E. P. Thompson’s contribution to the apprehension of knowledge produced from and in work

Abstract

In this article the author presents a reflection on the meaning and contradictions of knowledge from experience at the workplace in the current reality of the world of labor. The theoretical framework developed by the historian Edward Thompson sustains the analysis. This perspective was chosen because of its methodological perspective, which is considered central to understand reality in its multiples dimensions: its objective and subjective aspects and its particular and singular elements as well as the totality. It allows one to apprehend reality and its historicity in a way that dialectically articulates past, present and future. The category of experience, as it is developed by Thompson, allows one to apprehend the meaning of knowledge produced from and in work and, more specifically, the broad context where that knowledge emerges and its possibilities.

Key words: knowledge from work, human experience, E. P. Thompson.