Debt and Control: Indebted Subject in Contemporary American Drama

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty, University of Qom, Qom, Iran

2 Department of English language and literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

10.22059/jor.2024.371319.2494

Abstract

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 had a profound impact on American drama, significantly influencing the visions, themes, and concerns of playwrights. This led to a more varied and socially aware theatrical landscape. Many dramatists redirected their focus towards the economic struggles and social instability resulting from the recession, producing works that reflected the anxieties and deprivations that economically insecure people experienced; works that captured the human cost of neoliberal economy. This paper explores this post-crisis trend in contemporary American drama during the second decade of the twenty-first century. Drawing on the perspectives of Gilles Deleuze and Maurizio Lazzarato regarding neoliberalism and the neoliberal subject, it examines their argument that the creation of indebted individuals is a primary means by which the neoliberal system perpetuates and strengthens itself. The paper, then, explores the portrayal of the indebted individuals in several American plays produced in the wake of the financial collapse. These plays, it is proposed, illustrate how neoliberalism constructs its subject through debt: a calculating subject primarily motivated by self-interest with little, if any, regard for moral considerations. The plays point to the interaction between neoliberal debt and self-serving conduct to investigate how neoliberalism impedes solidarity through the mechanism of debt.

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References

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 31, Issue 1
April 2026
Pages 129-148

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