Diss Research Questions & Quals Reading List in Outline Format

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Mind Map of Diss Questions & Rough Quals Readings

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5369: Final Exam

David Korten’s interview appears to be about economics and not technology. However, economics is a sociotechnical system, and thus Kline would label it technology. Economic systems muster large amounts of human labor, govern it, and direct it; this matches Mumford’s description of a mega-machine which is another form of social technology. Given these two points, economics is considered a technology in this paper. Korten’s interview about economics can also be read as an interview about technology. In the interview, several distinct threads emerge which echo standing themes in technology studies. One theme is the apparently unchangeable nature of technology and its deterministic illusion. David Korten asserts that economic, i.e. technological, change appears difficult because,

the thing that holds us captive to the system are the stories that circulate in our culture, by which we define what it means to be human and what human possibilities are, and all the various aspects of what is wealth and what proper life should be. All of those stories are currently framed within a culture in ways that support the system of domination and exploitation which I refer to as Empire.

Korten claims it is not the economic technology which prevents change but the stories surrounding that technology. These stories work to reinforce the apparent pre-destined and determined nature of technology. This harmonizes with Marcuse’s definition of one-dimensional thought:

One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hypnotic definition or dictations (410).

Marcuse explains that one-dimensional thoughts promote false needs—these false needs are in conflict with what people really need in order to live: vital needs. These master stories, these one-dimensional thoughts reproduce and promote the idea that technology, including economics, is a fixed system. Thus people live and work in order to satisfy these false needs instead of their vital needs and experience misery or emptiness as a result of this lack of fulfillment. In the individual’s experience, Korten depicts it as a battle between stories handed down and stories based upon personal needs and lived experience; Marcuse’s version is false/one-dimensional needs and vital needs. Individuals internalize the combating discourses and are often confused or frustrated by the resulting tensions.

Korten depicts the current economic structure as an illusion: the currency is not based on anything real like people, relationships, and the environment, thus it is his goal to help people see through the illusion and address their personal, real needs as opposed to serving the needs of a hollow economic system. This is similar to how Feenberg describes the illusion of technical determinism and how it can be undone. Through his faulty boiler example, Feenberg demonstrates technological determinism is a construction that can be undone. He shows legislative and political action’s power to correct systems. If laws can change technology, then economics, a social technology, can be changed. This connects to the second theme: average, normal people working for social change. Feenberg’s boiler example directly questions people’s deterministic view of technologies and economics, and it encourages them to engage and take control of their experience. The example also recognizes how changes only took place over a length of time. Feenberg pushes for this kind of longitudinal democratic social action and progress throughout his work, and his roots are clearly established in Marcuse’s thought. For Marcuse, undemocratic constructions can be adjusted and undone through the power of engaged and meaningful public discourse by an educated public. Such discourse works and is effective because it can directly challenge the assertions of one-dimensional thought, help resist false needs, and help people recognize their vital needs. For Korten, vital needs are the “real reality” of people, family, and a decent environment. The elite will not simply instill a new economy or stories in order to meet these values. Korten states, “My view is that the only way we can get there is through civil society, people’s action of creating anew from the bottom up.” Korten’s writing and interviewing are intended to generate more discourse and push for more engaged political action and economic discussion.

This emphasis upon “people” and working from the “bottom” of society draw heavily from classical Marxist ideas of class and resistance. These strands are seen clearly through Marcuse as well as more blatantly in Feenberg’s attempts to recuperate Marxian economics and labor critiques. Marxism, and its rejection or promotion, is present throughout technology studies for a good reason: technology, innovation, production, and economy are all interlocking and integrated elements which cannot be disconnected. Thus, when Marxism critiques modes of production or class structures, it often evolves into a critique of class and social structures, the role of innovation, and questions of governance. Korten’s emphasizing the terms civil society and “from the bottom up” indicate he is probably heavily influenced by Marxist criticism. His calls for citizen action and “solidarity” on a global scale also echo traditional Marxist traits. This reading is supported by his analysis of the economy where he asserts that a small elite control of the economy and are fooling the masses with their narratives. Korten draws here upon the Marxist narrative of class conflict. In another parallel, rather than describe religion as the opiate of the masses, Korten appears to have relabeled Marx’s opium religion as stories. Like two other technological theorists and critics, Feenberg and Marcuse, Korten takes a viable critical method, Marxism, and retools it to fit his needs and situation. This Marxist connection emphasizes the value of comparing Korten to Feenberg and Marcuse: it clarifies the evolution of Marxist thinking and its distillation and dispersement throughout technology studies.

