| This thesis seeks to show that contemporary speculative fiction films both present and act as agents for an understanding of the human as increasingly economically rational. This conception of the human focuses on humanist values that project a vision of human exceptionalism into the future. Expanding on Michel Foucault's definition of neoliberalism, this thesis follows its connection to biotechnology and the transhuman subject created through biotechnological intervention, arguing that the films Limitless (2011), Avatar (2009), and District 9 (2009) depict a vision of the human as something that can be calculated and therefore optimized, moving toward the transhuman goal of perfectibility. |
