05 Deranty 105484R 1/7/09 11:12 pm Page 69

WHAT IS WORK? KEY

INSIGHTS FROM THE
PSYCHODYNAMICS OF
WORK

Jean-Philippe Deranty

ABSTRACT This article aims to present some of the main results of contem-
porary French psychodynamics of work. The writings of Christophe Dejours
constitute the central references in this area. His psychoanalytical approach,
which is initially concerned with the impact of contemporary work practices
on individual health, has implications that go well beyond the narrow psycho-
pathological interest. The most significant theoretical development to have come
out of Dejourss research is that of Yves Clot, whose writings will constitute
the second reference point in this article. The article attempts to demonstrate
that the thick definition of work that Dejours and Clot operate with, as a result
of their focus on its psychological function, speaks directly, in substantial and
critical ways, to all disciplines with an interest in work, to philosophers, social
theorists and social scientists, including economic theorists.
KEYWORDS Yves Clot Christophe Dejours psychoanalysis work

This article aims to present some of the main results of a strand of

research in the psychology of work currently pursued in France at the Con-
servatoire National des Arts et Mtiers in Paris. The originality and richness
of this approach harbours tremendous theoretical potentials that allow us to
revisit some of the key issues associated with work. The writings of Christophe
Dejours constitute the central references in this area. His psychoanalytical
approach, which is initially concerned strictly with the impact of contempor-
ary work practices on individual health, in fact has implications that go well
beyond the narrow psychopathological interest. These broad implications
make it a serious dialogue partner for all the social sciences interested in

Thesis Eleven, Number 98, August 2009: 6987

SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC)
Copyright 2009 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd
DOI: 10.1177/0725513609105484
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70 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

issues of work. The most significant theoretical development to have come

out of Dejourss research is that of Yves Clot, whose writings will constitute
the second reference point in this article. Dejours uses a psychoanalytical
approach, focusing on the impact of work experiences on the subjective
economy of working individuals. As a result, his model is more accurately
described as a psychodynamics, rather than as a psychology, of work. Since
Dejours is the one who has opened new ground in this area, in particular
by articulating contributions stemming from a variety of disciplines (anthro-
pology, sociology, ergonomics, philosophy and, of course, psychoanalysis),
I will continue to refer to this strand as a psychodynamics of work despite
the fact that Yves Clots core references are psychological, rather than psycho-
analytical.1
The definition of work remains a serious theoretical problem today. It
is a classical conundrum in sociology (Grint, 1991). It is also an area in philos-
ophy where progress has stalled since Arendt (1998[1958]) and Habermas
(1974) turned their backs on work as being incompatible with, or at least in-
different to, individual and political freedom, and they offered conceptions of
work that reflected this philosophical demotion. Today the area suffers from
added conceptual confusion since economic theory, operating with an ultra-
thin definition of work, has come to occupy a position of quasi-hegemony
in policy debates and is pressing its claim for sole authority in the other social
sciences without, however, making other approaches to work irrelevant. The
article aims to suggest that the thick definition of work that Dejours and Clot
operate with, as a result of their focus on its psychological function, speaks
directly, in substantial and critical ways, to all disciplines with an interest in
work, to philosophers, social theorists and social scientists, and also, perhaps,
to economic theorists.
Dejourss definition of work is borrowed from ergonomics, notably from
the ground-breaking research of Alain Wisner (1995).2 It reads as follows:
Work is the coordinated activity deployed by men and women in order to
face that which, in a utilitarian task, cannot be obtained through the strict
application of the prescribed organisation (2002: 43). Yves Clot (2004: 98)
borrows from Dejours this conception of work, defining it in his turn as
directed activity that must be taken in a three-fold sense: directed towards
others, by the subject, through the object.
The article starts by clarifying the broad theoretical premisses underpin-
ning this approach to work (Part 1). This foundation is secured by reference
to the anthropology and ethnology of techniques, an area of anthropology
which allows Dejours and Clot to avoid abstractions and dualisms and helps
them to articulate the three essential dimensions of subjectivity, technique
and society. The article then studies successively the three aspects of work:
the instrumental, prescriptive aspect of work (Part 2); the part of the subject;
and the significance of workplaces understood as specific lifeworlds (Part 3).
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Deranty: What is work? 71

