Reconstructing Reality: Individual Agency against Collective Autonomy in Dystopian Narrative Structures

A critical investigation into the manifestation and problematisation of agency in visual culture, with a particular focus on a humanist and anti-humanist perspective. The study focuses on dystopic filmic narratives, and a recent cycle of the mind-game film, to navigate postmodern portrayals of individualistic agency against collective autonomies. Several symptomatic case studies are critically analysed within a theoretical and philosophical framework. The dissertation is broken into two chapters; the first takes a humanist approach, utilising Thomas Elsaesser’s (2021) conceptualisation of ‘productive pathologies’ to evaluate a subjective approach to narrative. The second chapter incorporates an anti-humanist approach; radical theorists, including Louis Althusser and A.J Greimas, are interwoven to examine the impact of structuralist and illusory agency. Although theory surrounding agency is expansive, this study finds a lack of sufficient theory that discusses the effects of the Anthropocene, and non-human agency, which is an area of research that remains speculative