Harry Potter and the Invisible Hand: The Notion of Inevitable Inequality, and 'Niceness' as Moral Action in J.K. Rowling's Neoliberal Fantasy

Abstract

My thesis explores contemporary children's fantasy literature, and the changing popular perceptions of fundamental moral concepts disseminated for young readerships in such texts. I have chosen as my primary text of survey J.K. Rowling s Harry Potter books; as globally popular texts, they have been celebrated across the globe for their visions of freedom, justice, and ethics, while subtly transmitting certain deeply troubling, conservative, and complacent moral visions. To better understand the implications of such moral messages for young readers, I have employed a twofold methodological approach; by reading at the narrative level the warm, affectively appealing visions of morals and their framing of certain events at the level of the reader, while simultaneously exploring the texts as informed by the specific socio-political context of our contemporary neoliberal ethos. My approach, from a theoretical perspective, is informed by Marxist critique of hegemonic structures and ideological formulations of individual moral values, as well as Foucault s work in identifying biopolitics, or the system reconfiguration of individuals as subjects. I build upon the work of a number of children s literature scholars who have identified the problematic aspects of Harry Potter s moral universe, and in drawing upon the specific political context of my analysis, I locate my work within the network of existing scholarship on the books, and on children s literature in general, within a particular understanding of the contemporary ideological underpinnings of the texts dissemination of certain values. In drawing upon contemporary political and economic discourse, my thesis assesses the immense importance of a popular children s fantasy series to the acculturisation of young readers in the prevalent ideological notions the texts propagate. In this, Harry Potter plays a crucial role in neoliberal governementality; it is a system of governance which, to ensure economic and political efficiency, requires a social and affective reconfiguration of how we define and perceive freedom or moral action. The scholars I build on have demonstrated the troubling conservatism of the texts. By identifying Harry Potter as a neoliberal fantasy, however, I aim to show how the stories frame within their overwhelmingly positive images of triumph and goodness a subtle contingency which urges readers to conceive of autonomous and moral action as purely individualised. Harry Potter succeeds in disseminating notions which are celebrated as inspiring and progressive, which makes the function of the texts in acculturation more efficient. While the moral ideology of Harry Potter has been argued to be dubious and restrictive, my research aims to identify how the books frame such morals as celebratory, in turn perpetuating a deeply dangerous and pervasive cultural complacency, one which in our contemporary culture has been becoming more and more pliant to the notion that our society shall remain inherently unequal and oppressive, and is considering the invisible hand of this status quo as unchangeable.