1. A TRIANGULAR DEFINITION OF WORK

A crucial result of the French psychology of work is the importance of
each of the three poles in the definition of work, as moments of equal consti-
tutive and normative importance. This encompassing view, which stresses the
necessity to articulate together the moments of the subject, the object and
the intersubjective, is made possible precisely by the focus on the impact of
the working experience on the life of the subject.
This approach is a safeguard against reductionist approaches to work,
of the kind for example propagated by the philosophers mentioned above,
who only consider work from functional and instrumental perspectives.
Outside philosophy, in the social sciences, the interest on work as a subjec-
tive experience provides a critical perspective against cognitivist approaches
that reduce work to the technical adaptation of a working subject to the task
at hand. It is precisely because they start from a clinical interest in the ways
in which work impacts on, and matters to, subjects, that Dejours and Clot
are then able to highlight its much broader social and cultural dimensions.
Conversely, the integrated definition of work also provides a critical stand-
point against culturalist and intersubjectivistic approaches, as they can be
found for example in the sociology of work. The definition of work con-
structed through the perspective of its psychological function keeps an eye
on the irreducible technical dimension of work, as a dimension of central
normative significance. A symmetric correction occurs regarding the instru-
mental and the technical dimensions as with the social and the cultural: the
technical is not a dimension that can be abstracted from, even in discussions
concerned only with the macro-sociological or micro-organizational aspects
of work.
Accordingly, the formal schema underlying any conception of work
needs to be a triangular one, and not just a bipolar one, as in cognitivist defin-
itions in terms of subject-task or in organizational approaches in terms of
subject-organization, or more broadly, when work is taken as employment,
in the relation of the worker(s) to the social order. The whole conceptual
and methodological difficulty resides in this necessity to integrate the three
dimensions coherently. The complexity arises from the fact that none of the
three dimensions is the ultimate one, and each is mediated by the others.
To help clarify this, we can anticipate on a point developed in the next
section: the technical order is indeed framed by the social-cultural context,
for example in the definition of what counts as an efficient act. Conversely,
however, there is a specific social significance to the technical, which is
different from the general social-cultural determinacy. Technique creates its
own form of sociality. This dimension is especially important to highlight as
it is typically ignored in normatively minded discussions on work.
This approach to work, which assumes that the psychological, the
technical and the cultural cannot be separated, whatever ones specific discip-
linary interest might be, has its theoretical foundation in the ethnological
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72 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

and anthropological literature devoted to the study of the interactions be-

tween techniques and culture. Dejours and Clot could be said to propose
an extension and an application, from a phenomenological angle and for
clinical purposes, of a French tradition of anthropological and sociological
literature which consistently stresses the interplay between the subjective,
the cultural and the technical (Faure, 2001), the tradition stretching from
Mauss (1979) and Leroi-Gourhan (1993) to Haudricourt (1990), Latour (2002)
and Stiegler (2006).
Within that tradition, it is an article by Franois Sigaut (1990) in partic-
ular which helped Dejours formalize the triadic structure through which the
psychodynamic of work can conduct precise analyses of the interaction of
subjective, social and technical dimensions in the work activity. This scheme
formalizes and elaborates on Marcel Mausss (1979) three-pole definition of
bodily technique as a traditional, efficient act. The methodological move
made by Dejours consists in starting from a broad anthropological under-
standing of techniques, which highlights the social and cultural dimensions
of technical use. On the basis of this social-cultural analysis of technical use,
work can then be defined in a substantive way as a form of technical use
constrained by its inclusion in the economic logic. The initial formal scheme
to approach work as a complex phenomenon is thus the following:

REAL

EGO OTHERS

The Ego-Real axis indicates the moment of the act properly speaking.
This is indeed an instrumental moment. However, seen from the perspec-
tive of the subject, it is more precisely the moment where the subject in
action faces the challenges of the instrumental task. There is never full trans-
parency between instrumental prescriptions and the subject putting them in
practice. This dimension that is true of all technical activity is most notably
true of the work activity.
The Real-Others axis denotes the efficiency of the act, an efficiency
that is instrumental of course, but also defined socially inasmuch as the effi-
ciency of the subjects act cannot be left to the sole judgement of the acting
subject. Efficiency is not an absolutely objective predicate, even if there are
strong objective constraints to it, but the product of a social judgement. This
does not amount to a culturalist dissolution of instrumental rationality. The
objective constraints are indeed very strong. But it is equally abstract to
believe that instrumental rationality simply imposes itself on the human agent
independent of the social context. The notion of instrumental judgement
brings together the two dimensions of instrumental constraints and socially
formed and socially imposed judgement. When technical activity is refined
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Deranty: What is work? 73

as work activity, that is, when the economic dimension is included, the
judgement of efficiency is doubled: beyond the purely technical dimension,
made concrete in the end product or the service provided, and measured by
productivity and quality, there is the utilitarian efficiency, the value created
by the technical act, its response to a social demand. This is the instrumen-
tality resulting from the profit motive: what was the social demand that trig-
gered the production process?
Finally, the intersubjective relation is the side of the tradition (Mauss),
the cultural moment of technique, since a technique that would not be
accepted in and defined through a culture would not make sense and would
not be seen to produce technical effects. Equally important in technique is
the dimension of its transmission, which is unconceivable if technique is not
also considered as a social practice. The specification of the activity, from
general technical to a work activity embedded in the economy, puts the
focus on the importance of the work collective. Indeed, the working subject
is socially integrated, first through the general division of labour, and more
specifically through the use of culturally defined techniques, through his or
her intervention in a specific technical world. But the cultural element of
work is also a third, more specific one. It points to the restricted yet highly
significant community of the work collective, the community of subjects who
are related on the basis of their knowledge and skill, the special knowledge
of the specific techniques involved, which no outsider can truly fathom.
Here, Dejours argues (2002: 60), the judgement on work is a judgement of
beauty: the acknowledgement of the quality of the activity and its end product
can only be brought about by the peers.

