Paper short abstract:

This paper asserts that while sociality is not disinterested, by being an integral part of many collaborative projects, it acquires crucial work and professional value. I will illustrate this through case studies coming from the independent theatre and cinema milieu in France.

Paper long abstract:

Searle asserts that collective intentionality is sufficient for engaging in joint action, no pre-notion of togetherness or sense of common identity being needed. This seems particularly true in the case of volatile, often short-term collaborations which are the basis of professional practices in the independent precarious milieu of theatre and cinema in France. Going further and discussing John Searle from a normative angle, Margaret Gilbert notes that when we form collective intentions, we create obligations and responsibilities and these mutual obligations (more than shared goals) constitute what allow joint actions to actually take place. While my ethnographic material fully supports both Searle's focus on intentionality as motor for joint action and Gilbert's insistence on mutual obligations as condition of its continuity, it also shows how sociality became the actual means through which mutual obligations are formed.

Despite the expectation that the strongest bonds are formed in the process of actual work, even in such cases of collaboration as are live performances, where the shared goal is to create a common body on stage- a strong emotional experience for each participant, the endurance of this collaborative body is dependent on the sociality established outside the stage and the backstage- in cafés, social networks, other projects. I will thus show how the chain of work and production in this highly competitive milieu depends on sociality, despite the awareness that this sociality is fraught with utility, and how, as a result, sociality acquires professional and even moral value.