The relationship of the power and the individual in Juli Zeh's dystopian novel the method

The main purpose of this study is to analyze Juli Zeh's dystopian novel The Method [Corpus Delicti, 2009] by using Michel Foucault's approach to the relationship between power and individual. The dystopia genre, which serves as a warning to how totalitarian systems can develop behind the projects of perfect human and perfect society of the Enlightenment and undertakes the task of criticizing the developments in the period in which it was written, has been examined in a literary-historical line from More's Utopia (1516), which sets out with the hope of a better life, to the present day. Afterwards, it is aimed to analyze the dystopian elements in The Method, one of the prominent works of contemporary German literature, with Foucault's concept of biopolitics, discourse and discourse analysis, and surveillance and punishment approaches. According to Foucault, the politics implemented by the power model that changed as of the seventeenth century are now biopolitics and – unlike the sovereign power – it seeks to improve the body, not to punish it. It is because producing obedient and productive bodies reinforces the power of the system and ensures its continuity. In the health dictatorship described in The Method, citizens are kept under strict control and control at every moment of their lives, from their nutrition to their sexual lives, with the promise of a long and healthy life, and they are rewarded or punished by the system called METHODE, depending on whether they follow the rules or not. After discussing the health discourse on which METHODE established and spread its power, the thesis will focus on how Foucault's methods of surveillance and punishment manifest in the work, and finally interprets the place of all these in the biopolitics that METHODE applies. Although the thesis has mainly built its theoretical background on a Foucauldian approach, Giorgio Agamben's biopolitics approach will also be included in order to deal with the references to Antigone and homo sacer (sacred man) in the work within the framework of the concept of biopolitics. This study, which focuses on a fictional health dictatorship in this period when the concept of biopolitics, which has become more popular than ever with the Covid-19 pandemic, takes on different faces, aims to capture perspectives that can also connect with current debates. Keywords: Juli Zeh, Corpus Delicti, utopia, dystopia, Michel Foucault, biopolitics, power, discipline, surveillance, dictatorship, totalitarianism, Covid-19.