personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.

com/howtoshare)
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Mesut Günenç and Enes Kavak (eds.)

New Readings in British Drama

From the Post-War Period to the Contemporary Era
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Bibliographic Information published by the

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the
Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-3-631-86022-9 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-86023-6 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-86586-6 (EPUB)
10.3726/b18947

© Peter Lang GmbH

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2021
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ Istanbul ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any

utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
www.peterlang.com
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Contents

Introduction ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 7

Mehmet Akif Balkaya

The Unbearable Absence of Existence: The Post-Structuralist Condition in
Tom Stoppard’s After Magritte ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 13

Gül Kurtuluş
Memory, Gender and Innovation in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine: The
Brechtian Legacy in the Postmodern Theatre ����������������������������������������������������� 31

Mesut Günenç
Deciphering Postdramatic Tragedy in Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love ����������������� 49

Enes Kavak and Gökçe Akarık

Nostalgia and Identity Crisis of Black British Characters in Roy Williams’s
The No Boys Cricket Club ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 63

Mustafa Bal
Apocalypse In-Yer-Face: Mark Ravenhill’s Faust Is Dead ���������������������������������� 77

Özlem Karadağ
Becoming Human/oid: A Posthumanist Critique of Thomas Eccleshare’s
Instructions for Correct Assembly ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 95

Hakan Gültekin
Post-Neoliberalism, Free Market and Disillusionment: Anders Lustgarten’s
If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep ������������������������������������������������� 115

Pelin Doğan
“An International Crossroads of Female Pain�” Intersectional
Feminism: Jackie Kay’s Chiaroscuro �������������������������������������������������������������������� 129

Notes on Contributors ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 149

personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Hakan Gültekin

Post-Neoliberalism, Free Market and

Disillusionment:
Anders Lustgarten’s If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We
Won’t Let You Sleep

Introduction
This chapter sets out to explore the significance of post-neoliberalism in
Anders Lustgarten’s If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep (2013)�
Acknowledging that any literary production cannot be examined without con-
sidering a bigger and more complex social structure, the study attempts to find
out about the dialectical relationship between Lustgarten’s play and the society
in which the characters live� Anders Lustgarten is regarded in Britain as the most
exciting political playwright of recent years� He won both The inaugural Harold
Pinter Playwright’s Award and The Catherine Johnson Award with the play this
chapter examines� Lustgarten depicts society from the standpoint of corrup-
tion, decadence and hopelessness� His play Lampedusa, staged in 2015, mainly
revolves around the migrant crisis� A Day at the Racists tells the story of betrayal
to the working class in Britain�
Post-neoliberalism is a relational perspective on governance that emerged
after the 2008 global financial crisis� Post-neoliberalism is also a concept given
to a period on which a global climate crisis affected the whole world and vital
resources were crudely consumed� Most importantly, the post-neoliberal era has
been built on serious political disappointments fuelled by neoliberal policies� In
the play set in a dystopian UK, the business representatives decide that the finan-
cially burdensome culture of addiction must be eliminated� For this purpose,
the state invents “Unity Bonds,” a tool that will generate returns if the number
of people committing crimes to the investor or taking drug treatment drops to a
certain level� Thus, the state wants to shift the cost of social repair to the private
sector� The play takes place in a dystopian universe in which free market princi-
ples dominate every area of society, and the basic rights of citizens such as health,
education and housing are commodified, the basic principle of neoliberalism,
dominates every area of society, and the basic rights of citizens such as health,
education and housing are commodified� Using close reading method, this study
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

116 Hakan Gültekin

deals with the analysis of the interactive arrangements between the play and its
socio-political context�
The impetus behind this study is to investigate the ways in which Anders
Lustgarten critiques the post-neoliberal era which destroys the foundational
values of the western society and the social consensus lying in its base by deep-
ening the economic and social injustices�

