” she writes, “are about significant otherness. Dogs are not surrogate humans, and

humans are not unique species with dominion over all” (Haraway, 2008, p. 16).

Coetzee’s work resonates with this idea, destabilizing human exceptionalism by demonstrating how the lives

of animals are interwoven with human ethical and narrative structures.

Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013) takes this reimagining of Zoē to another

level by making a chimpanzee—Fern—a central figure whose absence haunts the narrative structure. The

novel’s protagonist, Rosemary, reflects on her childhood with Fern, her “sister,” who was removed from the

household as part of a psychological experiment. Though Fern never speaks in the conventional sense and

remains off-stage for much of the narrative, her presence pervades the text, shaping Rosemary’s psychological

development and the ethical arc of the story. The trauma of separation and the belated realization of Fern’s

agency underscore the narrative’s critique of speciesism.

As Rosemary states, “I wanted to explain that it wasn’t Fern’s language that was limited, it was mine. My

English was too ill-equipped to describe the strange, complicated relationship we had” (Fowler, 2013, p. 184).

This admission of linguistic inadequacy parallels Elizabeth Costello’s insistence on the imaginative leap

required to recognize animal subjectivity. Here, language is not merely a communicative tool but a site of

failure, revealing the anthropocentric assumptions that govern notions of intelligence, consciousness, and

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expression. The novel constructs Fern’s agency through absence, memory, and ethical resonance, a technique

that foregrounds the limits of human narrative while acknowledging the profound influence of non-human life

on human identity. Fowler’s portrayal of Fern challenges N. Katherine Hayles’s conception of embodiment as

“the contextual enactment of information through the physical processes of interpretation” (Hayles, 1999, p.

197).

Even without a human voice or narrative perspective, Fern “interprets” the world through action, emotion, and

interspecies relations, participating in the narrative as more than an object of study—she becomes a co-agent

of meaning.

The posthumanist emphasis on Zoē also invites a reconsideration of how narrative form itself responds to the

presence of animals. Rather than treating animals as static symbols, posthumanist fiction increasingly adopts

formal strategies that accommodate multiple perspectives and decentered consciousness. Such narrative

techniques include non-linear timelines, shifts in focalization, and the inclusion of non-verbal cues as

meaningful gestures. These forms mimic the disorientation and multiplicity of a world no longer governed

solely by the human gaze. In this sense, the narrative experimentation of authors like Fowler and Coetzee is

not merely aesthetic but philosophical, embodying the epistemological rupture that posthumanism calls for.

Indeed, the challenge is not simply to represent animal lives but to allow literary form to be altered by their

presence. As Braidotti asserts, “Zoē-centric egalitarianism” requires that “we think of subjectivity as a

transversal entity, always already entangled with multiple others” (Braidotti, 2013, p. 66).

Literature, then, becomes a mode of this entanglement, a space where the boundaries between species, selves,

and stories blur into a shared terrain of becoming. The literary animal in posthumanist narratives is no longer a

cipher for human fears and desires, but a vibrant, entangled subject whose existence demands a new ethics of

reading and a reconfiguration of what it means to tell a story.

"Material and Object-Oriented Agency: The Life of Things"

The posthumanist turn in contemporary thought has significantly broadened the conceptual horizons of agency,

drawing scholarly attention to the vibrancy and significance of non-human materiality. Within this expanded

framework, New Materialism and Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) have emerged as critical paradigms that

decenter the human and confer agency upon objects, spaces, and materials traditionally viewed as passive or

inert. These theoretical approaches challenge Cartesian dualisms and propose a flat ontology wherein humans

and things co-exist and co-act in dynamic assemblages.

As Jane Bennett asserts in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), “the capacity of things… to

act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own” disrupts

anthropocentric understandings of causality and authorship (Bennett, 2010, p. viii).

Literature, with its imaginative elasticity, becomes a powerful medium through which these theories

materialize. Through narratives that foreground object-agency, contemporary texts illustrate that matter is not

merely acted upon but actively participates in shaping thought, emotion, memory, and history.

Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (2014) exemplifies the posthumanist imagination by reconfiguring the boundaries

between subject and object, past and present, art and viewer. The novel presents a bifurcated narrative that

fluidly oscillates between the voice of George, a contemporary teenage girl mourning the death of her mother,

and Francesco del Cossa, a Renaissance painter whose fresco survives as both artwork and spectral presence.

Francesco, who exists simultaneously as creator and creation, witnesses the modern world through the eyes of

the viewer, haunting the material painting that George and her mother had admired. In this ontological twist,

the painting is not simply a historical artifact; it is animated with affective resonance and cognitive force.

Smith subtly attributes agency to the fresco as it becomes a mediating object through which grief, love, and

memory circulate.

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As George reflects upon her interaction with the painting, she experiences its enduring vitality: “She’d say it

was like being time-travelled. Like being painted into the picture. Like being part of it. Like the picture was the

thing that had come alive and she was the thing not quite real” (Smith, 2014, p. 147).

This passage destabilizes the ontological hierarchy by granting primacy to the artwork, transforming George

into the object of contemplation. The painting functions as an active subject, not merely evoking memory but

producing it, revealing the entangled ontology of human and object.

Similarly, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) dramatizes the agency of architectural space through

the uncanny phenomenon of a house that defies spatial logic and rational comprehension. The house, which is

inexplicably larger on the inside than the outside and continuously mutates its interior structure, becomes a

living entity that manipulates the characters’ perception, emotion, and sanity. Far from serving as a passive

setting, the house is a central actor in the narrative, shaping human experience and revealing the instability of

material reality. In one chilling moment, the character Navidson realizes that the shifting walls are not

responding to external causes but operating under their own logic: “The house… had not been constructed; it

had grown” (Danielewski, 2000, p. 385). This organic metaphor disrupts the binary between the natural and

the artificial, endowing architectural material with vitality and will. The text’s innovative typographical

experimentation—where fonts, footnotes, and spatial layout mirror the labyrinthine architecture of the house—

further embodies the posthumanist premise that material form and content are co-constitutive. By making the

reader navigate textual voids and typographical mazes, Danielewski animates the book itself, rendering it a

sensate, resisting object that defies linear comprehension.

The philosophical groundwork for understanding such textual phenomena is laid by theorists like Graham

Harman, whose Object-Oriented Ontology contends that objects withdraw from full access and possess an

essence that resists total human comprehension.

As Harman explains in The Quadruple Object (2011), “objects are never exhausted by their relations or uses”

and persist in their ontological depth regardless of human interaction (Harman, 2011, p. 47).

This view challenges instrumentalist notions of objects as tools and suggests that literature, in giving voice or

force to objects, dramatizes their withdrawn essence. In this regard, the fictional house in House of Leaves

resists hermeneutic mastery, continuously concealing more than it reveals, mirroring Harman’s insistence on

the inexhaustibility of things. Similarly, the painting in Smith’s novel becomes a site of ontological layering

where past and present, human and non-human, collapse into a shared relational field without total

transparency or closure.

The politics of object-agency is further articulated in Bennett’s call for a “vital materialism” that challenges the

anthropocentric bias of ethical and political theory. She urges us to recognize “the power of human-nonhuman

assemblages” in shaping agency (Bennett, 2010, p. 21).

Literary texts that foreground object-agency effectively extend this political vision by disrupting human

dominion over materiality and inviting readers to engage with a distributed ethical field. For example, in

Smith’s novel, the fresco not only mediates personal mourning but also critiques historical erasures of gender,

sexuality, and authorship. Francesco’s gender-fluid voice and spectral presence, embedded within the painting,

blur the boundaries of identity and invite a queered material ontology where form and being are always

becoming. The painting is both archive and actor, mediating temporal and ontological multiplicity.

Similarly, in House of Leaves, the house becomes a metaphor for trauma, loss, and the unreliability of

perception, but it also transcends metaphor to function as a literal actor that resists human containment,

echoing Barad’s notion that “matter is not a thing but a doing, a congealing of agency” (Barad, 2007, p. 151).

