Bastards at Work: Universal Lessons on Bullying from Contemporary French Storytelling

Description

Bullying is a social phenomenon that defines the contemporary workplace with much of the emphasis on psychosocial rather than physical suffering. In France, workplace bullying has emerged as a subject of intense interest and controversy among scholars, policy makers and cultural producers - notably novelists, playwrights and film directors. It has a high public profile as reflected in specific legislation, a wealth of critical literature on workplace suffering, and an extensive range of novels, plays and films. This study contextualises and analyses this wave of fictional storytelling that has emerged in France since the year 2000. It critically analyses more than a dozen such stories with a view to determining how they reflect the lived experiences of workers. Each story is considered from the perspectives of critical commentaries and research from France and elsewhere, focusing on the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, medicine, anthropology, sociology, literary analysis, economics, law and business management. This study also examines how fiction reflects changes in the nature of the French economy, organisations and work itself since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s. Cover Contents List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements List of stories analysed with title translations in English List of abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1 Mind games: The workplace as battleground for psychological warfare Chapter 2 Systemic violence: The organisation as bully Chapter 3 Homo œconomicus and beyond Chapter 4 Brain over brawn: Psychological violence in the era of knowledge work Chapter 5 Body and mind: Bullying and medicalisation at work Chapter 6 Degrees of complicity: Co-workers as witnesses Chapter 7 Storytelling as authentic lived experience Appendix 1 Corporate: Emilie’s journey: A sequence analysis Appendix 2 Isabelle Sorente’s play, Hard copy (English trans.Martin Goodman) Bibliography Index