LabourNarr

The neoliberal turn that has taken place in Europe since 1980, in addition to macroscopic and external phenomena such as deregulation, privatization, or greater flexibility in the labor market, also has an impact at the microscopic and individual level, changing the perception and value that contemporary man attaches not only to his professional activity, but also to his social role. In other words, with the advent of neoliberalism, we are witnessing a cultural paradigm shift, which this project intends to reconstruct and study by choosing artistic and discursive productions as its point of observation. The LabourNarr project is transmedia and aims to study three different forms of cultural representation (literature, film, and television series) that, between the 1980s and today, have represented, directly or indirectly, disparate spheres of labor, such as the factory, the company, state public employment, or self-employment. The goal is to isolate and study certain key elements, such as the representation of particular social categories (e.g., the factory worker, the office worker, the unemployed), socially relevant themes (e.g., gender equality, the relationship to the environment), or particularly influential concepts (e.g., merit, success, equality) and to observe their evolution over a broad period. These representations are seen, on the one hand, as a mirror of European society over the past four decades, but, on the other hand, as a vehicle for the circulation, affirmation, and resistance of political ideas and visions. The research will be conducted on cultural representations produced in three Romance linguistic and cultural areas: Italy, Spain, and France.