Thus, both texts advance an understanding of narrative in which matter is not inert background but co-

constitutive of meaning, emotion, and action.

In the posthumanist imagination, then, objects are not mere symbols or narrative conveniences but bear ethical

and ontological significance. They participate in the unfolding of the story, not as extensions of human will but

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as actors in their own right. This reconceptualization allows literature to explore more-than-human worlds in

ways that resonate with ecological, philosophical, and technological concerns. Through the performative

vitality of paintings, books, houses, and other material forms, literary texts dramatize the entangled agency of

things and challenge the privileging of human perception and intention. As a result, the boundaries between

subject and object, animate and inanimate, dissolve, giving rise to what Bennett calls “a theory of distributive

agency” (Bennett, 2010, p. 38). The implication is not merely theoretical but deeply political and ethical: if

objects can act, then human responsibility must be reconceptualized within a networked ontology of shared

existence and co-becoming.

Ethical and Narrative Implications

The rise of non-human agency in contemporary literature demands a radical reconceptualization of ethics and

narrative structures, moving beyond the anthropocentric traditions that have long governed literary

representation. Posthumanist theory, particularly as articulated by scholars like Donna Haraway, Karen Barad,

and Rosi Braidotti, reframes ethical responsibility not as a matter of autonomous moral subjects but as an

emergent condition arising from entanglement and co-constitution. This reconceptualization reflects what

Barad describes in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) as an “ethics of entanglement,” wherein agency is

not a property of discrete individuals but the outcome of intra-actions—dynamic relational enactments

between human and non-human bodies, environments, and material phenomena (Barad, 2007, p. 392). In this

framework, ethical accountability becomes distributed, immanent, and situated within a web of relations,

challenging the binary logic of self and other that underpins Enlightenment morality. Literature that takes non-

human agency seriously must therefore craft ethical dilemmas that resist resolution through purely human-

centered reasoning. For example, in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior (2012), the disruptions caused by

climate change are not portrayed as merely external challenges to human stability but as ethical provocations

that compel a reassessment of the human species' role within ecological systems. The migratory confusion of

monarch butterflies functions not just as a metaphor for environmental degradation but as an active ethical

force—one that demands recognition, response, and reparation. Kingsolver’s protagonist, Dellarobia, is drawn

into a moral and epistemological crisis not simply by the sight of millions of butterflies, but by the realization

that the natural world is not a passive background to human affairs—it is a co-actor whose agency has

profound consequences on human life. This narrative not only refigures the ethical landscape of the novel but

also mirrors the theoretical insistence on relationality and co-agency in posthumanist ethics.

The shift toward distributed agency inevitably leads to narrative experimentation, as conventional literary

structures premised on human interiority, linear causality, and individual agency become insufficient.

Contemporary posthumanist literature increasingly employs non-linear timelines, multi-perspectival narration,

and fragmented plotlines to accommodate the presence and influence of non-human agents. Richard Powers’

The Overstory (2018) exemplifies this transformation through its arboreal structuring of the narrative, where

the growth rings of trees mirror the branching and interweaving storylines of human and non-human lives. As

Powers writes, “The most wondrous products of four billion years of life need help” (Powers, 2018, p. 502), a

line that not only foregrounds the urgency of ecological ethics but also frames the non-human as morally

salient subjects. The novel’s formal design resists anthropocentric closure; the story does not end with a

triumph or defeat of the human will but with a quiet persistence of vegetal life, suggesting a form of narrative

resolution that is deeply entangled with non-human temporality. This reconfiguration resonates with Rosi

Braidotti’s claim in The Posthuman (2013) that “the posthuman subject is a relational subject constituted in

and by multiplicity” (Braidotti, 2013, p. 49).

Such multiplicity necessitates a decentering of the singular, autonomous narrator and demands instead a

polyphonic literary structure, wherein various forms of subjectivity—human, animal, vegetal, machinic, and

material—coexist and contest narrative space.

