Creative Work is Work: Precarious Artistic and Intellectual Labor in The World After Us
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2280-9481/24122Parole chiave:
Creative labor, Precarity, Cinematic realism, French cinema, autofictionAbstract
This article analyzes The World After Us (Le Monde après nous, 2021), the debut feature by Franco-Tunisian director Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas, as a rare cinematic portrayal of precarious artistic and intellectual labor that explicitly frames creative work as work. Focusing on the figure of an aspiring writer struggling to survive through a succession of insecure service jobs, the article argues that the film deploys realism as a discursive strategy to claim artists’ and intellectuals’ legitimate belonging to the working class. Through an analysis of the film’s handheld camerawork, frantic pacing, and fragmented narrative structure, the article shows how realism produces a mise en phase that mirrors the temporal and affective conditions of precarized cultural workers. The article further situates the film in contrast to the contemporary proliferation of autofictional narratives of social mobility, reading The World After Us as a materialist critique of autofiction as a market-oriented genre that capitalizes on marginality. Finally, drawing on feminist social reproduction theory, the article conceptualizes creative labor as a form of reproductive labor, highlighting its embodied dimension and its political potential to challenge neoliberal narratives of individual responsibility and self-blame.
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