Korten’s humanistic priorities of people and environment echo Feenberg’s interests in socialist democracy that are partially rooted in Marcuse. All three seek to recenter economies and social systems around ecologically sound democratic socialism, but Feenberg makes it clear that this can only happen when the public is educated or engaged enough to organize. Marcuse seems more pessimistic in his writings because he regarded the US as being almost totalitarian. In spite of this, Marcuse continued to push for discourse and action. Unfortunately, Korten does not provide any direct or specific examples in his interview as how economic change can be achieved beyond “resistance”; this pragmatic gap is similar to technological critics like Heidegger, Arendt, Mumford, and Ellul. Unlike Heidegger and Arendt, whose vocabularies are complex and have little clear link practical action, and Mumford and Ellul, who make sweeping statements regarding social problems and solutions while providing no actionable suggestions, the pragmatic vagueness of Korten is on par with Feenberg and Marcuse. They are more practical than Arendt or Ellul, but they do not provide action items. Unlike the other writers mentioned, the works of these three seem much closer to every day experience and thus easier to interpret and apply by readers. In stark contrast, Bob Johnson demonstrates the ability to theorize about social change by developing technorhetoric and then applying it. Rather than get lost in describing social control or admitting determinism, Johnson and his class applied Feenberg’s boiler example: over a period of two years they worked with a local activist coalition to get a waste site cleaned up. This proved that what appeared to be impossible or predetermined could actually be changed.

Korten’s interview, while pointed and poignant at times, hovers between the highly theoretical and directly actionable. This was a brief interview, but Bob Johnson made his claim to value and ethos with his waste clean-up site in less than a paragraph. Korten’s interview demonstrates a weakness in technology studies: providing powerful and specific concrete examples. While Feenberg and Johnson can claim a credible and practical theory, largely due to specifics, Korten cannot.

5369: Final Draft: Wordle

5369: First 2900 Words

Here’s the first third or half of my paper. Finally got a decent workable draft going, thank goodness.
I know it’s not perfect, but I love having workable copy.

Introduction
–research question/ issue

Concept of assemblage can contribute to the development of research training in TC graduate programs:
If graduate Technical Communication (TC) programs allowed Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage to more overtly influence their graduate research teaching and training practices, the programs and students could benefit in several significant ways. Assemblages offer TC a new research method. The sliding and rhizomic nature of assemblages could impact the direction of current and future research and provide rich new territory to examine. Finally, training graduate students to consider assemblages in their research could impact beyond that realm and potentially help TC redefine itself.
Graduate training instills the values and practices of the current field and determines the field’s future direction. Since doctoral training’s purpose is to contribute meaning and knowledge to the field while “moving the ball forward,” initiating new assemblage-based practices, theories, and approaches at the graduate level could impact three areas: research practices, research focus, and professional identity. Developing assemblage-based research methods in graduate programs has several valuable reasons. First it develops future professionals entering academia and industry by providing them with another research method that complements the other methods they have learned. Second, it nurtures the application of a theory based method in an environment which is generally more receptive to Continental theory than industry; this offers a chance for the method to develop with less resistance while keeping in mind the importance of developing methods which are viable in and valuable to industry. Third, the assemblage-based method, and its position within the larger Deleuzian theory of rhizomes and insterstices might help resolve some of the concerns and splits in research training in both undergraduate and graduate research.
Situating doctoral research training contexts, the key binaries in TC, and the differences between modernist and postmodern approaches to organization theory are necessary in order to properly consider assemblage’s potential impact on the field in this limited topic: graduate research training. After situating the question, assemblage theory’s key facets directly relevant to developing an assemblage-based research method in TC are presented. Deleuze and Guattari develop assemblage rhizomatically throughout their works. Any shorter work with assemblages, especially of article length, will necessarily exclude many ideas and definitions; however, this paper’s purpose is not to fully elaborate assemblages or assemblage theory. The purpose is to apply several key theoretical concepts in directly relevant and practical actions that can potentially benefit Technical Communication as a field and individual doctoral students. Concepts important to developing an assemblage-based research method are then discussed. Buchanan, DeLanda, Hardt and Negri, and Galloway and Thacker’s works are cited as examples of scholars in other fields applying assemblage-based research. Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of the potential impacts that an assemblage based research method could have on Technical Communication and proposes future research and practice directions.

1 Situate Discussion
1.1 A ROLE OF RESEARCH IN THE ACADEMY: History, Academy/Industry,
Research: History’s Impact & Value
Doctoral students are trained to conduct research for many reasons. One of the most important ones is to generate new knowledge and move the field forward. When students are trained, they are exposed what has been taught and researched historically. As Smith indicates, awareness of what has been taught and researched in the past directly influences what is currently research and what will be researched in the future (427). Thus, historical awareness helps explain why the field emphasizes specific topics and methods; similarly, this helps explain why new methods or ideas, such as the assemblage, have a difficult time being adopted: they have not been taught or researched in the field before—at least not on a larger scale. Coppola also urges historical awareness because it would help technical communicators better understand the influence “Big Science,” anthropology, and history have on TC. The scientific approach, Coppola claims, has shaped TC’s emphasis on the physical world while the humanistic roots have driven the focus on close readings of texts (Coppola 261-2). Recognizing these roots, and where the field does not have roots, can help identify both the strengths and the gaps in Technical Communication.
These historical roots often determine which research questions are explored. Research questions, Carolyn Rude claims, define academic fields. She writes, “Research questions, more than research methods or topics, define a field internally and externally by pointing to the knowledge making that is unique to the field. Questions are dynamic and generative. If they are good questions, the answers gained through research point to refinements or extensions of the questions—more questions” (Rude 175). Thus, when graduate students are trained in which research methods and topics are viable or not, the questions they are learning to ask and analyze determine the field’s future. Assemblages are not based in science or humanistic traditions, and thus its presence could help the field ask new questions and develop new topics. Historical awareness is critical for understanding why doctoral students are trained the way they are, but tradition should not be followed just for tradition’s sake.