2. THE POLE OF THE OBJECT

One of the most interesting aspects emphasized by the psychological
approach to work is the ambiguous process of depersonalization that occurs
in the work activity. This process is ambiguous because it can be synony-
mous with domination, misrecognition, and exploitation, or conversely, can
also provide the conditions for subjective fulfilment through work.
This aspect is most prominent in the experience by the subject of a
world of objective constraints. This is the dimension that corresponds to the
OtherReal axis in the triangle of work. In Dejourss interpretation of Mauss,
this is the axis of the social-cultural definition and transmission of instru-
mental and economic efficiency. As we saw, economic efficiency is never a
purely objective judgement that can be severed from its cultural grounding.
As a judgement, it is proffered and imposed by socialized subjects on other
subjects and, notwithstanding its objectual dimension, is social and cultural
in that sense. As Mauss demonstrated, the instrumentalist dimension of human
activity need not be severed from the cultural aspect, if only because instru-
mental, utilitarian techniques are learnt and transmitted socially by human
subjects, notably through mimetic processes.
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74 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

Insofar as the task is prescribed, and insofar as the prescriptions obey

the logic of teleology and instrumentality, the subject is confronted with what
appears to be at first a purely objective world. Even if the prescriptions are
socially created and imposed, elaborated by the work engineers and ergono-
mists, deriving from the mechanical procedures created by the makers of the
machines, linked with administrative and organizational rules, and so on,
and are imposed through the complex of customer-hierarchy, even with all
the intersubjectivity at play in this realm, the norms governing this dimen-
sion are mainly instrumental, governed by the aims of production: quality
and quantity. This is typically the sphere where the alienation of subjective
life would seem to be unavoidable. The sphere of domination is constituted
by the networks of intersubjective relations, inside and outside the work-
place, but the sphere of direct alienation, where the subject loses himself or
herself as subjectivity, would be here. In her encounter with the overpower-
ing world of technical norms, quantitative targets, instrumental regulations,
procedures, mechanisms, and so on, the working subject seems to lose her-
self. Images of rigid and potentially pathogenic machines, work cadences and
mechanic processes impose themselves here. This is the domination of the
object over the subject.
The immediate aim of the psychology of work is clinical, and so it is
especially concerned with all the possible pathogenic aspects of the work
experience. Conversely, however, it also points to the ambiguous nature of
that experience and is able to highlight the specific normative dimensions
of the encounter with the objective world.
The first insight of that kind concerns the impact for the working subject
of his inscription within the division of labour. The division of labour, of
course, obeys a logic that is strictly functional and instrumental: its aims are
purely instrumental, to produce commodities for exchange; and its organiza-
tion is purely functional. With Plato (1991), social and political philosophy
from the very beginning had highlighted the functional and instrumental logic
governing the division of labour. But with Plato already, the moral implica-
tions of the division of labour had been identified, both in terms of its impact
on the subjects ethical life and on the ethical quality of society itself.
This is the point where Yves Clots analyses are invaluable, as he
develops historical and anthropological premises that are only implicit in
Dejours. Clot identifies three levels at which the inscription in the division
of labour gives work a decisive psychological function.
The first level relates to the psychological impact of the subjects inscrip-
tion in the social division of labour in its most general sense. This corresponds
to the type of social recognition studied by Axel Honneth (Fraser and Honneth,
2003: 1401) under the notion of performance principle, or Leistungsprinzip.
This is the norm, arising with modern society, according to which the subject
asks to have her contribution to society recognized. This is the recognition
of the self, not as an equal bearer of rights, but as an agent contributing in
a specific way to the reproduction of society.
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Deranty: What is work? 75

The point made by Clot bears similar traits to the German concept of
Leistungsprinzip. The decisive references, however, are no longer the social
behaviourist Mead, or contemporary sociology, but two classical authors in
French psychology, Henri Wallon (1930, 1947) and Ignace Meyerson (1948,
1987). Like Honneth, Clot establishes a strong connection between norma-
tivity, subjective well-being and the subjects inscription in the division of
social labour. By contrast with Honneth, however, Clot emphasizes the
material mediations through which this inscription is effectuated, and how
they impact on subjective well-being. Clot argues that the depersonalizing
aspects of work are not necessarily alienating in the pathological sense of the
term, but can also play a structuring role for the subject. He renders this idea
by playing on the different meanings of occupation: by losing herself in the
working activity, the subject can deal in new ways with her pre-occupations,
the existential and psychological content of subjective life that preoccupies
but also literally precedes or lies outside the occupation. Here Clot follows
closely the work of the psychologists of work organizations Curie and Dupuy
(1994). Because of its depersonalizing logic, due to the objective constraints
that are indifferent to the subjects idiosyncratic personality structure, work
forces a rearrangement of psychological life, which is not necessarily detri-
mental but can also be a source of subjective liberation. Work from that
perspective is seen normatively as a potential educating factor as it forces
upon the subject the challenge of facing objective constraints and the highly
specific social constraints associated with them (orders, demands, expecta-
tions, and so on). We might speculate that the psychological function of work
consists in the rupture it introduces between the personal preoccupations of
the subject and the social occupations he or she is required to accomplish
(2004: 65).
The subject is taken outside of herself through the work activity, but
this distance put between the self and her immediate physiological and affec-
tive life is not necessarily an alienation in the pathological sense; it can well
be an important, indeed a necessary, step in self-realization. This is a process
that can allow for an increase in self-distantiation and reflexivity. The self-
forgetting that is made possible through the use of tools, the constraints of
technical prescriptions and work processes can be a process of Bildung.
If we focus further on the social dimension attached to the objective
constraints, similar arguments can be made; a potentially positive alienation
can occur. By working, the subject is forced to leave the idiosyncracy of
subjective life and the intimacy of family life and is thrown into wider society.
She or he takes place in the division of labour. It is precisely the fact that
this social dimension is tightly attached to objective imperatives obeying a
functional logic that can have a liberating aspect. If the rules governing the
social world qua economic are objective, this can represent a liberation
from other social worlds structured around norms that can be, in some cases,
more rigid or inegalitarian. The strong functional and instrumental dimen-
sions of the subjects contribution to the division of labour, the fact that their
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76 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