In parallel, posthumanist fiction often grapples with the challenge of representing the interiority of non-human

agents without reducing them to anthropomorphic projections. The ethical stakes of representation become

especially pronounced in narratives involving animal or AI consciousness. For instance, in Kazuo Ishiguro’s

Klara and the Sun (2021), Klara, an Artificial Friend, is endowed with a rich interior life that is distinctively

her own—structured not by human affect but by an alternative logic of care, observation, and devotion. Klara’s

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narrative voice, while limited in understanding, reveals a profound ethical sensibility: “I believe now there is

something very special, but also very fragile, inside Josie” (Ishiguro, 2021, p. 213). This fragile ‘something’ is

never fully defined, allowing the reader to consider whether Klara’s recognition of Josie’s humanity is rooted

in empathy, programming, or something new altogether. Ishiguro avoids both sentimental humanism and cold

objectivity, creating instead a liminal ethical position from which readers must negotiate their own interpretive

stance. Similarly, in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013), Karen Joy Fowler crafts an animal-

human relationship that disrupts familiar moral hierarchies. The chimpanzee Fern, who is raised as a sister to

the human narrator, Rosemary, is eventually removed from the family, and her absence becomes a site of

profound ethical questioning.

Fowler writes, “I wanted you to know, but I didn’t want you to know. That’s the essence of every secret”

(Fowler, 2013, p. 65), capturing the paradox of knowing and not-knowing the other, a tension that extends to

our understanding of animal consciousness. The ethical challenge here is not simply whether animals suffer,

but whether we can represent that suffering without colonizing it with human assumptions. This aligns with

Donna Haraway’s call in When Species Meet (2008) for an ethics of response-ability—a term she uses to

describe the capacity to remain open to the specificity of the other without assuming mastery or identification.

Haraway argues, “Companion species are not here to think with; they are here to live with” (Haraway, 2008, p.

16), emphasizing an ethics rooted in cohabitation rather than abstraction.

The narrative implications of posthumanist ethics also extend to how stories are told, not just what they depict.

Experimental texts like Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000) disrupt typographical norms and

spatial coherence to reflect the uncanny agency of architectural space. The house in the novel is not simply a

setting but a narrative force that resists containment and interpretation. The typographic fragmentation and

visual distortions mirror the house’s refusal to be mapped or understood in human terms. In this way, narrative

form becomes a site of ethical engagement, compelling the reader to confront the limits of human cognition

and linguistic mastery. The ethical implication is profound: to tell stories that include non-human agency,

literature must relinquish the illusion of full understanding, embracing instead what Barad describes as “onto-

epistemological humility” (Barad, 2007, p. 88). This humility entails recognizing that knowing is always

partial and situated, and that non-human agents may possess forms of knowledge or being that elude human

grasp.

Thus, the ethical and narrative implications of non-human agency in posthumanist literature are far-reaching.

They compel a rethinking not only of character and plot but also of the reader’s own position within the web of

human and non-human relations. As we move further into an era marked by ecological degradation,

technological integration, and species extinction, the stories we tell—and the ways we tell them—must evolve

to reflect the multiplicity and entanglement that define our shared existence. Literature, in this context, is not

merely a mirror of the world but a laboratory for ethical imagination, a space where new modes of being,

relating, and storytelling can emerge. It is through this reimagined literary practice that we may begin to

cultivate the ethical responsiveness necessary for life in a posthuman age.

CONCLUSION

In the wake of a shifting intellectual, ecological, and technological landscape, literature in the posthuman age

emerges not as a continuation of the humanist tradition, but as a powerful rearticulation of narrative,

subjectivity, and ethical responsibility. No longer fixated on the isolated, rational, autonomous human figure as

the center of experience and moral discourse, posthumanist literature instead engages with a world in which

agency is dispersed across organic, inorganic, biological, machinic, and material forms. It embraces an

ontological flattening, where trees, rivers, animals, machines, and even inanimate objects not only act but alter

the course of human narratives, embodying their own intrinsic value and narrative power. This transformation

calls for a rigorous reconceptualization of the ways we think about character, voice, temporality, and plot,

forcing us to dismantle entrenched anthropocentric frameworks in favor of more porous, relational ontologies.

