This current paper offers an analytical exploration of the posthuman ideological discourse in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, with a focus on the power struggle between flesh and blood human beings versus bioengineered and human-like creatures called replicants. Drawing from critical theory, poststructuralism, and environmentalism, the study examines how the film constructs a hierarchy that reinforces systems of power and control and at the same time allowing space for resistance and rebellion. The narrative of Blade Runner 2049 presents replicants as both subjugated to exploitation and as threatening subjects, whose growing collective consciousness challenges the anthropocentric and capitalist ideologies that define their existence. Through the depiction of rebellion, struggle, and the desire for autonomy, Denis Villeneuve’s film interrogates the foundations of human supremacy and attempts to reconfigure the parameters of subjectivity in a posthuman futuristic setting. The paper also argues that Villeneuve’s media franchise can serve as an allegorical mirror that critically reflects the mechanisms of ideological domination and the potential for posthuman agency within oppressive power structures.
Tariq Ejjabbar (Tue,) studied this question.