From Neo to Post: Long Journey of Liberalism

This part of the chapter will outline the basic orientation of neoliberal policies,
the development of the financial-centred accumulation process, and the crisis
and post-crisis practices of this accumulation model� In the following part of
the study, the policies that became apparent after the 2008 financial crisis, also
known as the crisis of neoliberalism, and evaluated under the concept of post-
neoliberalism, will be discussed� After the Second World War, the world had
changed radically and pretensions of the Axis powers to organize continental
Europe and East Asia had collapsed�1 In this respect, the economic elites of
the advanced capitalist world had to create a new alternative system in order
to survive in postwar era�2 Keynesian economics, advocating a mixed economy
in which the private sector was predominant but the state and public sectors
played a major role, became the basic economic theory of the post-war estab-
lished order� The economic recession that started in the late 1960s prepared the
conditions for the transition to a new paradigm in economic policies� A new ap-
proach has dominated economic policy practices, symbolizing a break from the
Keynesian practices of the post-war period� Neoliberal policies, which allow the
unimpeded flow of capital and claim that the free market can be a solution to all
kinds of economic problems, has started to become widespread�
In The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism, the neoliberal approach is described
as advocating unrestrained economic liberalization, complete privatization,
and total marketization and it opposes any kind of interference or regulation
by the state�3 As David Harvey points out, since the beginning of the 1970s, it
is observed that there was a sympathetic point of view to neoliberalism in the

1 Charles S Maier, “The politics of productivity: foundations of American international

economic policy after World War II�” International organization 31, no� 4 (1977): 608�
2 Hakan Gültekin, The Critique of Neoliberalism in David Hare’s Plays� Çizgi Publishing,
(2021), 15
3 Damien Cahill, et al�, eds�, The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism (London: Sage,
2018), 23�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Post-Neoliberalism, Free Market and Disillusionment 117

political-economic practices and theories of the advanced capitalist countries�4

Privatizations and deregulations made by the neoliberal state spread rapidly
among the advanced capitalist countries and became the norm� Advanced capi-
talist countries quickly pioneered the establishment of a neoliberal world�
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and United States President Ronald
Reagan played important roles in neoliberalism being the only viable economic
and political hegemonic ideology of the capitalist camp in the 1980s�
In the United States, Ronal Reagan implemented a thoroughly neoliberal eco-
nomics program called Reaganomics� On the other side of the Atlantic, the British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also implemented an individualist economic
program, positioned against the welfare state and collective mind� On the other
hand, neoliberal economic principles began to be seen not only in the capitalist
camp, but also in the other side of the cold war, the socialist bloc� As Chaohua
Wang reports, The People’s Republic of China, which met neoliberal principles
in the 1970s, became the world’s most dynamic economy in the 90s, surpassing
Japan as the country to export the most goods to the USA�5 The 90s, the golden
age of Neoliberal policies in the Western camp, have been called “the roaring
nineties�” According to Anthony Giddens, adviser to British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, who was in power from 1997 to 2007, the Labour Party needed to
develop a new understanding, and this necessity led to party policies called “the
Third way�” The third way meant that the Labour Party abandoned traditional left
values and compromised with neoliberalization� As Gultekin addresses, post-
cold war social democracy did not have to make a choice between Keynesianism
or Thatcherism, alternatively the Labour Party was able to build a third path by
combining two dominant democratic approaches�6 Tony Blair in the UK and Bill
Clinton in the United States were key representatives of the second wave of neo-
liberalism, hoping to create a socially conscious market globalism� Unlike their
predecessors, Blair and Clinton tried to synthesize the harsh rules of market
globalism into a set of ethical concepts�
Neoliberalism, which emerged with the crisis of the Keynesian economic
model in the 1970s, began to be associated with other crises in the 2000s� The
new millennium began with the Republican Bush government’s invasions
of Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, and these interventions led to serious

4 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2007)�
5 Chaohua Wang, ed�, One China, Many Paths� (London: Verso, 2003)�
6 Gültekin, The Critique of Neoliberalism in David Hare’s Plays�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

