Two Modes of Corporate/Neoliberal Masculinity: The Founder and Silicon Valley

This essay offers a brief reading of Hancock’s The Founder (2016) and Judge’s Silicon Valley (2014–19) to contribute to the mapping differential modes of a unified, nihilistic force, the masculinity that abets neoliberalism. I suggest that a reactionary character links the two different modes of masculinity depicted in the respective texts, with The Founder’s story of Ray Kroc embodying neoliberal masculinity as teeth-gritted optimism while Silicon Valley finds its mostly-male team forced to surf the intense highs and lows that come with being buffeted by disruptive market forces. Reading for affective intensities without aim—strong feelings incapable of taking social form—offers a cipher for interpreting how neoliberalism relies on masculinity to impede the generation of ways of living antagonistic to capitalist instrumentalism.