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This first case study of corporate reform examines the car maker Renault. Once a paradigm case of the French model — state-owned, progressive labour relations, mass-production — the company went through a severe crisis in the early 1980s, out of which it re-emerged by the late 1980s with a different corporate governance model, labour relations, work organization and product line-up. The chapter examines reforms in four key areas: ownership, labour relations, work and supplier organization, and product market strategies.

Chapter five examines a series of suicides at car manufacturer Renault, situating them in the transition from an industrial model to a knowledge economy, in which value is expropriated from the resources of the mind. Suicides did not take place in the emblematic spaces of the factory, where cars were once mass produced, but in a state-of-the art research centre, where cognitive workers conceptualised and designed cutting-edge cars of the future. In the knowledge economy, the mind is treated as an endlessly productive resource that reproduces itself continuously and is unencumbered by the physical limitations of the body. I argue that suicides were the end point of a form of vital exhaustion that transcends the corporeal defences of the physical body and depletes the mental and emotional resources of the self. Suicides do not reflect a deterioration in formal or material conditions of work, but rather a transformation in forms of constraint, as the individual worker internalises modes of discipline and becomes his or her own boss. Suicides affected workers who experienced a phase of chronic overwork in which the quest to achieve productivity targets pushed them to work continuously and obsessively.

This chapter argues that 'lesbian middle-brow' writing from the early part of the twentieth century offers an important counterpoint to queer theory's long-standing opposition to normativity. Whereas early queer theoretical formulations opposed 'regimes of the normal' that specifically upheld heteronormativity, the sharpness of this critique has morphed into a more general position in which any kind of normativity or conformism is treated as intrinsically suspect. By contrast, novels with famous lesbian protagonists such as Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) and The Unlit Lamp (1924), along with Mary Renault's The Friendly Young Ladies (1944), show the manifold reasons why historical queers have been attached to the idea of the normal – for example, for the opportunity it offers of safety and protection from violence. Moreover, they show the importance of what might seem distinctly non-radical to contemporary readers – namely, middle-brow realism – in the history of lesbian representation and subjectivity. These middle-brow novels are the occasion to reflect on what keeps anti-normativity at the heart of queer theoretical strategy: the opportunity it provides of opposing a form of sameness framed as stultifying, conformist and assimilationist.

The chapter covers the early history of what will become known as the tank and the creation of the United States Tank Corps. Patton is the first “tanker” in American military history. After leaving the staff of John J. Pershing, Patton embarks on an educational journey to learn about tanks. He attends tank school in France and tours the Renault tank factory. It is here that he learns to drive a tank and selects the Renault light tank for use by the United States Army. The Renault tank is covered in detail, and Patton prepares to establish the American light tank school in France.

Patton, after transferring to the United States Tank Corps, is now the head of the nation’s first light tank school. He has yet to develop the reputation for training he will attain by 1938 and show in the lead-up to American entry into World War II. In many ways this position will be the most important in Patton’s career. How he performs will make or break his career. Patton selects the land for the tank school and begins to develop the training center and fight for more officers and soldiers. The tank school slowly builds a cadre of instructors and students, but a lack of tanks slows training.

The first section of this chapter analyses the history, privatization, and M&A of the five automobile companies studied—Volkswagen (Germany), Renault (France), Jaguar (UK), SEAT (Spain), and Alfa Romeo (Italy). The second section demonstrates that while Volkswagen and Renault can be considered Alphas today, the others are Betas. The third section explains why firms became Alphas or Betas. It argues that the competitive market position of the firm before and after privatization, the goals of managers, and the significance of non-state shareholders is important. Yet, while internal factors are important, the more external, political factors are necessary and sufficient in order to explain why a firm becomes an Alpha or a Beta. This includes the impact of liberalization in the sector, the roles of states, and the actions (or inactions) of regulators that are lobbied by the firms.

In this chapter we will examine briefly the formal interaction between trade marks and competition law. We have seen that competition questions were raised in the previous chapter in respect of the potential function of trade mark rights as tools for compartmentalizing the common European market into national markets. We have also highlighted the competition arguments and rationale considered by the Court first in determining what constitutes a protectable trade mark and second in delineating the scope of protection. Here, the focus shifts to how trade mark rights and agreements involving trade marks are weighed up by competition law. The two primary competition rules that are described below deal with anti-​competitive collusion (Article 101 TFEU, previously Article 81 EC) and abuse of market dominance (Article 102 TFEU, previously Article 82 EC).