ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that SF’s queer, inter-species intimacies—which oppose kinship structures grounded in racialised and gendered identity formation—tentatively delineate the borders of what the author has called “planetary” humanism. When this manifests in SF, the human race of Elysium is on the brink of expulsion from its planet, past and present conjoin in the deep spaces of The Citadel, and the native bacteria of “Planetoide de Oportunidades” make their claim to the right to exist by broaching the bodies of lesbian women. When read as evocations of new forms of planetary humanism, these texts confront humanity’s ego with the precariousness of its planetary position. This is the outer reaches of the humanist imagination, where systems of race and gender can finally be reconfigured. Yet, this chapter exposes how in this incipient state, humanistic contradictions proliferate. When the human body is violently penetrated, and its pleasurable permeability is evidenced in queasy ways, the problematic and non-consensual aspects of border-crossing come to the fore. It concludes that at the borders of the planetary, communities forged in precarious, dystopian worlds are forced to explore the limits of what it means to be alive together.
