Sujeito definido pelo trabalho: como o discurso da cultura promove a escravidão voluntária na sociedade do desempenho

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, work is central to Western society. Technological advances could make us believe that humanity would achieve a more satisfying life, with comfort and abundance of resources. However, depression has been considered the disease of the century, and misery is far from being eradicated. The subject works more each day and oppresses himself. The performance society demands more efficiency, in a fast-paced, multitasking life, always looking for the best performance. The cultural imperative of the pursuit of success at any cost in the consumer society means: working, producing and accumulating things. In this scenario, a kind of voluntary slavery is born: subjects are submitted to exhausting routines, unhealthy environments, and a life of psychic dissatisfaction. In order to explain what led to this situation, this study presents concepts that define work and how it has evolved to the present day, addressing its main transformations, focusing on work relationships from the point of view of authors such as Ricardo Antunes, Christophe Dejours and Carlos Roberto de Oliveira. Seeking to understand what moves subjects to remain in this cycle of suffering, the analysis focus in the way past and current discourses contribute to a work culture that enslaves subjects through ideologies such as performance, meritocracy, and enjoyment of success, through the reflections of Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Juan David Nasio and Byung-Chul Han. Some of the symptoms generated are exposed; the impacts of the contemporary social model such as servitude and deprivation of their own time by the workers are analyzed, and also how a successful career becomes an object of desire, with its inevitable consequences for the health of the body and mind. In the end, the study seeks to show that degrading work appears as a derivative of the maxims that were adopted throughout this civilizational course, but that a way out can be proposed. The transformation of the social character, through new structures and beliefs that privilege the being as a way of living, instead of having as the privileged way, based only on material achievements, will be able to change the current pattern in order to build new satisfactory ways, from the psychological and economical point of view, for the subjects’ lives