118 Hakan Gültekin

criticism of neoliberalism’s argument that free markets would bring peace and
tranquillity� On the other hand, the biggest and most important crisis of the new
millennium is the 2008 global financial crisis� In the end of the first decade of the
2000s, a market crisis originating in the USA emerged and after the crisis that
sharpened in 2008, the stability of finance-centred accumulation was tried to be
restored with state interventions� After the 2008 crisis, the state’s interventions in
the market, which is claimed to be managed by an “invisible hand” in the neolib-
eral order, herald the end of neoliberalism and the beginning of a new era� This
marks the beginning of the post-neoliberal era in economic and political circles�
Post-neoliberalism presents a relational perspective on governmentality in the
context of a post-global present of climate change, resource exhaustion, and dis-
illusionment with neoliberal reforms�7 After the 2008 Global Economic crisis, it
became clear that neoliberalism fell short of preventing the contradictions posed
by its own practices�
With the limits of crisis management in neoliberalism, different proposals
and strategies have come to the fore� Different rules and strategies developed to
overcome the crisis of neoliberal financial market capitalism have been discussed
under the concept of post-neoliberalism� From this point of view, post-neolib-
eralism is both a set of rules, an ideological attitude, and the name given to an
era� Post-neoliberalism always develops in an incomplete “hybrid” manner�8
According to Yates and Bakker, post-neoliberalism is not a policy of abandoning
neoliberalism altogether� It is a tendency to move away from certain aspects
of neoliberal policy prescriptions� In particular, it aims to restructure the state
power against free market regulation and to prevent the social concerns created
by the market economy� It aims to revitalize citizenship through people’s active
participation to the governmental procedures�9
One of the most distinctive features of the post-neoliberal period is the criti-
cism of the destruction brought by neoliberalism, which has been the dominant
ideological formula of the world economy for nearly 40 years� In order to better
understand post-neoliberalism, a clear definition of neoliberalism must first be
made� As Steger and Roy defines, Neoliberalism is a doctrine that advocates the
utopian project of a society organized around self-regulating markets and free

7 Patti Lather, “Updata: Post-Neoliberalism,” Qualitative Inquiry 26, no� 7 (2020): 768�
8 Pierre Gautreau and Perrier Bruslé Laetitia, “Forest Management in Bolivia under Evo
Morales: The Challenges of Post-neoliberalism,” Political Geography 68 (2019): 121�
9 Julian S Yates and Karen Bakker� “Debating the ‘Post-neoliberal Turn’ in Latin America,”
Progress in Human Geography 38, no� 1 (2014): 62–90�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Post-Neoliberalism, Free Market and Disillusionment 119

from political interference�10 David Harvey states that neoliberalism consists

of a variety of contemporary political practices that improve the conditions for
capital accumulation, even if they contradict the philosophical doctrine that the
omnipotence of the market is at the heart of these neoliberal practices� Also,
neoliberalism is the manifestation of a particular social interest in restoring the
power of an economic elite�11
Nicola Sekler claims that in the post-neoliberal period, projects, trends and
scenarios were reproduced in different fields and efforts were made to reproduce
the bourgeois capitalist hegemony�12 As a result, tendencies within and outside of
neoliberalism develop simultaneously and parallel to each other� In this sense, the
post-neoliberal state, while advocating for the reformation of state interventions,
still tries to ensure the continuity of free market practices� Or, although the
state opens the results of neoliberal policies to discussion, it also makes intel-
lectual attempts to legitimize neoliberalism� While seeking social reformation
grounds after neoliberal destruction through post-neoliberal alternatives, it also
displays authoritarian and militaristic tendencies� This study examines Anders
Lustgarten’s play by taking this definition of post-neoliberalism as a guide� The
present study considers post-neoliberalism both as a period and as a set of eco-
nomic and ideological rules� From this point of view, the study also discusses the
post-neoliberal state practices in Lustgarten’s play, as well as the scenes depicting
the dissolution of social integrity peculiar to the post-neoliberal era�

Commodification of Daily Life: Lustgarten’s Unity Bonds

Once post-neoliberalism is considered as a period, the destruction of neoliber-
alism, which has ideologically dominated the world economy for nearly 40 years,
is able to be clearly observed� The post-neoliberal era can be described as a real
hell into which people who think they have found peace in the false paradise
of the neoliberal era fall into� Consistent with this depiction, Lustgarten’s play
features a character list that includes individuals from many different classes
and various occupational groups� Most of the working-class names might be
seen in the play’s character list; and characters from different professions such
as workers, administrators, civil servants, nurses and politicians stand out� The