Research: Job Training for Academia and Industry
Traditionally, doctoral programs in TC have prepared students to take positions in academia. Research and publication are central to academic citizenship. While various doctoral programs emphasize different methods and epistimologies, all graduate programs offer and require research training. What motivates the training has a direct impact upon what and how the training is taught and what is emphasized. Blakeslee indicates that the expectations of what academics do and how they are judged—research, tenure process, publication—directly impacts how research is taught and evaluated in graduate TC courses. Blakeslee states that the goal of research is and should be to “Better prepare our graduate students for their scholarly pursuits” (149). She states research training should improve students’ research abilities, increase their exposure to research, and make research a larger part of graduate student culture (158-9). Campbell concurs with Blakeslee by stating, “Research activity is an integral ingredient in the development of any profession, including business and technical communication” (223). Davis agrees with Blakeslee and asserts that the drive for professional status directly shapes graduate education (Blakeslee HUH? DAVIS? 76-7). Johnson-Eilola’s article demonstrates the diversity in programmatic expectations and outcomes and shows how programmatic emphases—empirical research, rhetoric, seminars, exams for critical skills—directly impact what the students are taught (406). Instead of focusing on skills which students may need after graduate school, programs usually emphasize skills necessary for student success. While there may be overlap between skills useful inside and outside of academia, programs appear to emphasize their own needs over students’. From these perspectives, research is a part of the professionalization process: induction and indoctrination into academia’s professional values. By emphasizing research as a means to tenure and publication, research becomes a tool for developing social capital within a limited community.
Doctoral programs in TC are not solipsistic or short-sighted. While priority is given to student success in academia, training for industry’s importance is recognized. As Campbell states in one piece, “The underlying assumption within this article is that research methods course work plays a crucial role in curricula for preparing professionals for their future careers in both academe and industry” (225). Davis indicates that industry’s expectation that graduates are capable of research impacts graduate education as well (Davis 80). As graduates move from universities into industry, programs which ignore industry’s needs would quickly lose credibility and their graduates would have limited job offerings. Thus, students need training in methods like usability testing, surveys, case studies, and statistical analysis so that they can deliver the kind of actionable information for decision makers who seek to improve their efficiency, productivity, and increase their material capital. While academia maintains a solid footing professionalizing their students for work in the academy, they must also offer practical, viable research methods so that they can retain and develop relationships with industry. Doctoral research training must address these numerous needs and goals within coursework, and the required diverse preparedness can stress both faculty and students attempting to develop competence in this variety of methods. Synthesizing these values, Whiteside asserts that the best approach to teaching research would consider what employers want, what technical communicators need, and what academia should provide (Whiteside 304).
Given these expectations on just the purposes research should serve, it is important to ask where is the time for teaching assemblage? Few doctoral students are able to train competently in more than a few research methods; as such, aren’t assemblages going to remove or reduce the students’ research competence and ability to perform for their academic or industry employers? This paper will address these concerns later; however, it is important to acknowledge the limitations on time and resources faced by graduate programs and doctoral students.

Research: Creating Core of Shared Values & Practices
Research coursework also provides a shared core of practices and values among doctoral students who have diverse backgrounds and different levels of research training. One result is that the diverse students have diverse needs. Student diversity has a notable impact on doctoral research training. Campbell addresses this in part by claiming that the diverse needs of students in technical communication shapes research (Campbell 238). Johnson-Eilola echoes the diverse needs of students, and he locates this need in the “Interdisciplinary nature of technical communication [which] involves faculty with expertise in different strands of research” as well as student having different academic backgrounds who are preparing to go into equally diverse professions (Johnson-Eilola 404). Since large numbers of graduate students in TC do not have professional experience in industry and little training in TC, graduate programs must rapidly instill an understanding of the field as well as develop a foundational understanding of research, research methods, and how these methods can be applied in industry.
Fields like biology and philosophy often have graduate students who have been working in their field since their undergraduate years and are familiar with the research methods and professional culture; TC’s interdisciplinary nature means that a fair amount of effort goes into establishing a consistent level of understanding and basic premises in their students. Spilka makes it clear that even undergraduates in TC receive limited research training, and that undergraduate research training is not consistent. One reason is administrators cannot agree on which research skills are most important (228). Just as students come to TC from fields like literature and engineering, graduates leaves TC for fields like academic research, Human Computer Interaction, grant writing, and medical documentation. An effective graduate program thus must teach research which is accessible to the different student backgrounds as well as the diverse future career goals.