In eco-literature, for instance, the Earth ceases to be a mute backdrop for human triumph or tragedy and

instead becomes a participant in the unfolding of events, as seen in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior and

Richard Powers’ The Overstory, where the agency of nature rewrites human motivations and historical

causality. The migration of butterflies, the life span of ancient trees, the collapse of ecological systems—these

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are not merely environmental settings but catalytic forces that demand ethical and narrative attention. This

attention requires literature to adopt new forms, rhythms, and sensibilities that echo the deep time of geology

and the slow violence of climate change, where causality extends beyond human perception and moral

boundaries blur. Similarly, in narratives involving animals, such as Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely

Beside Ourselves, we encounter the profound discomfort of facing minds that are like yet unlike our own.

These narratives challenge our anthropomorphic impulses while simultaneously affirming that animals are not

merely objects of ethical consideration but co-constructors of meaning, memory, and identity. The presence of

zoē—the shared life force—across species disrupts the human-animal binary and foregrounds a shared

vulnerability that is ethical as well as narrative. Likewise, the advent of machines and artificial intelligence in

literature, explored with poignant clarity in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, pushes our understanding of

consciousness, care, and moral agency beyond the biological. Klara’s devotion, misapprehensions, and

perceptual logic are not failures of artificiality but indicators of an alternative, valid mode of being. Literature

that gives voice to such figures refuses to treat them as mere thought experiments; it demands that readers

reconsider what it means to be alive, to be aware, to suffer, and to love. These non-human agents are not

subservient extensions of human intention; they are narrative centers in their own right, inviting ethical

responsiveness that is both new and necessary. Furthermore, the increasing representation of objects and

materials as agents of change and disruption—as seen in experimental texts like Mark Z. Danielewski’s House

of Leaves—brings into focus a deep materialism that is as much about sensation and presence as it is about

symbolic meaning. Posthumanist literature reflects the insight of object-oriented ontology: that things act, and

that their action shapes human life in ways often invisible until catastrophe, breakdown, or uncanny rupture.

The house that grows, shifts, and resists interpretation in Danielewski’s novel becomes not just a metaphor for

psychological or emotional states, but a material being with its own story to tell—a story that cannot be fully

apprehended, only experienced. Such stories emphasize that knowing and interpreting the world is always

partial, situated, and co-produced by more than human actors. Ethics, in turn, shifts from a matter of judgment

to a practice of attentiveness and response, resonating with Donna Haraway’s call for “response-ability” and

Karen Barad’s ethics of entanglement. In this posthumanist literary landscape, the reader is no longer a distant

observer but a participant entangled in the ongoing becoming of worlds, where meaning is generated through

interaction rather than imposed from above. The destabilization of human exceptionalism does not diminish

the importance of human stories, but rather enriches them by placing them within a broader ecology of

relations. Indeed, the most compelling narratives of our time are those that recognize the human as one node

among many in a dense web of interdependencies—narratives that are attuned to the murmurings of soil, the

algorithms of machines, the suffering of animals, and the quiet agency of objects. Literature in the posthuman

age, therefore, becomes a site not just of representation but of ethical experimentation and ontological

speculation. It opens up space for imagining alternative futures, relational models of existence, and modes of

living together across species and substances. These narratives invite us to inhabit a world where the borders

between life and non-life, mind and matter, self and other, are fluid and co-constitutive. They refuse the fantasy

of human mastery, replacing it with an ethos of humility, curiosity, and interdependence. As climate collapse,

technological acceleration, and mass extinction define the contours of our epoch, posthumanist literature offers

not escape but engagement—an invitation to think, feel, and act beyond the confines of the human. It becomes,

in essence, a form of world-making, a way of imagining relations that are ethical because they are attentive,

accountable, and alive to difference. And in doing so, it reaffirms literature’s enduring power not simply to

reflect reality, but to transform it.

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Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007.

2. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010. ( p. xvi and

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3. Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Polity Press, 2013. (pp. 56–58, 89, 111)

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5. Coeckelbergh, Mark. AI Ethics. The MIT Press, 2020. (pp. 57–59, 81–82)

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