"The smell of other people's lives"

insubordinate domestic worker, dismissal and the politically motivated employer's property damage

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2024/84624

Ana, a domestic worker, pregnant, was dismissed by justified termination after using her employer's cosmetics. Based on this real court case, the article discusses the (il)legitimate disobedience practiced in domestic work, as a potential form of resistance to inequality and exploitation. To this aim, the article will consist of an ethnographic reconstruction of a lawsuit, seeking, through legal-procedural prose, to understand the position of the actors involved and their discursive production in the face of the law. Boss and mistress, family, worker, lawyers, judges, justices. All of this is based on a theoretical transit between authors who discuss the political character of domestic life, domestic work and social reproduction; the possibilities of politically motivated property damage and the resistance process of domestic workers. The conclusion is that the insurgencies, albeit silent and individual, practiced by domestic workers who have caused damage to employers' property are legitimate practices of self-defense and signify a moment of pause in the expropriation and alienation of labor.