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ABSTRACT
This article discusses neoliberal impulses in time-travel romance, examining time-travel stories across different literary cultures. My argument presupposes the assumption that the neoliberal ideology has permeated every aspect of modern life to the extent that love, romance, and the emotional fulfillment granted by romantic relations no longer operate independently from the neoliberal logic that always positions modern subjects as homo economicus. Love and romantic pursuits become an entrepreneurial matter, requiring strategic competition and careful management of risks. Discussing stories about time-travel romance in novels and films through a Marxian lens, I argue that these time-travel stories do not just express a desire for a total escape from the world the characters and the readers inhabit. Rather, they enact fantasies in which a person can easily emerge triumphant in their romantic pursuits and consequently make more pronounced the neoliberal subjectivities of the characters. The emplotments and the trajectories of these stories then indicate ideological capitulation rather than critical resistance to the world the characters try to run away from.
Notes On Contributors
Bancha Rattanamathuwong is a lecturer in English at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. His interests include comic studies and popular fiction.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.