Science fiction has often been associated with colonial imaginaries, given its engagement with themes such as invasions and encounters with other civilisations. This article addresses these relations by focusing on the invasion plot subgenre and the nexus between the modern subject and colonial frameworks. It argues that conceptions of subjectivity are a site of symbolic struggle, acting not only as the bases of the reproduction of colonial logics in these narratives, but also as a locus for their disruption. It first analyses Independence Day and War of the Worlds, highlighting how categories such as disembodiment, anthropocentrism and linear progress are crucial in reproducing the modern subject and colonial hierarchies in invasion stories. It then explores Arrival and Annihilation to argue that invasion plots can also present alternative forms of encounter as they disrupt modern subjectivity and colonial frameworks by contesting ideas of disembodiment, identity, progress and the human/nonhuman divide.

Este artigo pretende oferecer uma alternativa a interpretações que identificam uma relação conflituosa entre os estudos decoloniais latino-americanos e os estudos pós-coloniais do sudeste asiático. Para tanto, será mobilizado um diálogo entre os pensamentos de Walter Mignolo e Homi Bhabha enquanto exemplares de cada grupo, procurando apontar os potenciais de uma leitura focada na complementaridade de suas obras. Assim, este trabalho utilizará os conceitos de “pensamento liminar” e “hibridismo” como linhas condutoras para explorar os projetos de ambos os intelectuais, procurando identificar as razões de seus contrastes, assim como conexões possíveis entre eles.