ABSTRACT
The Monkey Wrench Gang explores how transgression can be used to (re)construct central social ideologies and Beloved defines transgression as the exploration of new forms of social organization, Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho demonstrates that transgression is not always about change. American Psycho’s graphic descriptions of violence caused the novel to achieve a well-documented notorious status even before it was published, and its fragmentary style only adds to the confusion. American Psycho exaggerates the contrast between corporate ideology and corporeal social effects into a narrative universe where neoliberal ideas are established through direct, and often extremely violent, interaction with physical bodies. American Psycho’s setting in a fictionalized version of Wall Street, the heart of the American financial sector, emphasizes its conceptualization of neoliberalism as a central social ideological framework. American Psycho demonstrates that Bateman Patrick’s fetishistic relationship with objects and objectified people gradually destabilize his ideological persona.
