Contemporary French Drama and the Stupidity of/in the Capitalist Labour Pool: The Case of Joël Pommerat

Informed by recent French theories on capitalism and labour, this essay builds on the premise that French intellectuals – artists and dramatists as well as economists – are concerned about the sociocultural and intellectual effects of the culture of “economism,” which interprets the sum of human life in terms of economic relations and consequence. With a sustained if cautious respect for socialism and egalitarianism, the French pursue a measure of ideological resistance to economism, or the “System,” and most especially to its distribution of labour and its assignment of work identity. Since the post-1960 dramatic oeuvre of Michel Vinaver and others, this theme and this perspective have been prominent in French drama. A survey of four plays by Joël Pommerat from the past decade reveals a variety of modes, presentations, and levels of economism’s de-intellectualization or dumbing down of society. Each of the plays emphasizes the experience and mind-set of a different level of “worker,” from those at the bottom of the economy to the CEOs we presume to be at the top.