03963nam 22005775 450 991048342240332120230810164230.03-030-12586-610.1007/978-3-030-12586-8(CKB)4100000008048163(MiAaPQ)EBC5771212(DE-He213)978-3-030-12586-8(EXLCZ)99410000000804816320190426d2019 u| 0engurcnu||||||||txtrdacontentcrdamediacrrdacarrierThe Critique of Work in Modern French Thought From Charles Fourier to Guy Debord /by Alastair Hemmens1st ed. 2019.Cham :Springer International Publishing :Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan,2019.1 online resource (233 pages)Studies in Revolution and Literature3-030-12585-8 Chapter 1: Marxian Theory and the Critique of Work -- Chapter 2: Charles Fourier, Utopian Socialism and Attractive Labour -- Chapter 3: Paul Lafargue, Early French Marxism and the Right to Laziness -- Chapter 4: André Breton, the Artistic Avant-Garde and Surrealism’s War on Work -- Chapter 5: Guy Debord, the Situationist International and the Abolition of Alienated Labour -- Chapter 6: The New Spirit of Capitalism and the Critique of Work in France since May ’68 -- Chapter 7: News from Nowhere, or an Epoch of Rest.What is work? Why do we do it? Since time immemorial the answer to these questions, from both the left and the right, has been that work is both a natural necessity and, barring exploitation, a social good. One might criticise its management, its compensation and who benefits from it the most, but never work itself, never work as such. In this book, Alastair Hemmens seeks to challenge these received ideas. Drawing on the new ‘critique-of-value’ school of Marxian critical theory, Hemmens demonstrates that capitalism and its final crisis cannot be properly understood except in terms of the historically specific and socially destructive character of labour. It is from this radical perspective that Hemmens turns to an innovative critical analysis of the rich history of radical French thinkers who, over the past two centuries, have challenged the labour form head on: from the utopian-socialist Charles Fourier, who called for the abolition of the separation between work and play, and Marx’s wayward son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, who demanded The Right to Laziness (1880), to the father of Surrealism, André Breton, who inaugurated a ‘war on work’, and, of course, the French Situationist, Guy Debord, author of the famous graffito, ‘never work’. Ultimately, Hemmens considers normative changes in attitudes to work since the 1960s and the future of anti-capitalist social movements today. This book will be a crucial point of reference for contemporary debates about labour and the anti-work tradition in France.Studies in Revolution and LiteratureLiteraturePhilosophyLiteratureHistory and criticismLiterature, Modern19th centuryEuropean literatureLiterary TheoryLiterary HistoryNineteenth-Century LiteratureEuropean LiteratureLiteraturePhilosophy.LiteratureHistory and criticism.Literature, Modern19th century.European literature.Literary Theory.Literary History.Nineteenth-Century Literature.European Literature.840.71331.01Hemmens Alastairauthttp://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut1229447BOOK9910483422403321The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought2853759UNINA