Could craftsmanship, which is too much criticized, be a model for intellectual life, but also for reforming contemporary forms of work? This is what a young lawyer and philosopher who took a detour through the carpentry profession advocates.
Playing the violin is a very easy thing. All you have to do is slide the bow over the strings and pluck them with the other hand. If no one in their right mind agrees with this proposition, all it takes is replacing the violinist’s gestures with those of ordinary manual work, such as sawing or nailing, to get everyone to agree. Contrary to these clichés, Arthur Lochmann’s book seeks to rehabilitate the artisanal gesture by celebrating its complexity. In the tradition of Richard Sennett, he goes so far as to consider that craftsmanship is a model to follow to cure the ills of contemporary work.
The author has followed an unusual path. After studying law and philosophy, he learned the carpentry trade with the Fédération compagnonnique before working in several companies in France and elsewhere. After this escapade of about ten years, he has now returned to university and is completing his training as a lawyer. From this experience, he draws a sincere story, supported by solid philosophical references. Accessible while being complex, nuanced without being affected, the subject is colored by the use of professional vocabulary of which he reveals the material and symbolic meanings. Arthur Lochmann is not the first intellectual to venture into a workshop, but unlike Simone Weil or the Maoists of the 1970s, his project is not to lead a revolution. Rather, it is about journeying in search of oneself and renewing one’s relationship with reality by learning a trade in order to arrive at “thinking materially by using one’s hands and accepting the verdict of things” (p. 197). Drawing on this experience, which is described in the first part of the book, the author draws lessons from it in order to propose a model that frees society from bullshit jobs and the race for disruption.
The psychological benefits of practical work
The experience that the author shares is first of all that of the encounter with a material with which he has developed an intimate relationship. Touching the wood, recognizing its essence by the smell of its sawdust, learning to read its fibers to be able to place it in the right direction by placing it “with the heart in the sun” (p. 17), feeling the sliding of the tool on the material as if it were an extension of the hand. A poetic and multisensory approach without being contemplative, since the challenge is to succeed in taming the material by putting techniques into play.
But measuring, sawing or assembling are operations whose complexity only becomes apparent when you try them. “To the outside observer, a good gesture always seems simple and easy” (p. 58). The narrator learns at the cost of a certain physical suffering that the apprentice’s body is a soft dough. Backaches and blisters on his hands are tests of his enthusiasm, all signs that his body is shaped by work. It is the trade that is coming home.
The evidence of the concrete (if it is cut too short, it shows) contrasts with academic speculations. Intellectual reflection, if it remains necessary, is no longer sufficient. We must learn to think with the whole body, to coordinate the eye, the brain and the hand, while having a full awareness of an often dangerous environment. The perception of the world is increased and we can then tend towards the perfect gesture through repetition. Or more precisely, the author tells us, we manage to make acceptable the inevitable imprecisions linked to each operation to the point of being able to say by looking at two well-assembled pieces of wood that “it’s a doe”.
This confrontation with matter brings psychological benefits and it is by going through the path of humility that one feels pride in having achieved “something which is outside of oneself” (p. 91).
The carpenter’s work always has a collective dimension, since it is the last link in a chain that goes back to the first of them. The author evokes the history of the profession, its culture and its traditions, but is not fooled by an immemorial past. “Each roof is a kind of laboratory” (p. 138) where ancient knowledge and technical advances are tested. If a frame has resisted the passage of time, it testifies to the effectiveness of the methods used to build it.
The culture of the craft is notably approached by the evocation of the art of the line, a sort of applied geometry allowing the tracing and cutting of complex pieces which, once assembled, will transform a two-dimensional drawing into a volume occupying space. Once in place, the framework arouses a feeling of control over the real world. The object is visible to all and it is there for a long time, perhaps until a colleague from the following century takes another look at the work.
But just as the best framework is always erected provisionally, the incorporation of the profession is called into question over the course of aging and experience, something the author did not have time to experiment with. Continuing to work despite the reduction of bodily resources is, however, part of professional knowledge, and we would have liked to learn more about it.
Social project or among ourselves?
The title of the book is a response to the description of the evils of advanced modernity described by Zygmunt Bauman in Liquid life. Constrained by social temporalities in permanent acceleration, the contemporary individual has become unstable himself by changing jobs, homes, and families during his existence. Nothing permanent can be built on the scale of a human life anymore and here is the individual who has become plural and liquid in an increasingly immaterial world. In this context, how can we give meaning to work when it is deteriorating under the combined effects of flexibility and the dispossession of know-how?