contribution can count beyond their other identity-features (race, gender,

sexuality, etc.) can potentially be a powerful medium of self-affirmation. The
example of the integration of women in the labour market during the two
world wars of the last century is a paradigmatic example of this. An objec-
tive type of social recognition is at play here, which undercuts other social
value judgements:
The centrifugal rhythms of social work and its technical and impersonal forms
of solidarity interfere with the preoccupations of the subject. As he or she
realises her or himself in them, these rhythms grant her or him independence
towards others, they protect him or her against the excision from the real.
Thanks to the encounters that they impose on the subject with an object obeying
norms that are different from the subjective norms, they give the subject back
to herself or himself. Work is a demarcation from oneself, inscription in a different
history: a collective history crystallised in social genres that are generally suffi-
ciently equivocal and diverging to allow and demand of each and everyone
that they put in their own contribution (mettre du sien) and get out of them-
selves. (2004: 71)

Against objections that would criticize a naively dehistoricized reference

to work, Clots reference to historical psychology, and especially the writings
of Henri Wallon and Ignace Meyerson, function as a powerful rejoinder.
Wallon and Meyerson had studied in detail the shifts in the psychological
function of work on the basis of an anthropological understanding of its
hominizing and educating potential (Meyerson, 1948, 1987; Wallon, 1930).
This dovetails with Leroi-Gouhrans famous theses on the phylogenetic
centrality of technical use. The anthropological perspective reconnects with
a historical perspective on the psychological function of work. A third central
reference could be mentioned here, outside of the French tradition, but with
very similar arguments concerning the decisive impact on the subject of the
inscription in the division of labour. I am thinking of Marcuses dual account
of work (1955: 128; 1988: 256): as alienated labour, work is the main vector
of surplus-repression, and so the utopia of emancipation requires an over-
coming of this toil, but on the other hand liberation also means liberated
work, and points to the potentially positive function of work for the subject
when work fully enables her to engage in socially necessary labour.
Together, these strands help to see how it is possible to maintain the
argument that work plays a central psychological function, without ignoring
societal differentiation and, as a result of it, the diversification of the modes
of identity formation. Accordingly, one would then say that it is precisely
because individual life is now pluralized as it is subject to diverging social
logics that work becomes all the more central. As Clot puts it (1998: 2256;
2004: 70), work can today be even more central for subjects, precisely because
it has lost its substantive central place in post-industrial society.
It is precisely because life has differentiated its insertions, precisely because of
the decrease in mono-activity and the increase in biographical contingency that
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Deranty: What is work? 77

work is all the more invested by subjects. They ask of work a lot more than
before. In particular, they demand of it to become a milieu where these lives
can be invented. Work is therefore less at the centre and paradoxically more
at the centre. (2004: 70)

Below the general social level, Yves Clot emphasizes a second fascin-
ating aspect of the depersonalizing aspect of work with important structuring
dimensions. This is the subjective aspect of work relating to the specificity
of a profession: the highly specialized ethicality of a professional milieu that
fuses the intersubjective and the technical. Clot (2004: 348) argues that the
best way to approach this reality of the subject at work is by paralleling it
with the importance of rhetorical genres in language use as demonstrated
by Bakhtin. In his criticism of Saussure, Bakhtin showed that language use
was not well explained only through the classical dichotomy of language and
speech. The missing element in this dichotomy is the social: the individual
use of language is made possible by the recourse to socially defined schemes,
the genres of discourse. The genres are highly effective structures that allow
communication between individuals to occur by mobilizing a complex array
of social and communicative assumptions that never have to become explicit,
unless communication breaks down and the rules and structures of the genres
have to be reflected upon. The genre pre-determines the choice of vocab-
ulary, tone, style, grammar, and so on. Because it is a complex, structured
scheme that is shared by all in the community of language, the genre of
discourse allows for a highly efficient performance of communicative action
as it coordinates the different perspectives with a minimum of actual, explicit
exchange.
The actual exchange of signs is minimal for a maximum of commu-
nicative efficiency. Similarly, the ergonomic studies quoted and the studies
performed by Clot himself demonstrate the vital importance of genres of
activity in work places. The genre of activity is an informal mode of action
coordination that is essential for the actual, effective instrumental action to
be successful. The mechanical application of technical rules would lead to
the interruption or a dramatic slowing down of the production process. Only
the implicit rules, forms of behaviour, types of inter-individual coordinations,
can fluidify the rigid production processes imposed from outside. A whole
universe of unwritten professional rules makes the application of explicit
rules work. The importance of this type of intersubjective, largely embodied
mode of cooperation is massively confirmed by interactionist cognitive science
(Hutchins, 1995).
The professional genres of activity are a fusion of technical constraint
and social interaction. They are determined by the material production process
and the economic aims, but they form a highly specific professional milieu.
Such milieus are highly hermetic, closed to the outside, because they are
formed around highly specialized skills that can only be acquired by the
working subjects through apprenticeship and a long, intimate frequentation
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78 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

