Abstract:

This study evaluates the dystopic universe patterned on biopolitical framework of Claire Denis’ movie High Life (2018). It analyses the movie by Foucault’s concepts such as power, biopolitics, discipline, surveillance and punishment. The article investigates what kind of subjectivity is produced in the ship by various discipline and punishment techniques such as imprisonment, surveillance, sexual control, and spatial arrangement on the ship, applied to a group of criminals sent to space and whose survival depends on life support units. By evaluating how discourses about science, law and politics marginalize the prisoners’ bodies within the framework of an experiment in space, the consequences of these discourses that interrupt Western modernism are discussed. In this context, it is argued that the film can be seen as an example of a critical dystopia. In addition, it is questioned whether the film, which expresses the spread of power through power relations based on a hierarchical basis, mentions any resistance against domination practices and whether it contains a utopian hope.