TRANSITIONAL/COMMENT CHUNK
1.2 Binaric Iterations: Acad/Indus, T/P, Concept/Skill
Academia versus industry is one obvious binaric tension which emerges when discovering the purposes behind doctoral research training. Graduates experience this fracture in their training and when they enter the job market; it directly impacts their capacity in research methods as well as the development of their professional attitudes towards academia and industry. Another significant binary in TC is over the role of theory and the question of what, if anything, theory contributes. This tension often manifests as the debate of theory versus practice. Patrick Moore proposes this debate is rooted partially in the differences in priorities between academia’s valuation of social capital and the workplace’ emphasis on material capital (Cruel 208). If academics seek collegial social capital, then researching theory with little practical application is still potentially valuable and can professionally advance the academic. Theory means little to most practitioners if it does not generate material capital, that is, improved efficiency, production, and profits. While theory may generate some new practices in industry, if academics do not publish these connections, their work has little value for practitioners.
Concluding thought or sentence here, please.
Knieval observes that TC’s historical relationships with and roots in both technology and the humanities might explain the academic/industry tension (66). Because TC is interdisciplinary, it has drawn on multiple traditions for its theories, training, practices, and perspectives. Depending upon the doctoral programs as well as professional experience, practitioners will be directly influenced by which larger tradition they identify with . This could be seen as a smaller scale manifestation of the sciences versus the humanities split. Savage reframes the academia/industry or theory/practice binary as concepts versus skills (1). A concept-based approach is likely to attempt to define itself as a different field, a development of ethics, aesthetics, values, and professional identity while a skills-based approach is usually regarded as working in service to other industries or fields. If a field attempts to relocate from a subordinate position to increase its pay and stature, then it often needs to demonstrate its independence and value by developing unique concepts or theories. Thus, centering on skills can be seen as an attempt to maintain TC’s historical roots of service and subordination to engineering, industry, and manufacturing while emphasizing the conceptual approach is an attempt to obtain greater social capital and professional acceptance. Both approaches are likely correct: the ability to work with our historical clients is important, yet every profession evolves. Concepts and theory can facilitate evolution. Ignoring professional history and attempting to prevent the field’s evolution both seem short-sighted and rooted in short-term professional interests as opposed to interests in allowing the fullest expression and development of the field and its practitioners.
Fortunately, this divide is not permanent and not everyone embraces this binary. There have been attempts to bridge this divide. Miller’s assertion that technical communicators do practical rhetoric seems like a clear bridge between the practice/theory divide (Practical 23). Ironically, while Miller asserts that practical rhetoric could be a bridge between the two poles, her most famous article, “Humanistic Rationale” has helped polarize the field; it is foundational to numerous technical communicators who theirs as a humanistic practice and reject or condemn the often technical, scientific service to industry (check on Moore’s article on Miller). Thus, it is difficult to accept Miller’s proposition as genuinely trying to bridge the poles; by focusing on rhetoric, a millennia-old humanistic practice, she reinforces TC’s conceptual and ethical aspects. Her positioning of practical rhetoric is more inclusive than many writers who cite her. In spite of this, rhetoricians often reject “practical” applications of their art while practitioner often reject “rhetoric” out of hand for not being practical or not being “objective” like technical writing supposedly should be. Instead of acknowledging the inherently persuasive nature of socially constructed “objective” scientific texts or how rhetorical skills are used in the academy to obtain social instead of material capital, both poles–slightly hyperbolized here–do not seem to recognize how much they actually have in common. Thus, by ignoring Miller’s approach which urges collaboration between academia and industry, the division is furthered and deepened. (Practical 23).
Rivers presents a potential solution different from Miller. Rivers does not deny the split between science and politics, objective and subjective, or demonstration and persuasion in TC. Instead of giving preference to one or the other, he asserts that technical communicators can create new spaces and translate between different fields (191). This moves TC from a role of merely transmitting or translating information to a role of collecting and articulating information (193). Both concepts, creating new spaces and collecting and articulating information, changes technical communicators’ role and power in important ways. First, it does not dismiss historical roles; rather, it builds upon them by offering new and different spaces. By emphasizing collecting and articulating information, this approach emphasizes the activities instead of providing information to one pole or another. This enables the profession to focus on its activities more and internal conflict less. Rivers’ Latourian approach could be modified for each new space addressed, thereby embracing rhetoric’s emphasis upon context and audience as well as industry’s expectation for useful, actionable information which is relevant to them. However, there appears to be little adoption of his suggested approach.
Doctoral students are trained in the heart of the academy, and they often spend three to five years earning their degrees. Their investment in time, effort, emotion, and relationships is usually centered with other academics. Even if a student only attends classes and works with their committee, a massive investment in academia still occurs. While this clearly benefits the academy, it is not necessarily the best result for doctoral students. Indeed, it likely biases doctoral students with academia-centered values, preferences, and understandings about the best methods, uses, and applications of research. An absence of the “other,” industry, means that many doctoral students will not have or grasp the full potential range of how they can apply their skills in various contexts. Even when research is taught in ways applicable in industry, the emphasis of academic training and work is on publication and the generation of social capital; there is little doctoral training on how research skills in order to facilitate material capital.
This paper does not suggest that industry should take control over academia, or that social or material capital is more valuable than the other. Instead of seeing the need for either side to dominate or control the other, or the importance of one invading the other’s territory, the assemblage concept offers an approach to research training and application which enables academia and industry to maintain their binaric autonomy while generating valuable understanding and exposure to doctoral students interested in making the the slide between the binaric poles.

