Transgression as Factor. Discursive Situation of Subject in the Space of Industrial Production (Social Semiotics Approach)

The article investigates modes of becoming of subject of work of Russian industrial engineers. Based on the data of a qualitative sociological survey of workers at Siberian industrial enterprises (the first series of focused interviews), it was concluded that the main modus for the becoming of engineers as subjects of labor is professional self-improvement through overcoming their specific institutional constraints in working life: outdated equipment, lack of spare parts, non-core tasks and lack of time. A common social practice, in line with which this development is procedurally unfolding, is the design of new products and spare parts largely for the needs of the production itself at the enterprise, rather than for the product market, from improvised, old and used materials and aggregates, which leads to downtime and reduced productivity, and at the structural level is expressed in maintaining the status quo situation in the enterprise – the productive force of the staff is spent on extensive maintenance of production capacity , is used idle – part of it is directed to the development of production, its modernization and increase of qualitative and quantitative indicators of products, the production of new types of products of labor. The situation is characterized by the asynchronous nature of the mechanism of production functioning at enterprises: while improving personal professional qualities at the expense of ingenuity and resourcefulness, engineers, nevertheless, are not able to eliminate the technological lag of production from the needs of industry in the volume and quality of goods. The mechanism of becoming a subject is studied through the prism of a semiotic analysis of the speech practices of the subjects of labor as a discursive designation by engineers of the real sphere of production relations in a language. The institute of labor is considered as an aggregate discourse space about production relations. The subject is represented as originating at the intersection of two main social institutions – language and labor – as becoming subject in the space of shifting and transition “from temptation of the real – through the symbolic – to the phantasmic” and back.