of the professional milieu. This is one sense of the judgement of efficiency

mentioned above. Only the individuals initiated to a trade can truly under-
stand what is meant in that context by efficiency, can truly fathom whether
or not something works properly. Of course, in the end, the judgement is
objective, instrumental, the ends are achieved or not, the instruments were
properly used or not, the clients are satisfied or dissatisfied, and so on. But
because the objective ends can be achieved only through the creation of such
professional lifeworlds, retroactively, these specialized social microcosms
acquire a quasi-monopoly on the semantics of efficiency. In particular, they
have their own definition of what constitutes failure and success (Hughes,
1951).
These genres have a depersonalizing aspect, since they demand that
the subject integrate social rules, technical skills, forms of behaviour adapted
to the task at hand and unrelated to specific personalities. But it is clear again
that the depersonalization that occurs in the acquisition of such a genre can
represent a form of positive alienation. Here, the parallel with language is
highly suggestive. We use language, a symbolic form shared by all, in genres
of discourse, that is, in socially and culturally defined schemes, but this is the
only way for us to actually express ourselves and express our individuality.
Finally, Yves Clots analyses point to an even more localized form of
depersonalization with important structuring effects. This time, this is the
essential interaction of the subject with the world of tools, machines and
technical procedures. This material dimension is essential to the professional
genres. Clot (2004: 136) notes in particular a very special kind of object that
he terms the objectified memory of the inner environment, the traces of
technical procedures determined collectively that are objectified in objects,
the material witnesses of the unfathomable inner environment of work.
The mastery of the genre is intimately connected with the appropriate use
of these objects, since they crystallize the secrets of the trade. Again, the
acquisition of such mastery involves a process of depersonalization that is
at the same time the condition of greater autonomy and richer subjectivity.
Moreover, by learning to use these special objects, one in fact learns much
more than using an instrument properly. In fact, the skill puts one in touch
with the whole community of experts: the use of these special mnemotechnic
objects is a mediation to enter the secret community of the trade.
Clot does not hesitate to generalize and interpret all object- and tool-
related activities as forms of social mediation. In the background lies the
basic premise of the anthropology of techniques that sees in techniques an
externalization and concretion of the human mind in its historicality. If that
is the case, then, at a very basic level, the individual use of tools and tech-
niques puts one in touch with the social power and imaginary of a given
historical time. More directly, though, the use of instrumental objects and
processes leads to a form of social integration because of the anthropo-
logical origin and effect of the division of labour which determines the use
of instrumental entities. By confronting him- or herself with a tool or a
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Deranty: What is work? 79

machine, the working subject indirectly yet irreducibly engages with many
other social individuals: the makers of the machine, the individuals who
commanded the construction of the machine, the engineers and maintenance
workers understanding the inner workings of the machine, the other users
of the machine engaged in the same genre of activity, the workers down-
stream relying on the finished product for their operations, etc. There is no
profession, even in those involving mainly emotional work, that does not
involve the use of material objects in which social relations are solidified.
However, as Clot says, despite its strong instrumental and social over-
determination, no technical object carries its mode of functioning on its face.
Its proper use has to be learnt, just as much as the belonging to a profes-
sional group by the mastery of a genre of activity involves a learning process.
The question of personal style re-emerges here, the dialectic of impersonality
and personal style. Every worker engages with the objects, tools and machines
of his or her workplace differently, despite the often highly constraining
aspect of instrumental objects and procedures. Indeed, this is one of the worst
aspects of Taylorist work: to have made the individual appropriation of objec-
tive work processes so difficult, indeed to have wilfully intended to make
them unattainable for working subjects.

