L’agir communicationnel face au travail professionnel

Comment se fait-il que Jürgen Habermas exclue de sa théorie de la communication le champ du travail, alors que travail et communication semblent indissociables sur le plan empirique ? En prenant appui à la fois sur le dernier livre de Habermas (Droit et démocratie) et sur des exemples tirés de ses propres travaux, Philippe Zarifian s’interroge sur les raisons de ce paradoxe. Il nous montre que si le monde du travail n’échappe pas aux logiques instrumentales de l’univers économique, les acteurs de ce monde sont néanmoins porteurs de formes de communication difficilement réductibles au pur intérêt individuel. Un tel constat semble plaider en faveur d’un dialogue renouvelé entre les théories du philosophe allemand et la sociologie du travail.Why does Habermas exclude labour from his theory of communication, whenever work and communication seem to be empirically inseparable? This inquiry into the reasons for this paradox raises questions on the possibility of reviving the dialogue between Jürgen Habermas’s theories and the sociology of work. Based on the German philosopher’s book, Law and democracy, and on examples drawn from his own work, Zarifian shows that, although the world of work does not escape from economic instrumentality, actors therein nonetheless convey forms of communication (for example, the willingness to cope “together”) that can hardly be reduce to purely individual interests. Far from reflecting weakened social norms (as Habermas supposes), these new forms of communication prove how inadequate these norms are for the new exchanges of meaning taking place beyond organizations and labour unions among wage‑earners. Questions thus arise about the inevitable tension, in the market and world of production, between the requirement to obtain results and the “modalities of intersubjective cooperation”, between manipulative and “communicational” actions