Between Algorithm and Accountability: Posthuman Power, Moral Agency, and American Muslim Subjectivity in Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel

Abstract

This study claims that Laila Lalami in The Dream Hotel (2025) shifts datafied to the moral self by subjecting posthuman predictive power to ethically responsible American Muslim persons. It responds to the crucial issue that the current frames of posthumanism, surveillance, and the representation of American Muslims fail to offer a comprehensive account of how moral agency remains a possibility when embodied and in psychic life has turned into a readable, extractable, and manageable data. This study examines the way the novel constructs Sara Hussein into a predictive portrait and rejuvenates her using context, kinship, prayer, and relational accountability. In concept, the research unites posthumanism, the surveillance studies, American Muslim criticism, and the Islamic-infused criticism of the ethics. On the methodological level, it uses qualitative textual analysis, a close reading applied to the novel guided by theory and deductive thematic analysis of the novel. The analysis concludes that, first, subjectivity is made mechanically legible by the novel through the disciplining of the body, shot apart data capture, and dream mining. Second, it demonstrates that algorithmic systems purport to have epistemic authority by making archives, dreams and traces of behaviour transparent truth. Third, it shows how Sara defies such down ranging by recalling, placing the story in context, praying and finding strength in solidarity ultimately, redesigning freedom as a caring and shared instead of an individual thing. The research therefore indicates that technology served as the crucial place in reconsidering the premises of moral agency, meaning making and responsible Muslim selfhood under predictive politics in the context of literary studies and greater discussions about data, morals and personhood.