3. THE SUBJECT OF WORK

Dejourss methodological starting point is more directly phenomeno-
logical. It is this focus on the phenomenological content of work that led
Dejours to give such a central place to the insight, gained from ergonomics,
that real work is concerned with the gap between the task to be done and
the activity that is actually done to fulfil the task. Dejours thus constantly
stresses that element of working activity: which cannot be obtained by the
strict execution of the prescribed organisation of work and which working
subjects therefore must face in order to effectively perform their task.
The prescribed organization of work takes into account demands that
stem from a number of others: the external demands from the client and the
hierarchy (and indeed the shareholders), the specific social context consti-
tuted by the working peers who impose specific constraints on the activity,
and all the economic and technical constraints imposed upon the activity of
work and defining it as such. The real, on the other hand, is simply made
up of all the elements of the concrete reality of work that could not be
anticipated, regulated or coordinated in advance by and through the organiz-
ation of work. The real element in work is the element that opposes the
simple, direct realization of the prescriptions for the accomplishment of the
task. Dejours defines it as:

whatever, in the world, lets itself be known through its resistance to technical
mastery and scientific knowledge. In other words, the real is that element that
makes technique fail when all the resources of technique have been correctly
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80 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

used. The real . . . is that which exists in the world and escapes us and becomes
in turn an enigma to be deciphered. (2002: 401)

The real is not necessarily the material in the sense of the Sartrian in-
itself. It is whatever resists the accomplishment of the task. It is the element
that separates the task to be done from the activity that actually does it. Often,
the real is purely social. Dejours, for example, highlights the fact that work
organizations can regularly be counter-productive, overly complex to the point
of self-contradiction, that the prescriptions, the rules and regulations, the
technical procedures governing work processes often contain contradictory
or counter-productive elements that make the activity of workers more rather
than less difficult. In such cases, the real is of direct social origin. But in
all cases, something resists the efforts of working subjects when they attempt
to apply the rules that have been defined to achieve productive ends.
The discovery of the gap between the prescriptive and the real leads
to the redefinition of work as working, that is to say, as the activity demanded
of the subject in order for the prescribed task to be accomplished despite
the prescribed rules being obstructed by unforeseen events and disruptions.
The redefinition of work as working is based on the premise that the risk
of failure is an irreducible element of work: the instrumental ends can be
achieved only when all the social and material obstacles that came in the
way of the technical procedures have been circumvented. From the psycho-
logical perspective, work consists in the personal investment demanded of
the subject to bridge the gap between the prescriptive and the real.
What emerges as the main feature of working . . . is that, even when the work
is well conceived, even when the organization of work is rigorous, even when
the instructions and procedures are clear, it is impossible to achieve quality if
the orders are scrupulously respected. Indeed, ordinary work situations are rife
with unexpected events, breakdowns, incidents, operational anomalies, organ-
izational inconsistency and things that are simply impossible to predict, arising
from the materials, tools, and machines as well as from other workers, colleagues,
bosses, subordinates, the team, the chain of authority, the clients, and so on.
In short, there is no such thing as purely mechanical work. (2007a: 72)

This is a tremendously important dimension to highlight because of the

correction it brings to current definitions of work, in sociology and philoso-
phy, and more generally to common representations about the contemporary
world of work. It highlights the fact that science and technology, however
efficient and masterful they have become, still cannot control the contingency
at the heart of reality and. especially, at the heart of the reality of work. The
reality of the world of work is today ignored to such an extent that there is
now a great discrepancy between the reality of production, a world full of
mishaps, accidents, failures, botched projects, and the representations of it
in the public imaginary, as a world totally ruled by scientific-technological
control.
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Deranty: What is work? 81

The focus on the part that the subject must necessarily bring to work
means that there is no mechanical work. Even the most Taylorized form of
work involves some participation and adaptation on the part of the subject.
This leads to a general point: against the widespread diagnosis of the de-
materialization of social worlds, and notably of the world of work, a diag-
nosis that gives the impression that contemporary (working) subjects are
now engaged only in pure cognitive, affective and communicative exchanges,
the psychology of work shows that subjects continue to be engaged massively
with the resistance of the material world. Furthermore, the insistence on the
active engagement of working subjects means that all work is to some extent
theoretical and practical at the same time. Theoretical because it involves, to
some degree, a reflexive adaptation to the contingent changes and challenges
of the performance of the task, and practical because the entire person is
involved in the performance of the task. The key term used by Dejours to
encapsulate this aspect of working is that of practical intelligence. All intel-
ligence in a work situation is practical, and all practice is forced to be intel-
ligent, because of the adaptation demanded by the real.
One obvious objection to this approach, with its emphasis on the subjec-
tive investment demanded of workers, is that it bears no significance for other
disciplines since it simply focuses on the subjective experience of an activity
that can also be objectively described, and especially one that can be quan-
tified for the purpose of calculation and prediction as in economic theory.
However, the focus on work as a subjective activity brings to light elements
that are not just elements of work as a mere subjective experience but of
work as such, of its very ontology, so to speak. This is the deepest sense
of the theory of the real and of the challenge to the subjects efforts to realize
the prescription. The key conclusion to be drawn from the gap between the
prescriptive and the real is that if the prescribed organization of work is
followed to the letter, the end product, its desired quality or quantity, will
not be achieved. This is in fact exactly what happens in forms of strike that
make a point of following every rule (a grve du zle in French). The subjec-
tive investment is an irreducible and necessary moment in the work process.
Without subjective mobilization, no production is possible.
Employers and managers have known this since there has been a
division of labour. No work is possible without the active involvement of the
workers, not for the trivial reason that one needs workers to do the work,
but because one needs practically intelligent workers, even in seemingly
unintelligent work, for the production process to be efficient at all. This in-
sight has tremendous critical implications for theoretical and applied discip-
lines that use overly formal or abstract definitions of work as, for example,
neoclassical economics. First, it implies that without taking into account the
necessary part played by subjective activity, one cannot truly account for
production itself and for productivity. In particular, it becomes impossible
to give a theoretical account of what matters most to economics: namely, the
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82 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

