Reconfiguring the Decentralized and Deterritorialized Human: A Post-Anthropocentric Braidottian Reading of Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Abstract

This research reconfigures C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe through the theoretical framework of Rosi Braidotti’s post-anthropocentric philosophy as articulated in The Posthuman (2013). Post-anthropocentrism is a critical stance that challenges the preference of the human subject as central to meaning, ethics, and knowledge, and instead situates the human as one among many interdependent life forms. Braidotti’s framework dismantles Eurocentric humanism for its hierarchical structuring of species, bodies, and subjectivities by decentralizing the human as the measure of all things. Instead, she emphasizes on zoe (the impersonal, vital force animating all life), the nature-culture continuum (a non-binary integration of ecological and social realms), and relational subjectivity (identity constituted through multispecies networks). The Pevensie children’s transformation from human-centric perspectives to relational ethics reflects post-anthropocentric models of negotiable identities. Through Braidotti’s post-anthropocentric lens, Narnia emerges as a proto-posthuman space where nonhuman agency disrupts classical hierarchies. This study advances SDG 15 (Life on Land) by exposing how Narnia’s zoe-centric ethics, where Aslan’s thaw challenges ecological instrumentalization, demand a radical rethinking of protection beyond human stewardship. Through close textual analysis, this study departs from the traditional, theological and morally allegorical interpretation of Narnia and reframes it as a proto-posthuman ethical landscape wherein the human is not central, but embedded in a web of more-than-human forces.