Abstract
This article aims to develop a reflection on the laborer’s body, the body work and the body imagery in the midst of the discourse materialist theory perspectives, of the historical materialism, of the Foucaultian genealogy, of the Brazilian historiography and of the contemporary work sociology. Without seeking to be exhaustive and without aiming at a complementarity among these perspectives, the article proposes the thesis of a historical body, whose composition, imagery, ideal and sufferings (of the bodies of laborers and non-laborers) are overdetermined by work’s morphology of the given social formation. As an illustration of the current immobile and confined laborer, the contemporary labor conditions of the telemarketing operator are addressed. Finally, some considerations are made about the bodies’ immobilization and conditioning and the urban laborer’s confinement during working hours. From the exposure of new means of suffering at work a materialist critique of contemporary body idolatry hegemonic criticism is generated.
Keywords:
Discourse; Body composition; Confined labor