explanation of the ways of raising productivity. Whilst neoclassical econ-

omics operates with the thinnest definitions of work as disutility and oppor-
tunity cost, purposefully abstracting from the content of work, it is forced
to add to itself an ad hoc complement in the form of management theory
and personnel economics to account for the motivation of workers. Despite
its claim to avoid reference to any psychological or anthropological element,
neo-classical economics in fact presupposes a crude psychology that it can-
not fully suppress. It is the basic assumption that given the opportunity,
human beings would rather not work than work, or that work is in essence
irksome. Already in the founders of the neo-classical tradition, the definition
of work, and in particular the meaning of disutility, were not as impover-
ished (Spencer, 2003). By contrast, a significant implication of Dejourss theory
of subjective investment in work is that in normal conditions there is no need
to attempt to motivate workers, that it is impossible to prescribe the psychic
mobilisation, because fundamentally it is unnecessary. The problem is in fact
the exact opposite: how to make sure that the mobilisation of intelligence
and personality is not broken (2000: 221). This is an insight that had already
been articulated by Adam Smith (1999: 185): If masters would always listen
to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather
to moderate than to animate the application of many of their workmen.
The shift to new techniques of production and management in the late
1970s can be taken as a vindication of the new definition of work in the
psychology of work: the concrete practice of innovation in production tech-
niques has proven the psychology of work right since the shift to new
techniques of production has consisted to a large extent in the massive enrol-
ment of workers subjectivities in the production process.
Furthermore, as this last point also suggests, the realization that the
human factor is an irreducible element in the production process opens onto
a robust normative and critical stance (Deranty, 2008). In particular, those
disciplines that operate with thin definitions of work, ignoring the subjective
element, end up doing great injustice to the subjective demands of workers,
notably by forcing reality to conform to their abstraction, as in the case of
policy work inspired by neoclassical economics. This remark also targets all
normative disciplines, like moral and political philosophy, including those
that define themselves as critical.
Before Clot studied in detail the specific logic of professional milieus,
Dejours had already emphasized the importance of the specific type of
sociality and sociability involved in work: it is through coordinated activity
that men and women can face the challenge of applying rules and processes
to attain the ends of the utilitarian economic task. Next to subjective involve-
ment, the coordination of activity, first in the form of prescription imposed
from above, but also in the form of horizontal cooperation, constitutes in-
dispensable moments in the realization of the utilitarian task. Without co-
ordination and cooperation, the productive ends cannot be met.
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Deranty: What is work? 83

This new element arising from the definition of work at first seems to
contradict the previous point about the importance of subjective investment.
Prescribed rules and processes do not carry their application on their fore-
head. They must be learnt, appropriated, mastered individually by each
subject. This requires a work of personal interpretation and adaptation. More
importantly, the resistance of the real means that the subject can perform
the task only by stepping out of the tradition and the norm. Because the
prescriptive aspect of the labour process is not sufficient to achieve the task,
the subject is forced to trick the real: he or she is forced to find the resources
in his or her practical intelligence to cheat the material and social resistance.
The subjective involvement in the task therefore leads at first to the radical
solitude of the producer. This irreducibly individual aspect of the applica-
tion of rules and processes carries with it the risk of being incompatible with
other activities, when the group is considered. An individual solution to a
specific problem can become an obstacle if it obstructs the strategies of the
other workers or of the whole group. This is why, Dejours argues, coordin-
ation from above can never be sufficient, and the real performance of work
always relies on horizontal cooperation.
Such cooperation, Dejours argues, is impossible without some minimal
normative requirements. The coordination of actions in the work situation
is dependent on the establishment of cooperation amongst workers. As with
Clots notion of a genre of activity, Dejourss key point is again that real
work requires a common framework of understanding that is simultaneously
of technical-instrumental and of a normative-intersubjective nature, a frame
that allows for a basic form of understanding to take place, without which
actions could not be coordinated.
What Dejours emphasizes more than Clot is the communicative moment
in cooperation. The analogies with Habermas are fully appropriate: through
the notion of genre, Clot describes the professional world as a lifeworld, whilst
Dejours insists on the communicative practices that take place within such
lifeworlds and make the work cooperation possible. The irony, of course,
is that the action in question is now an instrumental one. As Dejours shows
(2002: 629; 2007a: 82), since the work process requires cooperation between
workers, it functions best if the individualized forms of subjective investment
that allow for the mastering of the task are confronted and discussed in a
public forum, where a consensus can hopefully be found on the best way
to realize the production. The communication at play obeys similar norma-
tive constraints as public discourse in general: via the justification of claims
through valid arguments acceptable to all and the publicizing of effective pro-
ductive methods, which requires a basic trust amongst the agents involved
in the production project.
This is quite an ironic twist. Dejours uses Habermass theory of commu-
nicative action to highlight dimensions of work that disappeared in Habermass
dualistic analysis of the forms of action. Dejours and Clot after him were thus
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84 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