10 Manfred Steger and Ravi K� Roy� Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction

(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2010�
11 David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2005�
12 Nicola Sekler, “Postneoliberalism from and as a Counter-Hegemonic Perspective,”
Development Dialogue (2009): 59–71�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

120 Hakan Gültekin

diversity of characters on a sectoral basis created by Lustgarten and the large

number of characters in the play provide an opportunity to more clearly observe
the neoliberal destruction� Because by its very nature, neoliberalism aims to
commodify everything and put every economic sector at the disposal of the free
market� In this respect, the critical notions found in the play from different eco-
nomic sectors strengthen the claim that Lustgarten’s play is a representation of
the post-neoliberal era�
The main critical issue that Lustgarten emphasizes in the play is the systematic
collapse of the social security system of the United Kingdom� Lustgarten creates
a fictional administrative system called “Unity Bonds” to symbolize this collapse:
Taylor But what if there was a way to turn those burdens into opportunities? (Holds up
papers) Unity Bonds� Unity Bonds transfer the costs of social repair from the taxpayer to
the private sector at a healthy return� Problem families can now be monetised, at a profit
to investors and no cost to the public�
McLean It’s an incentive structure� The fewer people receive treatment for the problems,
and/or the greater the reduction in offences, the higher the returns�
Taylor It really is a game-changing solution�
They all subtly look at Asset-Smith� He leafs through the papers� Beat�13

In this scene, bureaucrats and politicians working in the Department of Home

and Business Affairs are seen in a meeting� They talk about practices that can be
applied to find solutions to social problems such as addiction culture, poverty
and child labour, which have increased in society in recent years� The solution
that the department found to these serious social problems is called as “Unity
Bonds�” The unity bond mechanism is a system in which social problems are
handled with fiscal concepts such as risk, benefit-harm and profit� That is, the
state has a system in which social problems can be resolved only on the condi-
tion that it brings economic profit� Taylor is glad that the sociological situation
problem families have may be resolved at no cost to the government and in a way
that can generate profits for investors� However, the solution of social problems
that will not bring economic return is never discussed at the meeting�
At the same meeting, participants equate union bonds, which concern the
living standards of thousands of economically and socially disadvantaged fam-
ilies, with Indian infrastructure stocks or Chinese mining stocks, which are
standard investment tools� Seeing the lives of millions of people as construction

13 Anders Lustgarten� If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep (London: A&C
Black, 2013), 2�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Post-Neoliberalism, Free Market and Disillusionment 121

and mining industry practices is first and foremost a humanitarian problem�

However, this is normal for the participants:
Thacker I’ve got no problem with monetising social behaviour� It’s the principle the
private prison system is based on� My concern is if we were saddled with the impossible
cases, the hard nuts� What does that do to our profit margins?14

Thacker clearly states in this scene that he sees no barriers to the marketing of
social behaviour� Thacker utters this expression, which can be found to be blood-
chilling under normal conditions, with extraordinary ease on stage� Thacker
merely delivers his view, because in the fictional post-neoliberal universe cre-
ated by Lustgarten, everything is reduced to economic profit and a free market
economy� In Keynesian economies, the social security practices that the state will
provide equally to every citizen without expecting any gain have undergone a
neoliberal transformation and are no longer seen as a social right�
In the same scene, the audience learns from Thacker that prisons have
also been privatized� Privatization is the most basic tool of neoliberalism,
which advocates the idea of putting everything under the control of the free
market� However, the idea of privatizing the country’s judicial system through
mechanisms called Unity bonds did not even occur to Margaret Thatcher, one of
the most famous practitioners of neoliberalism� Maclean explains how the Unity
Bonds system works in the judicial mechanism with the following words: If the
number of people who commit crimes or receive treatment for drug addiction
goes down to a certain level, investors get a return�15 As Maclean clearly states,
if there is any reduction in crime, investors profit� However, if the crime rate
does not fall, investors cannot profit either� The aim of lowering the social crime
rate, which is normally considered a social issue and should be done without
expecting any benefit, has turned into an investment tool in Lustgarten’s post-
neoliberal universe�
In another scene, a teenager named Ryan and a man with “Competitive
Confinement Ltd” written on his jacket are seen in a prison cell� The man has
some documents and the man questions Ryan based on them� It soon becomes
clear that Ryan had participated in a peaceful demonstration and was holding
placards with political slogans:
Man If you plead guilty, bearing in mind the relatively minor nature of the crime, I’d see
you getting a very short custodial sentence� Three months maybe�

