The New Capitalistic Human Race in Caryl Churchill"s Serious Money

Caryl Churchill portrays the socioeconomic background of neoliberal capitalism in Serious Money, satirizing its predatory winner monopoly system. All the characters are Foucauldian ability machines. This capitalistic human race transforms material markets into financial markets and regards the immaterial values as market value, adapting themselves to the neoliberal game rules for the survival of the fittest. The playwright dramatizes how capitalism reduces human relationship to what Marx calls the cash nexus with the death of inside trader Jake. Inside trading for the Corman’s team is a kind of invisible hand. While Adam Smith’s invisible hand is a term to emphasize the self-regulating nature of a free market and becomes an aesthetic term to symbolize free market economy, the term in Serious Money is the secret of neoliberalism. Jake disappears in the middle of the operation for its governmentality in accordance with the capitalist axiomatic. The playwright doesn’t forget to criticize asymmetrical economic interests between the first and third worlds. This paper invokes the ideas on how the social and the common are ignored under the neoliberal system. Recent repetitive financial crises reflect the social consequence of the total crisis which is far beyond economy and economics. In order to overcome the crisis and develop new social mechanism, this paper concludes with the idea to revive the common for the sustainability of humanity.