able to identify the essential normative moments that are required in instru-
mental action for its success. The analytical distinction between instrumental
and communicative action is a dangerous simplification if it is interpreted in
a reified way: for instrumental ends to be coordinated, an essential norma-
tive component is required. A similar point directed at other classical philo-
sophical definitions of work, like that of Arendt, could be made. Dejours
manages to demonstrate that all work, including the most mechanical, is
never reducible to poiesis or techne, that is, to an action obeying pure
instrumental rules, but always constitutes also a form of praxis, insofar as it
involves the whole ethical character of the individual, relies on coordination
and cooperation, and necessitates fundamental ethical norms, like trust and
the symmetrical exchange of justifiable arguments (1998: 180).
An important consequence of this definition of work from a psycho-
logical perspective is the role played by recognition in it. This is only a
consequence of the overall model, not in itself a part of the definition, but
a significant consequence nonetheless. Dejourss theory of the subject insists
on the structuring dimension of suffering at the core of subjectivity and
especially of subjectivity at work (1998: 181; 2003: 14951; 2007b). If working
in its concrete sense means bringing about the productive ends by circum-
venting the obstacles to the application of prescriptions, then work is essen-
tially an experience that puts the subject in question: work in the concrete
sense is the experience of the failure of rules and regulations, it is a chal-
lenge to the subjects capacity to innovate and trick the resistance of the
material and the social; it is often an affront to personal physical and psycho-
logical abilities, in any case always a challenge to the identity of the subject.
Since the prescribed rules show their limitations, work is also always an
experience on the verge of the illegal, always a form of cheating with the
rules. All of this makes work an experience that is structurally inducing of
suffering. But as we saw, it is in cooperation that the task can actually be
performed and the individual resources put to the task acknowledged. It is
therefore precisely through this recognition of the subjects contribution that
the suffering necessarily involved in work can be sublimated into pleasure,
i.e. in a subjectivity or identity-enhancing experience:
the sense of suffering depends on recognition. When the quality of my work
is recognised, all my efforts, angst, doubts, disappointments, discouragements
become full of meaning. All that suffering had not been in vain; not only has
it contributed to the division of labour, but it has made me, in return, a different
subject from the one I was before recognition. The recognition of work, or
indeed of the product of work, can be repatriated by the subject in the
construction of his or her identity. . . . Without the benefice of recognition of
his or her work, and failing the power to thereby access the meaning of his
or her lived relation to work, the subject faces his or her own suffering, and
it alone. (Dejours, 1998: 37)

Recognition here is recognition of the individual workers contribution

to the production process. Dejours makes this a key element to differentiate
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Deranty: What is work? 85

between pathological and identity-enhancing work practices. Recognition in

this model combines two of the important possible meanings of the term:
the agents active contribution must be epistemically acknowledged, and a
moral acknowledgement must be granted as acknowledgement of the agents
contribution. If the judgement on the agents practical contribution to the
production process becomes central, then the social component of the norma-
tivity of work does not limit itself to the general question of the social status
of a given activity defined as profession, in other words, to the performance
principles. Two further social relations related to work also become signifi-
cant. First, the relation internal to the production process, between the agent
and the hierarchy, receives its distinct normative weight. It is no longer simply
reducible to the general social recognition, nor to a simple instrumental rela-
tion of defining and applying means for productive ends. The lack of recog-
nition of the workers skills, in as much as they are practically and actively
engaged, becomes a major source of suffering. This is a denial of recognition
not of the status but of the practical contribution to the production process.
Here, the subjects inscription in the division of labour finds a new, more
concrete meaning, with the emphasis on the actual place in which the working
subject is directly involved: the workplace.
This leads to a second form of recognition: the recognition of the
subjects contribution to the production process can actually occur only in
the actual workplace, amongst the peers. This gives its proper name to the
normative importance of work collectives for working subjects. The partici-
pation in a genre and the integration in a professional field are the pathway
to recognition, which itself can be, in good cases, an experience of sublima-
tion of suffering. The point to stress here is that recognition is a necessary
consequence of the definition of work as coordinated activity of subjects
facing the opposition of the real. It means that recognition is a necessary
normative component of work, but in a more concrete and differentiated
sense than in social philosophy.

Jean-Philippe Deranty is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Macquarie Univer-

sity. He has written extensively on European philosophy and critical theory. His recent
publications include Beyond Communication: A Critical Study of Axel Honneths Social
Philosophy (Brill, 2009) [email: Jean-Philippe.Deranty@scmp.mq.edu.au]

Notes
1. See the exhaustive presentation of the psychodynamics of work by Molinier
(2006), who insists in particular on the strong interdisciplinarity characterizing
Dejourss project.
2. See Daniellou (2004) for a presentation of Wisners important contributions to
ergonomics.
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86 Thesis Eleven (Number 98 2009)

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