14 Ibid�, 5
15 Ibid�, 6�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

122 Hakan Gültekin

Ryan Fuck off! Three months –

Man In return for which we’d write you the most glowing reference you can imagine� After
all, we have what our website calls a “commonality of interests�” If you come back here
after you get out, we don’t get paid�
Beat as the boy gathers himself�
Ryan One more time, mate, yeah: they weren’t mine�
Man Or you can put that claim to a judge� It’s quite a hostile environment out there at the
minute� They were in your hands when you were arrested, Ryan� (Beat�) You don’t
have to decide now� I’ll see you again in the morning�
He gets up and starts to leave� He stops and puts his hand on the boy's shoulder�
One more thing� If you do take up our offer and I see you back in here, I will come to
your cell one night when you are sleeping, and I will pour battery acid over your face�
OK? (Beat�) There'll be someone along to take you upstairs in a few minutes�
He leaves� The boy stares into space� Blackout�16

In a normal legal system, the interrogation of a criminal suspect is conducted only

by government officials with legal academic licence� The role of the state is undis-
puted here because it is a rule that the police, judges and prosecutors, who are state
officials, must be impartial�
However, in Lustgarten’s fictional post-neoliberal state, the principle of impar-
tiality in law has clearly disappeared and legal inquiries are now made by compa-
nies, the sole representatives of capital� Possible inquiries by companies whose sole
reason for existence is to gain economic interests will be exactly like this scene� On
stage, there is a man who clearly has no legal training and who speaks to Ryan like
a mobster� He is bargaining with Ryan about the crime he has committed, and this
negotiation is not on a fair ground� The presumption of innocence, which is one of
the most basic elements of universal law, has disappeared and Ryan is present in this
scene not as an equal citizen with rights, but as a bargaining commodity�
This scene also exhibits another post-neoliberal trend� While in the average
democracy it was not even a crime for Ryan to peacefully demonstrate and
hold political banners, in the fictional post-neoliberal state of Lustgarten it has
become a crime requiring 3 months in prison� Lustgarten’s fictional govern-
ment is seriously authoritarian, and as Mitchell and Fazi clearly states, it is the
reflection of the authoritarianism and centralization trend, which are important
features of the post-neoliberal era� Neoliberalism, which has been advocating for
years to shrink the state in all areas and to carry out state affairs at the maximum

16 Ibid�, 30�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Post-Neoliberalism, Free Market and Disillusionment 123

level by private companies, created the 2008 crisis�17 As in every crisis period,
this crisis period also brought nationalist politicians with authoritarian tenden-
cies to the fore�
Donald Trump’s election as president in the USA and UKIP’s becoming
the third party in the UK’s general elections may be counted as examples of
authoritarianism's sudden rise in politics�
Another area that gets its share of Lustgarten’s critical approach in the play
is the national health system of the United Kingdom� Scene 4 opens with Joan’s
dialogue with a nurse at a hospital� Joan desperately asks the nurse for help, but
the nurse brings her some documents to fill out and sign� Although her health
condition is urgent, no one takes care of her� Then a hospital manager arrives
with documents and tells Joan “I’m afraid we can’t make provision for you at
this hospital, Joan�”18 Joan insists her condition is urgent and even mentions the
name of her illness�
Administrator We can’t make provision for you�
Joan Why not?
Beat�
Administrator Unity rejected your application�
Joan I didn’t make an application� I didn't make an “application�”
Administrator I’m very sorry, Joan� Please accept my sincere –
Joan Why’d they turn me down?
Administrator I couldn’t say, it’s a matter of commercial – 19

