Blurring the boundaries between human and nonhuman beings in the posthuman universe of Star Wars

Humans started to be seen as the most central figures in the universe after the Renaissance period. With the advancements in technology, science, and art, humanity gradually noticed that they could dominate life and shape the world according to their needs and desires. Humans began to think that they were the most unique and powerful beings that were capable of everything through their knowledge and innovations. This movement in history is called humanism, which brings humans to the center as the most valuable and significant beings among species. The anthropocentric view of humanism causes an exclusionary approach toward all nonhuman beings. Yet, due to the rising ecological awareness after the 1950s, people increasingly valued nonhuman living beings in nature. Additionally, the technological developments in those years led to the rise of interest in futuristic concepts such as robots and cyborgs. These science fiction concepts heavily challenged the traditional norms and boundaries of the human in the humanist movement. These alterations in the perception of humanity triggered the emergence of posthumanism as a critical theory in the 1980s and 1990s. Posthumanism aimed to criticize classical humanism's anthropocentric attitude toward the nonhuman and the human's centrality, agency, and uniqueness in the world. Some works already possessed a posthumanist point of view in science fiction cinema. One of these examples is the Star Wars film series created by George Lucas in 1977. The films in this series have posthumanist themes, topics and concepts that question what it means to be a human. The universe of Star Wars includes myriad nonhuman beings such as aliens, cyborgs, clones and droids (robots in the Star Wars series). Both human and nonhuman beings can co-exist, co-evolve and collaborate despite their different characteristics. In this regard, the film series advocates an egalitarian and embracive manner toward all types of entities in the universe. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate the boundaries between humans and aliens, as well as humans and machines, in the posthuman universe of Star Wars by using selected films from the series with a posthumanist stance.