Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Since neoliberal economy was initiated by Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the US during the 1970s, the discourses of personhood have been inevitably dissolved by the liquefaction of global capital. Resistance against neoliberalism has been expressed and put into action in the UK’s vote to leave the EU and the presidency of Donald Trump for the US in 2016. The white underclass in America is openly pro-Trump while the English folks wish to close the borders and withdraw from international crisis like Syrian refugees. In terms of millennial male identity, both the hetero-male elites and non-elites are determined to repudiate neoliberalism, which turns human existence, global finance, and genders into a liquid, malleable state of being. To safeguard/solidify the masculine subjectivity, the white trash in American South resort to radical self-expression in the spectacle of excess to compensate his ideological lack. In “Skyfall” (2012) James Bond criminalizes the neoliberal economy, where digital terrorism penetrates the UK government through the gaps between national/international laws, but Bond manages to defeat the millennial villain in the old English ways. In “Spectre” (2015), Brexit is prophesized by Bond’s withdrawal from the service, as people now consider the old ways the best ways.