Neoliberalism regards education, health and social security areas, which are seen
as a citizenship right in the Keynesian understanding of capitalism, as a burden
to the state and aims to bring these areas under the control of the free market
economy through privatizations� To this end, neoliberal governments have over
the years privatized all the mechanisms of the health sector, turning human
health from being a universal social right into a property that can be bought and
sold� Such capital-centred practices originating from neoliberalism have created
serious social inequalities in access to health services� The period when these
inequalities are most visible is the post-neoliberal period that emerged after the
2008 global economic crisis�

17 Mitchell William, and Thomas Fazi� Reclaiming the State (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press Economics Books, 2017)�
18 Lustgarten, If You Don’t Let Us Dream, 35�
19 Ibid�,36�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

124 Hakan Gültekin

Lustgarten draws attention to the neoliberal-related problems of the post-

neoliberal period through the incident of the character named Joan� At the end
of the scene, Joan doesn’t get the health care she wants�
Another man, who is behind her in line and has no problem with his Unity
Bonds information, gets ahead of her and gets medical care� In this way,
Lustgarten emphasizes the inequality of health services and the hypocrisy of the
health sector�

Conclusive Remarks: Post-Neoliberalism as a Neoliberal

Dystopia
In the Guardian, Michael Billington laments the lack of political drama in recent
years, describing Lustgarten’s If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep
as “a polemical bombshell,” noting that he has welcomed the play’s arrival�20
To Chris Megson, Lustgarten’s drama places social and political issues centre
stage, ranging from the housing crisis and the electoral ascendancy of far-right
parties to the alienation of the urban working class and the racist scapegoating
of immigrants�21 Anders Lustgarten is described as a political dramatist, who
believes that the society in which he lives must undergo radical change, a revolu-
tionary transformation� From this point of view, Lustgarten mirrors contempo-
rary British society, but this mirror is a broken mirror prepared with a Brechtian
hammer, aiming to change reality�
Populism, political extremism and racism emerged as the three main outcomes
of the post-neoliberal era� With the 2008 global financial crisis, populism and
extremism began to gain strength in the United Kingdom, and especially in
England, the central country of the kingdom, as in many other countries of the
world� For example, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which
was founded in 1993 and was not even mentioned in the mainstream media for
many years, showed a serious rise after the 2008 crisis� UKIP, which advocated
Britain’s separation from the European Union, thought that immigrants were
destroying the country, and developed rhetoric that sometimes escaped racism,
increased its vote rate to 12% in the 2015 general elections, while circulating
around 2% of the votes for years� While this rise alone may be an indication of

20 Michael Billington, “If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep” – Review�
The Guardian (2013)�
21 Chris Megson, “Can I Tell You About It?”: England, Austerity and “Radical Optimism”
in the Theatre of Anders Lustgarten,” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 6,
no� 1 (2018): 41–42�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Post-Neoliberalism, Free Market and Disillusionment 125

the rise of populism in British mainstream politics, the fact that UKIP is one of
the components of the winning side of the Brexit referendum strengthens this
thesis�
While these were happening in Britain in the post-neoliberal period, inter-
esting developments were also taking place on the opposite shore of the Atlantic�
Businessman Donald Trump, generally known as a contractor, TV star and a
tabloid figure in American history, was elected president of the United States in
2016, the same year as the Brexit referendum�
As if he had no share in the crisis due to his great wealth and the capitalist class
he represents, Trump has built his entire election campaign on the consequences
of the crisis� With all the post-neoliberal era brought, Trump appeared before
the voters, made an accounting of neoliberalism and made countless promises
to the American people� Trump came to power with populist rhetoric that
scratched the public’s sensitive points, such as building a wall on the Mexican
border, deporting fugitives, or recalling American firms abroad� In the play,
Jason’s harassment of a Black employee in a bar because of his skin colour can
be interpreted as Lustgarten’s drawing attention to the increasing racism in the
post-neoliberal era�
The Conservative Cameron government, which could not respond to the
needs of the British people, especially the lower and middle classes, who were
deeply affected by the 2008 financial crisis, failed in this sense� Indicators such
as economic recession, foreign trade deficit, impoverishment of the middle class,
unemployment and injustice in income distribution are among the economic
realities of the Cameron period� Cameron’s economic administration has cre-
ated a serious disappointment in the British public� This growing disillusion-
ment underlies the successful Brexit campaign� Under the Brexit campaign led
by UKIP, this crisis, which has serious economic reasons and has almost become
a social trauma, has distorted and created unrealistic economic discourses� For
example, he claimed that the United Kingdom was taken over by foreign powers
and conducted political campaigns with the theme of “take back our country�”
Making a social trauma political material instead of saying something new is an
example of populism�
Post-neoliberalism is a set of ideals that somehow transforms neoliber-
alism, but is simultaneously characterized by economic policies embodied by
the Washington Consensus� While there is scholarly debate about the defining
features of post-neoliberalism, it is often associated with economic policies of
nationalization and wealth redistribution, opposition to deregulation, financiali-
zation, free trade and the weakening of labour relations, and more generally with
eco-finance� After the 2008 global financial crisis, there have been indications that
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