5371: Final Paper: Abstract

Abstract
Reframing Technical Communication’s Binaric Identity
Through the Assemblage Concept

Technical Communication (TC) is a young profession. Unlike philosophy, rhetoric, or physics, Technical Communication has not had centuries to develop a sense of itself, nor has it had time to establish full relationships with other fields, to develop traditional practices, or to be fully aware of its social, political, economic, and cultural positions. Thus it is of little surprise that the field’s identity is still discussed and contested. Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage concept offers a potential solution to the current binaric factionalization of Technical Communication. Instead of defining the field with these binaries as inherent to TC, the postmodern assemblage concept offers technical communicators a way to see binaries as poles on a line along which technical communicators can move or slide. Assemblages could help redefine the profession as a constantly shifting field where practitioners are but one territorializing force. For practitioners, assemblages offer the perspective and understanding that binaric poles exist, but an individual is not obligated to be loyal to either. Instead, practitioners are free to explore the territory between binaries. This means being free from socially constructed notions of loyalty to humanism or skills-based thinking, not being confined to academia or industry, or not thinking that they can only write certain kinds of texts. Recognizing that the poles’ control is constructed, sliding the lines between the binaries could potentially open up exciting new territory and help generate new kinds of practice, new research topics, and new methods.

Wordle of 5371 Theory Paper Final Draft

5371 Theory Paper: Final Draft

Reframing Technical Communication’s Binaric Identity Through the Assemblage Concept

1 Introduction
Technical Communication (TC) is a young professional and academic field. Unlike philosophy, rhetoric, or physics, Technical Communication has not had centuries to develop a sense of itself as a field, nor has it had time to establish a series of relationships with other academic fields, to develop traditional practices, or to be fully aware of its social, political, economic, and cultural positions. Thus it is of little surprise that the field’s identity is still discussed and contested. Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage concept offers a potential solution to the current binaric factionalization of Technical Communication. Instead of defining the field with these binaries as inherent to TC, the assemblage concept offers technical communicators a way to see binaries as poles on a line along which technical communicators can move or slide.
Historically, Technical Communication has resisted theories and concepts which appear to have little practical or pragmatic value. This is due in part to TC’s initial role as a skills provider to engineers who needed to improve their writing; practitioners’ initial concentration within industry reinforced service experience. For decades, practitioners generated documents which supported physical processes, procedures, and equipment operation. Historical centering in supporting action, manufacture, and procedure has resulted in many practitioners identifying TC only with these kinds of relationships, services, and writing. In short, practical work is what the field did for decades; as many fields’ identities are based upon what they do and where they are located, it is no surprise that many practitioners’ identity resides in a fixed sense of being practical and pragmatic.
Technical Communication’s practical nature has been contested for several decades by the humanistic approach best signifed by Carolyn Miller’s articles. The pragmatic/humanstic binary is just one several which have divided TC. This paper emphasizes assemblage’s potential value to practitioners by contributing a different sense of professional identity. In order to address assemblage’s potential promise and its relevance to practical-minded practitioners, this paper situates and identifies several of TC’s major binaries, sites of continued struggle, which attempt to define “what” TC is. This identifies several of the forces at work in current discourse about professional identity. Second, the paper identifies assemblages’ core concepts that are relevant to discussing professional identity in this limited context. As these concepts are introduced, the paper attempts to demonstrate how assemblages can possibly reshape professional identity by valuing binaries in a different way. Thus, this paper addresses the problem of whether or not Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage concept be usefully applied to professional identity in TC. If it is possible to apply assemblage in practical ways, then it opens up a larger question of what other theoretical constructs, ignored or dismissed up until now as impractical, can be applied in a practical fashion to TC.

2 Situation
Rarely is a field consistent in how it sees and represents itself. If a field has hundreds of years of existence, then it is more likely than a relative newcomer to have a fixed sense of self. This has problems and benefits. While a relatively fixed sense of identity enables most members to agree on the purpose, role, and goals of the field, it can make the field less adaptable and more resistant to change. Relatively new fields like TC have the opposite problem: they are constantly impacted by change, especially if they are interdisciplinary like TC. Interdisciplinary fields by definition draw from a variety of other traditions in fields. Often, those fields hold conflicting values. When TC draws on ethnographic methods from anthropology, it values the qualitative. When TC draws on engineering’s need for facts, charts, and data to present in reports, it values the quantitative. Thus the richness of interdisciplinarity comes at the price of internal tensions. Within TC, two consistent binaries struggle to define practitioners and the field: humanistic/skills and academia/industry. While each pole has attempted to define the field’s identity, a few individuals have recognized that middle ground is not only possible but valuable. Assemblage theory not only recognizes the value of binaries, but the assemblage concept could potentially reshape the field’s view of itself by encouraging practitioners to see themselves as constantly sliding and shifting on the lines between the binaries’ poles. Rather than defending a fixed position at either pole or in the middle, movement between the binaries allows for constant movement, adaptation, and growth. This could contribute to the professional identity by emphasizing practitioner’s pragmatic ability to move between academia and industry as well as to work for socially-centered humanistic goals as well as for material culture and profit. Just because a technical communicator has worked in one arena does not mean they or their skills cannot be applied in other arenas. The assemblage concept could encourage practitioners to explore the territory between the different poles and thereby increase practitioners’ social and material capital as well as develop individual adaptability to change. Rather than waving humanism’s or capitalism’s banners, assemblage offers TC the potential to recenter their identity as adaptive problem solvers.

