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At the Shores of Work

At the Shores of Work Shifting away from the paradigmatic factory gates, this article examines what comes into view as cinema approaches the port. Through a reading of Aloysio Raulino’s experimental short film Santos Port (Brazil, 1978), it shows how the port film is uniquely poised to view livelihoods that trouble narrow definitions of work and its spatial, temporal, and corporeal limits. Through its montage and unusual soundscape, Santos Port presents laboring bodies in excess of their labor in an elusive portrait of both a strike and of work-life relationships. Unwaged, overlooked forms of work and their relationship to broader modes of life are subject to an unprecedented attention. In the process, the port film queries what is meant by work, and in particular its spatial-temporal dimensions—the work site and the working day, the key site of struggle for labor under capitalism. Crucially, the port film is also where the labor of gender is thrown into stark relief, for understandings of work-time and work-space are indelibly and insistently gendered. The article concludes by suggesting how these expanded understandings of work are inflected by the geopolitical position of port films and their relationship to global capitalism. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

At the Shores of Work

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Copyright
Copyright © 2021 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-8874073
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Shifting away from the paradigmatic factory gates, this article examines what comes into view as cinema approaches the port. Through a reading of Aloysio Raulino’s experimental short film Santos Port (Brazil, 1978), it shows how the port film is uniquely poised to view livelihoods that trouble narrow definitions of work and its spatial, temporal, and corporeal limits. Through its montage and unusual soundscape, Santos Port presents laboring bodies in excess of their labor in an elusive portrait of both a strike and of work-life relationships. Unwaged, overlooked forms of work and their relationship to broader modes of life are subject to an unprecedented attention. In the process, the port film queries what is meant by work, and in particular its spatial-temporal dimensions—the work site and the working day, the key site of struggle for labor under capitalism. Crucially, the port film is also where the labor of gender is thrown into stark relief, for understandings of work-time and work-space are indelibly and insistently gendered. The article concludes by suggesting how these expanded understandings of work are inflected by the geopolitical position of port films and their relationship to global capitalism.

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Jun 1, 2021

References

  • The Post-colonial City Symphony and the ‘Ruins’ of Suite Habana
    Aguilera Skvirsky, Salomé
  • Masculinity, the Embodied Male Worker, and the Historian’s Gaze
    Baron, Ada
  • The Birth of Mangue: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Prostitution in Rio de Janeiro, 1850–1942
    Caulfield, Sueann Balderston, Daniel Guy, Donna J.
  • Dockworkers and Labour History
    Cooper, Frederick Davies, Sam Davis, Colin J. Vries, David de van Voss, Lex Heerma Hesselink, Lidewij Weinhauer, Klaus
  • Fantasías de nitrato: El cine pornográfico y erótico en la Argentina de principios del siglo XX
    Cuarterolo, Andrea
  • Workers Leaving the Factory
    Farocki, Harun Gaensheimer, Susanne Schafhausen, Nicolaus
  • O trabalho portuário até 1970: Contexto internacional e nacional
    Ferreira Queiróz, Maria de Fátima Geraldo, Juliana Varela Ferreira Queiróz, Maria de Fátima Machin, Rosana Couto, Marcia Thereza
  • Introduction, Dossier: The Work of the Image; Cinema, Labor, Aesthetics
    Gorfinkle, Elena
  • Globalization and the ‘Spatial Fix.’
    Harvey, David
  • São Paulo, a symphonia da metrópole (Rudolfo Rex Lustig y Adalberto Kemeny, 1929)
    Labaji, Amir Paranaguá, Paulo Antonio
  • Kemeny and Lustig’s São Paulo, sinfonia da metrópole
    Meneguello, Cristina Jacobs, Steven Hielscher, Eva Kilnick, Anthony
  • The City in Early Cinema: Metropolis, Berlin, October
    Minden, Michael Timms, Edward Kelley, David
  • Documentary Film and the Modernist Avant-Garde
    Nichols, Bill
  • Eisenstein’s Strike and the Genealogy of Documentary
    Nichols, Bill
  • Introducing Disagreement
    Rancière, Jacques Corcoran, Steven
  • Women of the Waterfront in River Plate Cinema: Jana Bokova’s Harbour
    Rix, Rob
  • Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism
    Thompson, E. P.
  • Brazil’s Deferred 1968: Timing the Cinema-Labor Cycle
    Wells, Sarah Ann
  • Sex Work in the Cinema: Lessons from the ’70s
    Wells, Sarah Ann
  • The Post-colonial City Symphony and the ‘Ruins’ of Suite Habana
    Aguilera Skvirsky, Salomé
  • Masculinity, the Embodied Male Worker, and the Historian’s Gaze
    Baron, Ada
  • The Birth of Mangue: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Prostitution in Rio de Janeiro, 1850–1942
    Caulfield, Sueann Balderston, Daniel Guy, Donna J.
  • Dockworkers and Labour History
    Cooper, Frederick Davies, Sam Davis, Colin J. Vries, David de van Voss, Lex Heerma Hesselink, Lidewij Weinhauer, Klaus
  • Fantasías de nitrato: El cine pornográfico y erótico en la Argentina de principios del siglo XX
    Cuarterolo, Andrea
  • Workers Leaving the Factory
    Farocki, Harun Gaensheimer, Susanne Schafhausen, Nicolaus
  • O trabalho portuário até 1970: Contexto internacional e nacional
    Ferreira Queiróz, Maria de Fátima Geraldo, Juliana Varela Ferreira Queiróz, Maria de Fátima Machin, Rosana Couto, Marcia Thereza
  • Introduction, Dossier: The Work of the Image; Cinema, Labor, Aesthetics
    Gorfinkle, Elena
  • Globalization and the ‘Spatial Fix.’
    Harvey, David
  • São Paulo, a symphonia da metrópole (Rudolfo Rex Lustig y Adalberto Kemeny, 1929)
    Labaji, Amir Paranaguá, Paulo Antonio
  • Kemeny and Lustig’s São Paulo, sinfonia da metrópole
    Meneguello, Cristina Jacobs, Steven Hielscher, Eva Kilnick, Anthony
  • The City in Early Cinema: Metropolis, Berlin, October
    Minden, Michael Timms, Edward Kelley, David
  • Documentary Film and the Modernist Avant-Garde
    Nichols, Bill
  • Eisenstein’s Strike and the Genealogy of Documentary
    Nichols, Bill
  • Introducing Disagreement
    Rancière, Jacques Corcoran, Steven
  • Women of the Waterfront in River Plate Cinema: Jana Bokova’s Harbour
    Rix, Rob
  • Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism
    Thompson, E. P.
  • Brazil’s Deferred 1968: Timing the Cinema-Labor Cycle
    Wells, Sarah Ann
  • Sex Work in the Cinema: Lessons from the ’70s
    Wells, Sarah Ann