126 Hakan Gültekin

there will be a major paradigm shift in the ideas and policies that guide national
economies and global capitalism� While both left and right movements chal-
lenge the dominance of unelected technocrats and global markets, the populist
policies of the following years appear as another outcome of post-neoliberalism�
Anders Lustgarten uses in his play not only the landscapes of economic
depression that have had an impact in the post-neoliberal era but also situations
that document post-neoliberal governance principles such as the rise of author-
itarianism and financial centralization�
The death of social security and retirement comes at the beginning of the
most obvious economic depressions of the post-neoliberal era and has taken its
place in Lustgarten’s narrative� The failure of the national health system in con-
nection with the destruction of the social insurance system is another topic of
Lustgarten’s narrative of post-neoliberal devastation� In addition to these two
major issues that hurt people in the real world, Lustgarten creates a fictional
official judicial system and creates a fictional universe where people are judged
based on their performance in the economic system called unity bonds� In If
You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep, in which Lustgarten combines
real world data and fictional systems, he leaves a warning for the future in this
way: Neoliberalism is not dead; it is still living in its own hell�

Bibliography
Billington, Michael� “If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep –
Review�” The Guardian, 2013� https://www�theguardian�com/stage/2013/feb/
21/if-you-dont-let-us-dream-review�
Cahill, Damien, et al�, eds� The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism� London:
Sage, 2018�
Gautreau, Pierre, and Laetitia Perrier Bruslé� “Forest Management in Bolivia
under Evo Morales: The Challenges of Post-neoliberalism�” Political
Geography, 68 (2019): 110–121�
Giddens, Anthony� The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy�
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 1999�
Gültekin, Hakan� The Critique of Neoliberalism in David Hare’s Plays� Çizgi
Publishing, 2018�
Harvey, David� The New Imperialism� Oxford: Oxford University Press , 2005�
Harvey, David� A Brief History of Neoliberalism� Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007�
Lather, Patti� “Updata: Post-Neoliberalism�” Qualitative Inquiry 26, no� 7 (2020):
768–770�
personal reading copy | copyright restrictions (www.peterlang.com/howtoshare)

Post-Neoliberalism, Free Market and Disillusionment 127

Lustgarten, Anders� If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep�
London: A&C Black, 2013�
Lustgarten, Anders� Lampedusa� London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015�
Lustgarten, Anders� A Day at the Racists� London: A&C Black, 2010�
Maier, Charles S� “The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American
International Economic Policy after World War II�” International Organization
31, no� 4 (1977): 607–633�
Mitchell, William, and Thomas Fazi� “Reclaiming the state�” Chicago: University
of Chicago Press Economics Books, 2017�
Megson, Chris� “Can I Tell You About It?”: England, Austerity and “Radical
Optimism” in the Theatre of Anders Lustgarten� Journal of Contemporary
Drama in English, 6, no� 1 (2018): 40–54�
Sekler, Nicola� “Postneoliberalism from and as a Counter-hegemonic Perspective�”
Development Dialogue 51 (2009): 59–71�
Steger, Manfred B�, and Ravi K� Roy� Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction�
Vol� 222� Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010�
Wang, Chaohua, ed� One China, Many Paths� London: Verso, 2003�
Yates, Julian S�, and Karen Bakker� “Debating the ‘Post-neoliberal turn’ in Latin
America�” Progress in Human Geography 38, no: 1 (2014): 62–90