Shepard’s Political Economy: Curse of the Starving Class in Neoliberal Capitalism

Through a close reading of Sam Shepard’ Curse of the Starving Class (1977), this article examines how the playwright’ work responded to the neoliberal economy as it began to deform and reorganize the lives of working Americans in the 1960s and 1970s by figuring neoliberalism as a nihilistic form of capitalism that cannot be adequately depicted via dramatic realism. Drawing inspiration from the work of Samuel Beckett, Curse engages neoliberalism through three formal devices: ceremonial monologues, objects that appear to magically proliferate, and elements of sacrifice – a lamb, fattened for slaughter. These three motifs are shown to subvert the causal logic of normative dramatic narrative to depict instead the new mode of neoliberal capitalism in which competition destroys familial bonds, creating only isolated individuals. It is precisely by integrating such Beckettian techniques within a realist envelope that Shepard made his family plays into a formidable demonstration of what it means to live within late industrial capitalism.