Split Selves, Alienated Subjects: Mr. Robot and Severance Against Corporate Capitalism

Abstract

Mr. Robot (Sam Esmail, 2015-2019) and Severance (Dan Erickson, 2022-) portray corporations as a capitalist structure that is simultaneously formative, dehumanizing, and antagonistic. Rather than reducing capitalism to an external structure, these series also present it as an internalized force that shapes and divides the self. In Mr. Robot, Elliot, suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, is split between his roles as a corporate employee and a hacker; in Severance, Mark undergoes a medical intervention to separate his professional and personal identities. Drawing on Marxist theories of alienation and post-Fordist approaches to subject formation, this article demonstrates how these crises of subjectivity reflect the subsumption of the self by capitalism as a productive resource. While such representations risk neutralizing the critique of capitalism by being overly individualizing, they nonetheless provide an inventive entry point for revealing—and critiquing—the social pathologies and power dynamics inherent to capitalism.