Extract
[...] In most cases, there is a significant gap between the reality of work and the work determined in advance, but in order for tasks to be carried out, the employee is forced to deploy their knowledge and ingenuity. In other words, the realization of work emanates largely from the worker's perspicacity. In a situation where the employee is limited to a mechanistic implementation of instructions and orders that are imposed on them beforehand, one cannot claim to achieve tasks. By finding a way to make work real to the point of detaching from the initial prescriptions, the employee transforms it into human work. [...]
[...] So it is essential that man has long developed a drive force from the appearance of his first drives until the moment when sublimation becomes his ultimate drive power. Now speaking of the situation of the domination of the employee with regard to his hierarchical superior, sublimation manifests itself at the moment when he is fascinated by his achievements, his exploits, for example by dint of investing heavily in a complex task, he manages to achieve it without being really experienced in the field but thanks to his simple resourcefulness. [...]
[...] It is his individual emancipation. It is in a certain way a way of 'reappropriation of his forces' against the dominant powers. It is also a detachment from a state of dependence, of subjection. If we stick to the definition proposed by Emmanuel Brassat, unconditional, 'emancipation would be a passage, or a rupture, the becoming independent of a person who would cease to see themselves subjected to a domination, who would gain access to a free exercise of the will, or who would finally find in themselves the power to decide on their actions.' (Brassat E. [...]
[...] Then we can also cite another visible form of workplace domination through the non-standardization of work methods or the standard is 'defined as the best known way at a given time to perform a task.' (Demetrescoux Radu (2019), The Lean Toolbox, Tool The Standard, editor: Dunod) Also defined as an operating mode, the standard is necessary to have some assurance that tasks are performed by all employees of a company, for example, according to the rules of the art and 'best practices of the moment.' (ibid) Nevertheless, as superiors want to exert their control over employees, they want at all costs for the latter to operate differently. For example, let's take the case of a health function. The clinic manager explicitly requires the nurse to vary her operating mode from one patient to another, otherwise she is threatened with dismissal. She cannot perform the same treatment on people suffering from the same disease. She is obliged to administer different care, so her work loses its meaning. [...]
[...] Regarding sublimation in individual emancipation, it is a question of judgment of beauty in 'aesthetic terms which first connote the conformity of the work accomplished with the rules of art'. Further on, the same Dejours speaks of a second aspect of the judgment of beauty thanks to the originality of the work accomplished by the worker which is like no other, as well as the quality of the service provided. The judgment in the register of doing is reintegrated into that of being, of identity. [...]
