ABSTRACT

The ontology of work and the economics of value underpin the legal institution, with the existence of modern law predicated upon the subject as labourer.

In contemporary Europe, labour is more than a mere economic relationship. Indeed, labour occupies a central position in human existence: since the industrial revolution, it has been the principal criterion of reciprocal recognition and of universal mobilization. This multi-disciplinary volume analyses labour and its depictions in their interaction with the latest legal, socio-economic, political and artistic tendencies. Addressing such issues as deregulation, flexibility, de-industrialization, the pervasive enlargement of markets, digitization and virtual relationships, social polarisation and migratory fluxes, this volume engages with the existential role played by labour in our lives at the conjunction of law and the humanities.

This book will be of interest to law students, legal philosophers, theoretical philosophers, political philosophers, social and political theorists, labour studies scholars, and literature and film scholars.

part I|2 pages

Law and Philosophy

chapter 1|12 pages

Migrants, Marx, Descartes, Fichte and Hegel

On working and being

chapter 3|14 pages

The disclosure of humanity

Challenges of the digital turn

chapter 5|12 pages

Europe and the construction of a worker mentality

Human rights as an instrument of neoliberal government? The case of Dutch labour activation programmes for welfare recipients

chapter 6|37 pages

From work to mobilization

chapter 7|22 pages

On working and being

The legal metaphysics of labour and the constitutional errors of Social Europe

chapter 9|13 pages

The ontology of labor

part II|2 pages

Literature and Cinema

chapter 11|12 pages

From text to work

Or, operation without production

chapter 13|12 pages

I can quit whenever I want

The academic precariat in Italian cinema

chapter 14|10 pages

Refusal of work in Italian literature

From Vogliamo tutto by Balestrini to Works by Trevisan 1

chapter 16|13 pages

Deux jours, une nuit and La loi du marché

The tactical withdrawal of government and capital

chapter 17|15 pages

When The Flash said: “We were all struck by that lightning”

Work and contemporary superhero TV shows

chapter 18|13 pages

‘A new name and a new job, that’s what he’d like’

Identity, labour and precarity, 1915–2015

chapter 19|17 pages

In the name of a loss

Work and the contradictions of contemporary literary imaginary