Escaping the Absurd. The Corporation and Form in American Psycho

The aim of this essay is to explore the representation of the Corporation in American Psycho and to affirm its very existence as a type of formal system of signs, language, and discourse that sets the boundaries of the characters’ world. The “corporate form” is a self-stabilizing system that absorbs all subversive elements and disruptions within it and reintegrates them into the larger whole of absurd and unproductive discourse that numbs and alienates Ellis’s characters. The essay shows how the characters in Brett Easton Ellis’ novel are simply formal entities themselves, whose only purpose is to endlessly reproduce and reinforce the aforementioned corporate form through the symbolic overuse of certain language and behavior, akin to how characters traditionally do in plays and works in the theatre of the absurd. Focusing on Patrick Bateman, the main character, and his attempts to escape this symbolic system, the essay will show how his efforts to do this represent instances of the Lacanian Real that surface in radical contrast with the general symbolic framework, and how, in doing so, he touches upon experiences that are fundamentally detached from it and unavailable to the other characters, in his attempt to reach a form of non-subjectivity.