Postgraduate Dissertation


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

Abstract

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.


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Authors

Ball, Maria

Contributors

Rights Holders: Ball, Maria
Supervisors: Buckland, Warren

Oxford Brookes departments

School of Arts

Degree programme

MA Film Studies: Popular Cinema

Year

2022


© Ball, Maria
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