Awakening from Neoliberal Rationalities: The Ecological Conversion of Brit Marling's Protagonist in The East

©2022 by the board of trustees of the university of illinois in the east (2013), actor Brit Marling plays Jane Owen, a young and ambitious private intelligence operative who has infiltrated an underground environmentalist organization that threatens the interests of polluting corporations. As Sarah Moss—the drifter alter ego Jane plays to get access to the eco-activists’ hideout—the protagonist will embark on an eye-opening doppelganger experience that shakes her ideological principles. Her ecoutopian conversion can be read under the light of the rising discredit of a “neoliberal rationality” that economized existence and democracy (Brown 10)—a demystification of individualist, exploitative, and competitive “hunter” logics (Bauman, Liquid Times 100–03) that runs parallel to a paradigm shift “from an unquestioned anthropocentric perspective to an ecocentric one” (Willoquet-Maricondi 5). The following pages examine the three stages of Jane’s ontological transformation in the movie: first, her everyday life as a workaholic citizen comfortably settled in the neoliberal status quo; then her undercover time with eco-activists in the underground organization The East, when she learns about the art of cooperation and develops an environmental consciousness; and last, Jane’s eco-utopian turn after breaking with her former lifestyle and committing to a sustainable future. As will be argued, the film formally supports Jane’s post-neoliberal eco-utopian turn, holding that green transformative agendas require the integrating and nurturing methodological perspectives of ecology rather than utilitarian violence and counter-power dialectics.