CAMILLE RICHERT PHD THESIS

JUNE 9, 2021 03:00 PM

On Wednesday June 9, 2021 at 3:00 pm Camille Richert will defend her PhD Thesis in History, specializing in Art History, with a view to obtaining a doctorate from IEP Paris.

"A motif for historiography of labor. Depicting working bodies, 1968-2020

It was prepared at CHSP under the supervision of Madame Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, University Professor. 

The jury:

Laurence Bertrand Dorléac (Directrice de recherche), Professeure des universités, IEP Paris

• Eric de Chassey (Rapporteur), Professeur des universités, ENS Lyon
• Nicolas Delalande, Associate Professor HDR, IEP Paris
• Thomas Schlesser (Rapporteur), Professeur chargé de cours, HDR, Ecole polytechnique
• Giovanna Zapperi, Professeure des universités, Université de Tours

 Summary:

A motif for a historiography of labor. 
Depicting working bodies, 1968-2020

Camille Richert

Directrice de Thèse :
Laurence Bertrand Dorléac

This thesis proposes to examine how work has been represented in the West from 1968 to 2020. As a theme lacking nobility in the history of art, work became a motif of choice as of the Second Industrial Revolution. This motif became stronger in countries with a service-based economy emerging after World War II. The “world revolution” of 1968, to cite Immanuel Wallerstein, contributed to this development: as a transnational cultural revolution, 1968 challenged the great unifying narratives of Western modernity. The professional activity, regardless of the industry, is no longer represented as taking part to the political regimes in which it is performed, but as the motive of a social critique seeking to be de-ideologized.
From then on, the works depicting labor have far less to do with the political function of art that occurred in the middle of the 19th century, according to Walter Benjamin’s terminology, than with a demystifying function. The chapters of this thesis explore its main declinations that share the historicization of work as a common feature. Work is no longer represented as an an-historical visual subject of politics, but as a historicized expression of the political. Moreover, after 1968 it isn’t one, but two myths that are debunked in the same fall: not only the mythologies surrounding work, but also the myth of this myth, supported by the idea that nature is controllable, and that this is something desirable as long as nature would provide the energy required for fulfilling the dreams and ambitions of social progress in the 19th and 20th centuries. Work was both its means and its emblem.