The Politics of Everyday

Résumé En

Stealing, doing something unauthorized, occupying places, feeling silly and on the edge… how can we account for these practices that make the everyday? Why would the notion of everyday be interesting for understanding people’s experiences at work? How can we make sense of the myriad of disconnected actions, gestures and encounters that make the everyday? This essay takes its inspiration from Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau’s specific investigations of everyday life to draw a picture of current workplaces; it aims to capture some particulars of symbolic and material life at work, as well as some representations of lived experiences that are shared by people at work. We defend a dialectical view of the everyday by showing the link between forces of alienation and forces of emancipation. We draw from interviews to suggest the extraordinary influence of the ordinary actions over our lives.