2.1 Binaries
Definitions are central in establishing TC’s identity. Definitions vary between the two traditional factions: academics and practitioners. The tension between these two populations often plays out as theory versus practice, and the arguments often draw in part on the “humanistic versus skills” tension for supporting evidence. Carolyn Miller indicates that the historical relationship between TC and science and technology has long made TC a positivist practice (Humanistic 49). Thus measurable, objective, and scientific criteria have been privileged in TC. Privileging the measurable and quantifiable in terms of professional competence can be seen in the drive for certification. Certification requires fixed standards, a certifying body, and some form of test or exam, and it is currently an important issue within the Society for Technical Communication. Cunningham uses a business paradigm as a basis for judging which criteria are important for TC; this establishes his view that the workplace and market should determine TC’s definition (1). Certification requires a valid and credible certification board and the demands a stable body of knowledge (Turner and Rainey 227-28). Hughes’ position in “Mapping Technical Communication to a Human Performance Technology Framework” is similar to Cunningham’s in that Hughes defines TC largely by communicators’ tasks, and he identifies how the shift in tasks, moving from writing manuals to helping users, has changed the nature of the field (368). This limits TC’s definition to a skills-based, evaluative position and excludes the potential for larger social action or theory.
While practitioners often support the skills-centered position, academics usually assume the humanistic stance. Knievel observes that TC’s historical relationships with and roots in both technology and the humanities might explain the academia/industry tension (66). Another mitigating factor Patrick Moore indicates is the different kinds of capital, social and material, which the academy and workplace prioritize and value (208). Mara states, “The argument between overly practical Technical Communication approaches and more civic-minded approaches, such as service learning, echoes a long-standing technical communication and rhetorical division between the Aristotelian notions of praxis and technê” (219). Mara’s assertion, rooted in Carolyn Miller’s seminal “Humanistic Rationale,” implies that the academic/practitioner split echoes a much older division and supports Knievel’s claim. Savage reframes the academia/industry or theory/practice binary as concepts versus skills (1). It is unlikely that the academia/industry binary will be overcome or resolved within the confines of a fixed field, only-one-definition-allowed approach to professionalization.
The efforts to resolve these splits have largely failed. In one attempt, Davis asserts that there should separate definitions and criteria for academic and practitioner technical communicators (84). Cementing the field’s binaries might result in creating two completely different communities. For a nascent field like TC, already struggling for power and legitimacy, this could cost both communities the credibility and status they currently have. In another move towards resolution, Miller asserts technical communicators do practical rhetoric; this appears as bridge between the practice/theory divide and urges collaboration between academia and industry (Practical 23). Unfortunately, rhetoricians often reject “practical” applications while practitioners often reject “rhetoric.” In one of the boldest propositions, Rivers’ asserts technical communicators can create new spaces and translate between different fields (191). This solution seems more viable because it does not deny the split between science and politics, objective and subjective, or demonstration and persuasion in TC. Rivers’ approach shifts TC from being a transmitter to collecting and articulating information between different stakeholders (193). Johnson-Eilola and Selber offer another model: three dimensional axes of teaching, thinking, and doing with no edges (416). This model’s unbordered nature, its openness to outside influences, corresponds well with an assemblage-based approach. It allows for free movement on the three axes and enables constant redefinition of what technical communicators do and where they operate. If identity were determined by the movements and shifts along these axes, it could redefine the role of binaries in discussions of TC’s identity as well as value the identity’s fluidity.

