Institution

Poem in automatic writing about « Institution »

Muscle, the immune system, biological evolution all benefit from disorder, in moderate doses. When projects change, the way work is organized changes with them: the roles, the places, the ways of deciding, the institution itself. I have led groups doing this a great many times, I will do it again in a few months, and I observe the same thing every time. A professional refuses something their institution asks of them, or proposes something their institution has not planned for. He distinguishes functionings, that is, the states and actions a person actually accomplishes, from capability, that is, the extent of what she is really free to accomplish:“Closely related to the notion of functionings is that of the capability to function. Their daily life is made of handling. The touching image that reassures the institution If the contest does not benefit the people, we must ask who it does benefit, for it would not be spreading without beneficiaries.

Robustness, antifragility, resilience

Bouncing back after the shock, gaining from disorder, holding steady through fluctuations: depending on the word we use, the effort demanded by crises falls on the person, the collective or the institution.

Resilience entered public debate through psychology in the late 1990s, antifragility through a statistician in 2012, robustness through a biologist in 2023, and everyday usage now blurs them together. I retrace the history of these three notions (…)

14 August 2026

8 min

Suspending Roles

The decisive question of a workshop in an institution is not the activity on offer, but the places people occupy, and this question is settled before the session.

In care and support institutions, the roles of caregiver and cared-for organise every hour of the day. A creative workshop can bracket these roles for the length of a session, provided this bracketing has been built beforehand with the team. I (…)

20 August 2026

5 min

Instituting oneself in one’s rights

Having a right is not enough to be able to exercise it. Cultural rights find their method in institutional psychotherapy and institutional pedagogy: creating the institution with people, rather than bringing them into an institution that is already built.

Everyone has the right to enter a library or a museum, just as everyone has the right to vote, and yet many people never exercise these rights. My argument here is that what is missing is not legal but institutional, in the symbolic and psychic (…)

31 August 2026

12 min

Arming Oneself

Why the soundest professional intuitions need theoretical backing, and where to find it.

In culture, social work and care, many professionals hold positions that are right, yet that they cannot put into words. Research has established that this silent knowledge is real knowledge; it nevertheless carries almost no weight in an (…)

18 August 2026

8 min

The institutionalized rebel

Criticism of cultural institutions is often voiced by those who dream of joining them, or who already work in them. I would like to understand the desire for power that can inhabit revolt, and draw from it tools for acting in coherence with oneself.

An institution is a place of power, through its financial means and its symbolic position. Revolt against it often goes hand in hand with the desire to run it, a link that sociology and psychology alike have documented, and one that operates in (…)

30 July 2026

9 min

An incredible talent

Why put creations in competition hurts the people social work is meant to support, and how to design project endings that bring people together instead of ranking them.

Talent contests, prizes and rankings are spreading through the social and medico-social field, presented as a valorization of the people being supported. Drawing on social psychology and on cultural rights, I argue here that any competition (…)

19 August 2026

13 min

Regulating the Regulators Too

Cultural rights call into question what our profession takes for granted, and this questioning unsettles even the people who chose to be trained. Training courses and support programmes run in their name need instituted spaces where the process itself, facilitation included, can be put up for discussion.

In a training course or a support programme on cultural rights, each person present is asked to re-examine assumptions that are part of their professional identity, and this re-examination produces resistance, projections onto the person (…)

10 September 2026

14 min

All themes

Photographs, paintings, drawings, assemblies and texts by Benoît Labourdette (unless otherwise stated).

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