Institutions as double agents: programming discourses and modal adjustments
Résumé
Paolo Fabbri suggested that every social actor finds himself straddling networks of explicit and inexplicit relations, between roles claimed and roles assumed secretly. This is also true for institutional subjects and their programming discourses that are affected by a double bind: it is necessary to present the organization of a series of coordinated actions according to a purpose and at same time to request a wise interpretation of the instructions, adapting them to the context of application. In this sense, programming discourse aims to a communication design that is prescriptive but that also needs a rhetoric of appropriation, to distribute the responsibility and engagement between the interacting parties. Always struggling against a lack of organization or inexperienced plans, programming discourses, when implemented, must rely on the skills of the performer, which suggests that the limits of their ambitions and their maieutic vocation should be specified in advance: to have qualified decisions expressed. In this theoretical contribution, we attempt to focus on some defining features of the class of programming discourses and to clarify the circularity of mandates that connects instructions and executions, exhortations and initiatives, initiations and expert knowledge.