This paper explores the role of language in the creation of modern neoliberal economic subjects. Starting from a Wittgensteinian conception of language, I argue that language is one of the chief ways through which we become and are socialised. Contrary to the full-formed economic agent found in standard economic theory, living persons need to learn what it means to act economically. A person is constantly subjected to multiple and often contradictory processes of socialisation. One important domain of these processes is popular culture. In order to explore some of the ways in which popular culture helps to create and sustain the idea of an economic subject, I examine two contemporary novels, David Foster Wallace’s Pale King and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. I aim to highlight how popular culture can both embrace and promote the ethos of a neoliberal subject but how it can equally be the basis for resistance and defiance.
