This article is an attempt to make sense of the paradox structuring the narrative of extinction in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), which juxtaposes a romanticized image of survival and rebirth and the ugliness of senseless death. Departing from a biopolitical framework, the article argues that Cuarón’s story represents extinction as beyond redemption yet as subject to regulation. Given the fact that the narrative is structured around the citizen/refugee nexus, I read the film as a story about the eschatological value of refugees to both cultural conceptualizations of human extinction and a reproduction of statist political identities. The film is thus not only about unequal access to death but also about how the difference between the citizen and the refugee can still be maintained in the face of climatic extinction when the regulation of life is no longer sufficient.

中文翻译：

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阿方索·卡隆《人类之子》中的难民、灭绝和死亡规律

本文试图弄清阿方索·卡隆 (Alfonso Cuarón) 的灭绝叙事结构中的悖论。人类之子(2006)，将生存和重生的浪漫化形象与无谓死亡的丑陋并置。文章从生命政治框架出发，认为卡隆的故事将灭绝描述为无法救赎但仍受监管。鉴于叙事是围绕公民/难民关系构建的，我将这部电影解读为一个关于难民对人类灭绝的文化概念化和国家主义政治身份再现的末世论价值的故事。因此，这部电影不仅讲述了死亡的不平等，还讲述了当生活的规律不再充分时，面对气候灭绝，公民和难民之间的差异如何仍然得以维持。