AN ANALYSIS OF THE FOUCAULDIAN ELEMENTS OF POWER-KNOWLEDGE IN STANISLAW LEM’S SOLARIS AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE’S RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA

The aim of this thesis is to explore the elements of power-knowledge in two SF novels written amid the Space Race during the Cold War era. While the dominant interest of both Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris and Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama generally revolves around the implications of human interactions with an alien presence, my focus is primarily on the power structures that propel those interactions: questioning the intentions of scientific pursuits and analyzing the effects of Foucauldian power relations on the human individual. I do this by applying Foucault’s theories of the duality of the subject and his work on biopolitics. What is gleaned is not only a study of the interests of power, but an emphasis on the intersectional restrictions of power and cognition.