“They know things are bad, but more than that, they know they can’t do anything about it” – cultural critic Mark Fisher observed in 2009 with regard to the apparent political apathy of university students in the current phase of neoliberalism. This example, along with several others, lead him to diagnose a general state of “reflexive impotence” when it comes to imagining viable alternatives to the dominant economic-political system of neoliberalism. Fisher’s, along with other critics’ assessment of the comprehensive reach of neoliberalism, attests to the difficulty of asserting political agency in an economic-ideological system so adept at incorporating difference and opposition that it has basically become immune to political critique. What does that mean for the praxis of political theater, which has classically presented itself as an oppositional representational politics?
This contribution attempts to address the urgent question of the feasibility of political theater in the neoliberal age. I will begin by tracing the trajectory of 20th and 21st century-critiques of capitalism in US American office dramas from Arthur Miller’sDeath of a Salesman (1949) to David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (1983) to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Gloria (2015) to demonstrate playwrights’ astute awareness of the increasing cooptation of the political by the economic. In a second step, I will discuss Jacobs-Jenkins’s play in light of Mitchum Huehl’s suggestion for rethinking the political as an ontological refiguration (rather than counter-representation) to assess in what ways contemporary drama might be able to re-envision political theater in the age of neoliberalism.
Ilka Lensen-Saal is Professor of American Literature at the University of Erfurt. Her work in the field of American Studies focuses on literary, performance, and visual cultural studies. She is the author of New Deal Theater: The Vernacular Tradition in American Political Theater and Collusions of Fact and Fiction: Performing Slavery at the Turn of the Millennium - Kara Walker and Suzan-Lori Parks. In addition, she has published widely on the literature of September 11 as well as on various aspects of 20th and 21st century American drama and theater, particularly on the political theater of the 1930s. Her current research focuses on recent engagements with transatlantic slavery in contemporary African American performing and visual arts.