Posthuman Praxis in Technical Communication

Kristen R. Moore is Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Texas Tech University, USA. Her research interests include institutional rhetoric and change, technical communication, public participation and engagement, and critical methodologies. Her scholarship has been published in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, and a variety of edited collections. Daniel P. Richards is Assistant Professor of Technical and Professional Writing at Old Dominion University, USA. His research interests include risk communication, writing pedagogy, and American pragmatism. He has published in Composition Forum, Intercom, Communication Design Quarterly, Technical Communication Quarterly, and has chapters in several edited collections.

Foreword



(Carl G. Herndl)



Introduction



(Kristen R. Moore and Daniel P. Richards)



Part I: Shifting Politics and Histories



1. Storytelling as a Balancing Practice in the Study of Posthuman Praxis



(Emily Legg & Patricia Sullivan)



2. Secret/Agent



(Julie Staggers and Michele Simmons)



3. Other-Oriented Rhetoric as Posthuman Witnessing of Wangari Maathai’s Arboreal Networks



(Andrew Mara)



4. Factors to Actors: Implications of Posthumanism for Social Justice Work



(Emma J. Rose and Rebecca Walton)



Part II: Shifting Methodologies



5. Can Objects be Moral Agents? Posthuman Praxis in Public Transportation



(Meredith A. Johnson and Nathan R. Johnson)



6. Writing Down the Machine: Enacting Latourian Ethnography to Trace How a Supercomputer Circulates the Halls of Washington, DC as a Report



(Sarah Read)



7. Nonhuman Agency and Constitutive Intertwining in Military Accident Reports



(Victoria Sadler



8. User Experience in a Networked Environment: How Latour Can Help Us Do Better UX Work



(Guiseppe Getto, Nathan A. Franklin, Sheryl M. Ruszkiewicz, and Jack T. Labriola



Part III: Shifting Workspaces



9. The Role of Metis in Revising Automotive Recall Letters



(Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder)



10. Objects of O2: A Posthuman Analysis of Differentiated Language Use in a Cross-Disciplinary Research Partnership



Mark A. Hannah)



11. Beyond Hearts and Minds: Posthumanism, Kairos, and Technical Communication in US Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency



(Jason Barrett-Fox and Geoffrey Clegg)



12. Investigating the Workplaces of Science



(Deborah C. Andrews)