39 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
39 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
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title="Instructions to the Doppelganger"
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has_items=["item3.md", "item4.md"]
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# A problem of language
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The Work Environment was a tool for organizers and workers together to begin to research and understand the risks to which their jobs would expose them. The booklet focuses on noxiousness, which it breaks down into 4 groups of factors:
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1) Environmental conditions: noise, temperature, light, ventilation, humidity…
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2) Production-specific elements, such as: gas, dust, smoke, fumes, exposure to chemicals…
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3) Physical factors: exertion, muscular fatigue, lack of sufficient rest and sleep, excessive rhythms, etc…
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4) Mental load: identifying on the one end of the spectrum boredom and monotony and at the other end stress, anxiety, overstimulation and humiliation.
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These four noxiousness factors made discussing health conditions easier. The classification it proposed was of immediate understandability because it was based on the experience of workers.
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And this was because the method upon which it was based was one of political translation itself.
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The person responsible for The Work Environment was a doctor based in Turin, a former partisan named Ivar Oddone, who wanted to better understand what is going on at FIAT cars, the major factory in town, what is making the workers unwell or subject to accidents. But as an external person he is not allowed in, and when he tried to talk to the workers at the factory gates, they speak two different languages…In the words of Gianni Marchetto, one of the workers I interviewed, “Oddone was not able to make himself understood, and in turn he wouldn’t understand us workers much either…”. He didn’t know anything about the production process, the names of the tools and of the operations. Likewise we had no clue about the technical language used by him as a doctor, even if he was well-meaning…”
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Oddone’s solution was to propose to a group of fifteen workers an experiment with what became known as “the technique of instructions to the doppelganger” – where he would ask the worker:
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“Give me all the information that would allow me to replace you without anyone noticing”
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How does your day start? What do you have for breakfast, do you have breakfast, how do you get to work, are you late or on time? Etc…
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Whenever the storytelling would deviate from describing the minutiae of everyday life, the narrator would be interrupted and asked to go back to giving instructions “as one would when teaching another how to drive”.
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In a way not too far off from the consciousness’ raising techniques that the feminist movement was experimenting with during the same years. the instructions to the doppelganger technique allowed workers to account for their quotidian experience, which in the dialogues was mapped through 4 key relationships:
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- with the machine and the job description proper
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- with the managers and the bosses
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- with working peers and colleagues
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- with political organizations (such as the party or the union)
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Finally, a key aspect of the instructions to the doppelganger was that they were held as group interviews, where collective patterns of noxiousness would become noticeable and become the bases for political struggles and demands.
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