This article adopts a neo-Gramscian perspective to analyze an impactful case of workers’ resistance escalating into civil society and the state, over the course of a social crisis triggered by employee suicides at the main French telecom firm in 2009 to 2010. On the basis of press data and interviews with key actors of the resistance, we produce a narrative of hegemonic transformation in three phases: (a) the rise of a new “hegemonic despotism” steering workers’ resistance within the firm, (b) the emergence of a counter-hegemony reaching out to the broader civil society, and (c) hegemonic transformation via state intervention. We contribute to the theoretical understanding of resistance by highlighting the role of a “hybrid space” spanning the firm, civil society, and the state in this “cascade effect” of resistance. Hybrid spaces enable the sharing, development, and leverage of discursive and material resources across the three main spheres of neoliberal hegemony.
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