Law, Labour and the Humanities: Contemporary European Perspectives

313 Pages·2019·5.149 MB·English

by  Tiziano Toracca, Angela Condello

Law, Labour and the Humanities
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,ithasbeentheprincipalcriterionofreciprocalrecognitionandofuniversal
mobilization.Thismulti-disciplinaryvolumeanalyseslabouranditsdepictionsintheir
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
migratoryfluxes,thisvolumeengageswiththeexistentialroleplayedbylabourinour
livesattheconjunctionoflawandthehumanities.
This volume 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.
Tiziano Toracca is a literary scholar, Visiting Professor at the Department of
LiteraryStudies,GentUniversityandResearchFellowattheUniversityofTorino.
AngelaCondelloisalegalphilosopher,AdjunctProfessorandResearchFellowat
theUniversityofTorino,thePrincipalInvestigatorofaJeanMonnetModuleand
the Director of LabOnt Law.
Discourses of Law
Series editors
Peter Goodrich, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA
Michel Rosenfeld, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA
Arthur Jacobsen, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA
ThepublishergratefullyacknowledgesthesupportoftheJacobBurnsInstitutefor
Advanced Legal Studies of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law to the series
Discourses of Law.
A GlassHouse Book
Forinformationabouttheseriesanddetailsofpreviousandforthcomingtitles,see
https://www.routledge.com/Discourses-of-Law/book-series/SE1036
Law, Labour and the Humanities
Contemporary European Perspectives
Edited by
Tiziano Toracca and Angela Condello
Firstpublished2020
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BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-PublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Condello,Angela,1984-editor.|Toracca,Tiziano,editor.
Title:Law,labourandthehumanities:contemporaryEuropeanperspectives/
editedbyAngelaCondelloandTizianoToracca.
Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork:Routledge,2019.|
Series:Discoursesoflaw|Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2019025773(print)|LCCN2019025774(ebook)|
ISBN9780367077174(hardback)|ISBN9780429022302(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Laborlawsandlegislation--Europe--Philosophy.|
Laborlawsandlegislation--Fiction.|Lawinliterature.
Classification:LCCKJC2855.L392019(print)|LCCKJC2855(ebook)|
DDC344.401--dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019025773
LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019025774
ISBN:978-0-367-07717-4(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-429-02230-2(ebk)
TypesetinGalliard
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
Contents
List of figures viii
Notes on contributors ix
Introduction: I work, therefore I am? 1
ANGELACONDELLOANDTIZIANOTORACCA
PARTI
Law and Philosophy 5
1 Migrants, Marx, Descartes,Fichte andHegel: Onworkingandbeing 7
EMILIANOACOSTA
2 Work, pensions and transgenerational justice 19
TIZIANAANDINA
3 The disclosure of humanity: Challenges of the digital turn 32
ANGELACONDELLO
4 How the future of work can work for the workers 46
MARCDEVOS
5 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 62
ANJAELEVELD
6 From work to mobilization 74
MAURIZIOFERRARIS
vi Contents
7 On working and being: The legal metaphysics of labour and the
constitutional errors of Social Europe 111
LUKEMASON
8 Irregular migrants at work and the groundless legal subject 133
ANASTASIATATARYN
9 The ontology of labor 145
ENRICOTERRONE
10 Objectivity, repetition, and the search for satisfaction 158
GERTRUDISVANDEVIJVER
PARTII
Literature and Cinema 169
11 From text to work: Or, operation without production 171
DAVIDAYERS
12 Works by Vitaliano Trevisan and the representation of work in the
neo-liberal age 183
CARLOBAGHETTI
13 I can quit whenever I want: The academic precariat in Italian cinema 199
ALBERTOBARACCO
14 Refusal of work in Italian literature: From Vogliamo tutto by
Balestrini to Works by Trevisan 211
SILVIACONTARINI
15 Labour and identity in documentary web series on new Italian
emigrants 221
MONICAJANSEN
16 Deuxjours,unenuitandLaloidumarché:Thetacticalwithdrawalof
government and capital 236
JOHNMARKS
17 When The Flash said: “We were all struck by that lightning”: Work
and contemporary superhero TV shows 249
MARASANTI
Contents vii
18 ‘A new name and a new job, that’s what he’d like’: Identity, labour
and precarity, 1915–2015 264
MORAGSHIACH
19 In the name of a loss: Work and the contradictions of contemporary
literary imaginary 277
TIZIANOTORACCA
Index 294
Figures
2.1 Growth of the resident population in Italy: 1861–2011, ISTAT data 26
2.2 Growth of the resident population in Italy: 2001–2017, ISTAT data 27
2.3 Projection of the demographic trend up to 2065 28
2.4 Italian debt/GDP ratio (1861–2015) 28
2.5 Social benefits, pensions and employment income in public
administration (percentage of GDP) 29
Notes on contributors
Emiliano Acosta (Mendoza, 1978) is associate professor at the Vrije Universiteit
Brussel and visiting professor at Ghent University. His research domain includes
modernandcontemporarypoliticalphilosophy,KantandGermanIdealism.
Tiziana Andina is Full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Turin, Italy
(www.labont.it/andina). She is an expert in metaphysics and ontology with a
specialization in social ontology and philosophy of art.
David Ayers is Professor of Modernism and Critical Theory at the University of
Kent. He has published books and articles on modernist literature, including
most recently Modernism, Internationalism and the Russian Revolution (Edin-
burghUniversityPress, 2018).HehasaleadingroleintheEuropeanNetwork
of Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, for which he edits a book series.
Carlo Baghetti obtained a joint PhD (co-tutelle) in the Universities of Aix-Mar-
seilleand“LaSapienza”ofRome.Hisstudiesmostlyfocusontherepresentation
of work in Italian literature. He is also the co-founder of the OB.E.R.T. (Obser-
vatoire Européen des Récits du Travail). He is currently lecturer at the Italian
departmentof theUniversity ofAix-Marseille.
Alberto Baracco is a lecturer in film studies at the University of Basilicata. His
main areas of research are film philosophy and film ecocriticism. His recent
publications include the two monographs Philosophy in Stan Brakhage’s Dog
Star Man (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and Hermeneutics of the Film World
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and the essay “Soggettività e natura” (in Antro-
poscenari. Storie, paesaggi, ecologie, Il Mulino, 2018).
SilviaContariniisalawgraduateandlawyer.ShedefendedherResearchHabilitation
degree (HDR) in 2004 and was recruited as a full Professor of Italian studies at
UniversitéParisNanterre.Prof.Contarini’sresearchfocusesonculturalproduction
andsocialtransformationsinItalyinthe20thand21stcenturies.Authorofsome
sixty articles and some twenty books (monographs, edited and co-edited collec-
tions), most recently Scrivere al tempo della globalizzazione (September 2019),