Thinking about the value of incommunication

In collaboration with IQSOG

Countering the fascination with flows, interfaces and technical mastery, Dominique Wolton proposes a profoundly political, anthropological and relational reading of communication. A reading that does not separate individuals from their contexts, that makes incommunication not a failure, but a structural and fertile condition of social life.

Modern organizations are also affected by this tension: on the one hand, the demand for clarity, coordination, alignment; on the other, the ordinary experience of ambiguity, of the disjunction between intentions and results, between decisions and practices, between display and action. In this context, recourse to communication often becomes a paradoxical act. Thinking about the value of incommunication means reconsidering the role of mediation, delays and misunderstandings in the creation of collective bonds. It means questioning the strategic function of the unspoken, the imperfect, the assumed discrepancy. In this sense, Dominique Wolton's analyses sketch out the contours of a different relationship to power, to speech, to responsibility.

This meeting aims to bring together two universes that are too often separated: that of communication science researchers, and that of management researchers and professionals. It proposes to think of communication as a test, a permanent negotiation, a place of recognition and dissensus, and not as a simple instrument of regulation.

Dominique Wolton is director of research emeritus at the CNRS, founder and director of the journal Hermès (CNRS Éditions), devoted to the cultural, political and scientific issues of communication. He has carried out pioneering work on the distinction between information and communication, on the place of misunderstanding in human exchanges, and on the mediations necessary for dialogue in complex societies. He is notably the author of Penser la communication (Flammarion, 1997) and Informer n'est pas communiquer (CNRS Éditions, 2021). He has also edited numerous publications on the relationship between science, politics and the media.