This study incorporates insights from the cognitive approach to literature into postcolonial studies for the purpose of investigating the potential of the ongoing dialogue between these two fields. It analyzes the cognitive process of categorization intricate in the classification of people according to race, colour and culture, revealing how Fanon’s idea of reciprocal consciousness challenges the fixity of borders between categories and goes with the nature of the human mind that is capable of adapting to and realizing the changeability and adjustability of categorical schemas. Thus, the activation of reciprocal self-consciousness generates intercategorical coexistence, pointing out the obsoleteness of colonially categorical mentality sustained by xenophobia. According to the resilient nature of the human mind, this paper proves that categories of cultures and race are overlapping and fuzzy, so artificial borders between them are inconsistent and penetrable allowing mobility and change in terms of membership and belonging. This study tackles Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) in the light of Fanon’s treatment of the Hegelian theory of reciprocal self-consciousness, exploring possible forms of intersubjectivity, cultural fusion, acculturation and means of transcendental self-representation as illustrated in characters who are capable of penetrating the categorical fixity of cultural difference or the self and the other.

中文翻译：

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互惠自我意识是 Mohsin Hamid 西出口中绝对边界固定的解药

本研究将文学认知方法的见解纳入后殖民研究，目的是调查这两个领域之间正在进行的对话的潜力。它分析了人们根据种族、肤色和文化进行分类的错综复杂的分类认知过程，揭示了法农的相互意识思想如何挑战类别之间边界的固定性，并符合能够适应的人类思维的本性。实现分类图式的可变性和可调整性。因此，相互自我意识的激活产生了类别间的共存，指出了由仇外心理所维持的殖民类别心态的过时。根据人类心灵的弹性，本文证明，文化和种族的类别是重叠和模糊的，因此它们之间的人为边界不一致和可穿透，允许成员和归属方面的流动和变化。本研究根据法农对黑格尔的相互自我意识理论的处理，探讨了莫辛·哈米德的《西出境》（2017），探索主体间性、文化融合、文化适应和先验自我表现的可能形式，如有能力的人物所说明的穿透文化差异或自我与他者的绝对固定性。