Échapper à la surveillance. La paresse comme transgression

Abstract

We assume that laziness is not an individual subject‘s psychological quality but a reaction against those (that) who (which) confine(s) us in a culture which regards activity as a paramount value, often as an end in itself. Laziness is the transgressive answer to those who force us to act, hence to expose us. Thus, in a surveillance society in which everyone is both the subject and the object of a general regime of visibility, the lazy one not only escapes from the universe of values but also exhibits this escape in subverting the meaning of surveillance which then becomes a tactics for the one who intends to rebel against the power, in modifying the value of values : the implicit belief that work – whatever it is- enobles man. We defend this thesis, inspired by an interview with Roland Barthes, through the analysis of three exemplary works : Yves Robert’s film Very Happy Alexander (1968), Goncharov‘s Oblomov (1859) and Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener (1853).