In the continuity of a current of thought which goes back to the movement Arts and Crafts and continues today with the work of Richard Sennett and Matthew Crawford, the author argues for a return to grace of craftsmanship, the beginnings of which he observes. By combining ancient knowledge with modern techniques and associating them with an ethic of doing well at the service of the community, craftsmanship would make it possible to carry out work from start to finish in good conditions within a united collective. From this practice of concrete work would even be born a project of society because, if we are to believe the author, “the material thought developed by craftsmanship constitutes a formative practice of the mind capable of restoring a more active relationship to the world and to politics” (p. 169).
Here is the craft adorned with unsuspected virtues. But what craft are we talking about exactly? Considered as the practice of a trade associated with a specific culture, it is defined in the book in the mirror of contemporary work. It is “the opposite of alienated work. It is a free and cultivated relationship with the materials used, through the implementation of complex know-how” (p. 171). Following Sennett, the author also characterizes the craft culture by an ethical impulse consisting of wanting to do one’s job well.
This is therefore not about craftsmanship as it is defined in contemporary society, that is to say by the status of self-employment and registration with a consular body, but about an ideal form of work. This apology for the beautiful gesture unfortunately remains entirely detached from the social conditions in which craftsmanship is practiced.
Indeed, if the ideal of emancipatory work remains present in craft businesses (in the sense of all independent workers exercising a trade and their employees), it must be said that the real conditions of exercising a trade deviate greatly from it. If these are sometimes mentioned in the book, it is as anecdotes and without analysis of the issues. This is the case for risk-taking at the top of roofs, seen in terms of sporting performance and described as everyday heroism (p. 56), or the “dirty work” all too briefly mentioned (p. 127).
Other dimensions, an integral part of the daily life of companies, are idealized by the author. Thus, the description of the work collective shows no power struggle between employers and employees, nor subcontractors, nor temporary handlers. In this perfect universe, there is no trace of the 26% of craftsmen who work more than 60 hours per week, the 66% suffering from muscle or joint pain, nor the 58% who declare themselves to be in a state of stress (Baromère Artisanté 2018), not to mention the concessions regarding the quality of work to obtain contracts and meet deadlines that are the daily life of craftsmen in the building industry. The reality of working conditions in the sector is therefore significantly different from the Epinal image of cathedral builders that is offered to us. Where is the “ethical, social and professional model adapted to face the challenges of modernity” (p. 152)?
In reality, this model does indeed exist, but only concerns a minority, a subcategory of crafts called “neo” since the 1970s, which recruits its members from the middle classes with high cultural capital. These neo-craftsmen aspire to practice creative work on a human scale that allows for individual development. Particularly present in artistic crafts, they are also found in building trades practiced in a creative and intellectualized way. Capable of holding an elaborate discourse on what they do, they find themselves in cultural homology with a wealthy clientele keen on personalized objects made to measure. Since quality of life is considered by these craftsmen as part of the remuneration, the minimum acceptable income can be quite low and it is possibly compensated by other economic resources available to this social group. Neo-rural craftsmen, makers, These engineers who combine new technologies and trades in shared workshops, or even former executives in bed and breakfasts, generally fall into this category. If their profile allows them to occupy the economic niche of creative crafts, it remains limited and, in the game of in-crowd, there is not room for everyone. Making it a model applicable to society as a whole is a delusion. As Christine Jaeger’s work has shown, crafts have survived until today thanks to their ability to slip into the interstices of industrial production, but they have never been able to change production relations. The usual political demands of craftsmen also go in the direction of a small-business conservatism throughout the XXe century and up to today.
The author’s personal experience is rich in lessons and his critique of contemporary work is well-founded and well-documented. However, it is regrettable that in the second part of the book, he strays into off-the-ground considerations, following authors whose limits he does not question. This attraction to the practice of a profession is nevertheless a social phenomenon that must attract attention. Having become an object of distinction through their rarity, professions are now practiced as an inner experience and are presented as a healthy occupation free from toil. Deconstructing the value judgments associated with so-called “manual” work is a laudable thing, but by focusing on its intellectual component and the inner experience it arouses, we forget that the arduousness of work contributes largely to the difference in life expectancy between social classes. We then risk giving rise to vocations that are a fool’s errand. For work to be a factor of emancipation, it is necessary not only to gather its crumbs, but also to improve its working conditions, something which craft boaters care little about.