REIMAGINING HUMAN LIFE AND LABOR THROUGH VISUAL ARTS: A STUDY OF KNOWLEDGE AND POWER DYNAMICS

Abstract [English]

Modern speculative fiction often interrogates how human life is organized and controlled by systems of knowledge and power. This paper examines Sulimma (2023) and Alderman (2023) in comparison, using Foucault (1970) as a theoretical framework. Specifically, it seeks to answer: (1) How does Severance portray routinized labor, an ‘undead’ logic of workflows that renders life legible as logistics under late capitalism? (2) How does The Future depict big-tech foresight and predictive analytics as a knowledge apparatus that both anticipates and produces subjects and worlds? (3) In what ways can Foucault’s concept of how knowledge systems order human life illuminate the critiques in these novels, and what gaps or transformations do the novels suggest in the Foucauldian “Order of Things”? This study argues that both novels use apocalyptic scenarios to lay bare the underlying episteme of contemporary society: Ma (2018) satirizes how human life and labor are reduced to mechanical routines and global supply-chain logistics, while Alderman (2023) critiques the technocratic vision of total predictive control over the future. Through close analysis, the paper finds that Severance illustrates a world in which individuals are so disciplined by capitalist workflows that even in an apocalypse, they adhere to habitual structures, whereas The Future explores the possibility of redirecting the apparatus of data-driven prediction toward more humane ends, a prospect the novel treats with ambivalence. Based on Foucault’s insights into the ways in which knowledge constructs life (in the form of categories, e.g. labor, life and language) and creates subjects, the paper demonstrates that both novels problematize the concept of a non-partisan or benevolent order system. This critical analysis claims that both of these writers, in their respective ways, doubt whether the Order of Things in our own time, the logistical, algorithmic rationality that governs the existence of humans, can be avoided or re-envisioned. The study bridges a literature gap in that it combines two recent studies (one focused on labor and globalization, the other on Big Tech and algorithmic governance) into a single theoretical framework, which further illuminates how contemporary fiction criticizes the structures that make life thinkable and manageable in the 21st century. The argument elaborated herein assumes that when these novels are read in conjunction with Foucault, it would ultimately imply that the real futures of change might involve a detachment of the very epistemic logic that now constrains life, labor and knowledge. The discussion shows that the two works highlight the close interconnection between knowledge and power in the way late capitalism treats human life, although they differ in tone: Severance is more fatalistic and ironic, while The Future is more contested and optimistic about changing the system internally. The Foucauldian reading foregrounds the question of whether the end of the world (literal or metaphorical) might be what is required to envision the end of the prevailing episteme that defines “life” under capitalist and technocratic regimes.