Consent and Resistance: An Evaluation of the Severance Series in the Context of Gramsci's Concept of Divided Consciousness

The Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of radical changes regarding the concept of work. People working and producing to meet their daily needs began to operate within an institutional structure. The new state of consciousness created by the conflict between work and private life in modern life can be explained through Antonio Gramsci's concept of "divided consciousness." This study explores the concept of divided consciousness within philosophical, ideological, and psychological contexts. A textual analysis of the Severance series is conducted, and the representation of the divided consciousness approach in popular culture is discussed. When evaluated within the context of working life and capitalist work culture, it is concluded that Gramsci's concept of divided consciousness is also applicable to the psychosocial structures of modern work environments. The divided consciousness motif in the series is a metaphorical approach to the debate about the separation of work and social life in modern work culture. The control Lumon exerts over its employees' innie consciousness is an exaggerated representation of the disciplinary mechanisms to which white-collar workers are subjected in the modern workplace. It has been evaluated that the Severance series and its narrative provide a powerful opportunity to understand the effects of modern work culture on employee consciousness within the context of Gramsci's divided consciousness approach.