2.2 Assemblages
The potential for constant shift and redefinition of the professional self as well as the field can feel nebulous; however, constant movement and shifting appears to be a more accurate rendering of lived experience than fixed universals. Attempting to concretize TC’s identity as only skills-based or only humanistic is an attempt to create or establish a fixed universal in the metanarrative of professionalism. In spite of all of Postmodernism’s contributions to current thought and practice, professional fields still drive to establish these fixed universals because they are often rewarded by prestige and profit. Assemblages, as a postmodern concept, denies fixed universals. Assemblage theory is similar to Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s open axes in its discussion of fields, lines, and territorialization and de territorialization. Instead of having a simple, fixed definition, assemblages are explicated rhizomically: Deleuze and Guattari discuss it in a number of their works. In order to address how assemblage theory can be directly relevant to theory-skeptical practitioners, this paper centers on a few key ideas from the complex vocabulary which emerges around assemblages. A brief tangent into Postmodernism is necessary to help ground this shift in perspective. Deleuze and Guattari’s work is postmodern, and as Cooper and Burrell explain, Postmodernism centers on non-human actors and moves away from anthropocentric views. The importance of human actors’ role differs in the two views. Modernists center humanity and treat them as primary actors; Postmodernists like Deleuze decenter human agents and regard social life as indeterminate and paradoxical (91). As Cooper and Burrell state, “In the postmodern view, organization is less the expression of planned thought and calculative action and a more defensive reaction to forces intrinsic to the social body which constantly threaten the stability of organized life” (91). For practitioners grounded in the workplace, this may seem unreal or completely irrelevant. What link is there to their professional identity? With a postmodern understanding, human and non-human forces are seen as shaping human response and environments. It is possible to see TC’s binaries as more than the result of discourse or lived experience; instead, the binaries themselves are actors/operators which impact and help define technical communicators and TC.
Similar to Johnson-Eilola and Selber visual representation, assemblages are “tetravalent” in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus description; the horizontal axes are expression and content, in the authors’ terms bodies and passions, while the vertical axes are territorialization and deterritorialization (88, 505). Assemblages are constantly shifting on the axes described above; they do not possess fixed borders or limitations. Assemblages are the result and the expression of multiple complicated and developing relationships between the different forces represented on and by the axes. Finally, assemblages operate in material and non-material manners, and language is not a determining or driving element in assemblages. For another view of these dense but powerful concepts, Wise summarizes them:
Deleuze and Guattari write that assemblages have two axes. One axis is the creation of territory, on strata, thus moving between making (territorialization) and unmaking (deterritorialization) on the Body without Organs. The other axis is the enunciation of signifiers, collectively, moving between technology (content, material) and language (express, non-corporeal effects). Assemblages are made and unmade along each of these dimensions (80).
For technical communicators, this offers them a chance potential to see their role as motivated by body and passion as well as where they have been and what they have done. While these factors are sometimes given lip service, there has been little discussion as to how these factors help define and determine the field. With the assemblage model, these factors become definitional instead of tertiary. As practitioners change and develop, a shift in professional interests and movement is normal. Similarly, neither the practitioner nor the workplace is the only force impacting their identity; instead, having multiple moves available on the axes presents change and movement as a very part of the field while acknowledging the power of non-human forces to influence the changes a practitioner experiences. While it is unlikely that practitioners or academics can or will fully embrace these as major influencing factors in their professional identity, assemblage theory provides an opportunity with an alternate set of criteria to determine how identity is created and defined.
As assemblages move on the tetravalent axes, their processes of territorialization and deterritorialization quantify assemblages’ forms and largely define what they as both material and enunciative (ATP 90,504). In terms of professional identity, this means that who a practitioner is and what they do is constantly changing; a practitioner need not, indeed cannot, create a fixed identity that remains in one place and engages in a fixed set of actions. Relevant to TC as a field is the point that assemblages are constantly shifting bodies which shift to produce signs, not language, and that an assemblage’s territory defines what it is. Language comes second. As an assemblage’s territory shifts, which is constant process, its identity transforms and as do the signs it produces. This constantly transforming nature is similar to the field because many practitioners and academics are constantly working with different professionals at different job sites while undertaking different tasks in changing organizational roles.
The constant shifts in territory underscore what Buchanan asserts is Deleuze and Guattari’s most utopian idea: that “one can think differently—not merely new thoughts, but an entirely fresh way of thinking” (117). This mode of thinking is nomadism. An assemblage makes nomadism possible because the assemblage “is able to articulate the slide into oblivion of one mode of thought together with the rise to dominance of another without having to explain it in terms of either succession or negation, but can instead stage it as a coadaptation” (118). This slide occurs on the tetravalent axes. The slide appears to remove the necessity for cause-effect explanation, evolutionary thinking of ideas, or arborescent models of thinking, power, responsibility, and/or development. This supports Buchanan utopian label because the slide occurs without having to justify, explain, or support human-centered perspectives or models of development and evolution. This can potentially empower practitioners by enabling them to see that shifts and changes in the field are not necessarily due to human action; this offers the chance to allow for or accept changes without having to explain or justify them in linear or causal language. In “real world” terms, it would not be as important or necessary to locate or assign blame or expend attention worrying about workplace or professional changes; accepting them and moving on could help avoid a great deal of personal stress. Additionally, technical communicators could conceive of their work as nomadic and attempt to fit in wherever it is appropriate as opposed to being concerned about whether or not their work resides in one binary or the other. Buchanan asserts that an assemblage’s value is that it avoids dualism and valuing by being in dialogue between the two poles (119). Assemblages are not simply arborescent or rhizomic; instead they move between the two models. Something that can be rhizomic or arboreal is considered an assemblage (120). Assemblages constantly adapt, mutate, and their constantly changing nature allows them to both create and adapt to numerous kinds of models, contexts, and situations. This adaptability seems ideal for technical communicators who work in diverse situations for an array of employers to fill ever-changing roles. Just as assemblage could encourage greater professional adaptability, the professional identity of TC could be seen more as an ability to adapt rather than to provide specific skills or values.

