Speculative fiction or conspicuous discursive space: Mohsin Hamid’s the last white man as poetics of disruption

Abstract

The Last White Man employs speculative fiction techniques to challenge systemic inequality based on racial privileges. A world is imagined by Mohsin Hamid where the white undergo a racial transformation that is as loathsome as Kafkian metamorphosis into a cockroach. While this speculative aspect describes the racial transformation as fragile because it is something biological, it acts as a tool for social critique exposing the impact that race can have on one's identity particularly in face of the dominant stereotypes about race. Through its form, the novel destabilizes the traditional notions of racial privilege by exposing the socio-psychological and systemic structures based on power dynamics about the privilege of those born white. Simultaneously, it invokes horror by alluding to pandemics or biological conditions that can affect human color through diseases like vitiligo. Discontents of the civilization are conveyed through inexplicable racial metamorphosis that destabilizes the deep-rooted racial hierarchies inviting retrospective reflection about changing a worldview that is based on something fundamentally inherited. In this regard, I study the novel rendering poetics of disruption by becoming a conspicuous discursive space bringing into discussion contemporary social structures that are in need of inversion, an inversion which Hamid renders through the use of speculative techniques.