L’usine qui lutte et l’usine en ruines: sur quelques mises en récit de la désindustrialisation en France

This article examines literary representations of deindustrialization in France, both from moments of worker resistance and from the fragile environments that embody their failure. An economic overview traces the gradual collapse of major industrial sectors since the 1970s and the loss or transformation of millions of jobs, then shows how these ruptures fragmented and fragilized the workforce, leaving lasting marks on their territories. The study focuses on two narratives: Daewoo (2004), a novel in which François Bon depicts the struggles of Lorraine factory workers confronted with plant closures, and Le Quai de Ouistreham (2010), a journalistic immersion in which Florence Aubenas portrays the daily lives of temporary cleaning workers in a context of economic crisis. The first text is approached through a crucial moment when the takeover of the factory appears possible, but which is defused by a fire whose cause and function remain ambiguous. Aubenas’s narrative is considered for its joint attention to present-day working conditions and to the memory of labor movements carried by women. The article asks how literature, although powerless to heal the economic, political, and social wounds inherited from generations of struggle, can nonetheless offer sites of remembrance and symbolic resistance.