From Death Drive to Entrepreneurship of the Self: Film Noir's Genealogy of the Neoliberal Subject

Abstract

Abstract:Through the comparative analysis of Double Indemnity (1944), Body Heat (1981), and The Usual Suspects (1995), this paper argues that what Michel Foucault called the neoliberal entrepreneur of the self has its prototype in the subject constructed by the classical discourse of film noir. While in the genre's early form the individual's attempt at existential self-valorization remains death driven, incommensurable with the ideological values of classical liberalism, neonoir reframes its isolated protagonist's unique mode of being as a reservoir of human capital beyond the limits of shared social norms.