3 Application
Assemblages’ traits, their complexity and shifting territorilization in the fields of technology and language is similar to Technical Communication. Since its inception, TC has dispersed diverse practitioners in different environments. Attempting to limit TC to a simple or single definition limits the lessons learned and value obtained from this diverse historical experience. It also threatens to limit where and how technical communicators can operate. Assemblages’ non-human centered approach offers practitioners the potential to enjoy and thrive from these complexities and binaries as an inherent aspect of organizational and perceptual creation. Rather than focus on remaining fixed, technical communicators could seek out and work with flows of agency instead of attempting to resist them or freeze them with sterile or limited definitions. Temporary and contextual definitions are important for site-specific problem solving; however, those definitions should be considered temporary. Applying this historically, TC could be regarded as having been a skills-based practice which slid into a humanistic practice and which continues to slide. This acknowledges the value and contributions of both poles without installing them as definitional, limiting roles.
Many technical communicators with humanist agendas have decried the anti-human or “cruel” aspects of TC. While anthropocentric views comfort, it is useful to realize that there are structures, forces, and flows which operate beyond human creation, understanding, or control. Ironically, technical communicators have been operating within the milieu of non-human actors, large corporate, governmental, and non-profit agencies, since the field’s inception. As Cooper and Burrell indicate, these entities develop their own rationale which often makes it appear as if rationality created the organization thereby naturalizing the organization. Not all technical communicators will accept this postmodern perspective. Their resistance to Postmodernism and adherence to Modernism creates another line in the assemblage of TC along which practitioners can slide. Assemblage theory enables technical communicators to interact, react, and identify with these forces, Postmodernism and Modernism included, for what they are: forces and assemblages which continually change. Instead of spending valuable time, energy, and effort attempting to moralize, justify, or condemn the forces, practitioners could center their efforts on researching the field’s history to determine past assemblages, focus on their current work in order to satisfy current clients or audiences, or explore how one or several assemblages or forces appears to be changing or moving.

4 Conclusion
This paper has attempted to slide the line between the poles of anthropocentric values and non-human actors. In order to indicate a postmodern concept’s value, it is often necessary to demonstrate the practical impact that concept can have on an individual’s life or identity. No matter how much stock is placed in rich theories which decenter humanity and emphasize non-human actors, the fact is readers and authors are still human. We are the center of our awareness, and it is not possible for us to stop being human. Thus, by demonstrating how valuing non-human forces and agents can create direct value and better professional experience, this paper has attempted to move along the line between Modernism and Postmodernism.
Technical communicators, by using the assemblage concept, could see a vast territory to explore instead of a walled and disciplined discipline where they must remain. Binaries’ poles help define the territory where technical communicators operate as well as the lines of force upon which they can slide/move. Rather than simple acceptance of one binaric pole over another, with conscious and intentional awareness of binaries, another option arises: to understand the poles and then slide the lines between depending upon the context. For the field of TC, assemblages could help redefine the profession as a constantly shifting field where practitioners are but one of many territorializing forces. Rather than expending resources in attempts to retain rigid and fixed definitions and resist assemblages’ changing nature, it is possible for practitioners to apply the assemblage concept by centering efforts on exploring the territories between the various poles and by working to understand how they, as individuals and a profession, can and cannot impact the territory called Technical Communication. For the individual practitioner, assemblages offer not just the perspective, but an understanding that binaric poles exist, but that the individual is not obligated to be loyal to one or the other. Instead, the practitioner is free to explore all of the territory between the different binaries. In practical terms, this means being free from socially constructed notions of loyalty to humanism or skills-based thinking, not being confined to working only in academia or industry, or not thinking that they can only write certain kinds of texts. Recognizing that the poles’ control is constructed, sliding the lines between the binaries could potentially open up exciting new territory and help generate new kinds of practice, new research topics, and new methods.

Bibliography

Buchanan, Ian. “Assemblages and Utopia, or Things Don’t Have to be This Way.
Deleuzism: A Metacommentary. Duke University Press, 2000. Print. 117-142.

Cooper, Robert, and Gibson Burrell. “Modernism, Postmodernism and
Organizational Analysis: An Introduction.” Organization Studies 9.1 (1988): 91. Print.

Cunningham, Don. “Core Competency Skills for Technical Communicators.” IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2008. IPCC 2008. 2008. 1-6. Print.

Davis, Marjorie T. “Shaping the Future of Our Profession.” Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication. 48.2 (2001): 139-44. Print.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan, and Stuart A. Selber. “Sketching a Framework for Graduate
Education in Technical Communication.” Technical Communication Quarterly 10.4 (2001): 403-437. Print.

Knievel, Michael. “Technology Artifacts, Instrumentalism, and the Humanist Manifestos: Toward an Integrated Humanistic Profile for Technical Communication.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication. 20.1 (2006): 65. Print.

Miller, Carolyn R. “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing.” Central Works in Technical Communication.Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 47-54. Print.

Moore, Patrick. “Cruel Theory? The Struggle for Prestige and Its Consequences in Academic Technical Communication.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. 38.3 (2008): 207-240. Print.

Rivers, Nathaniel A. “Some Assembly Required: The Latourian Collective and the Banal Work of Technical and Professional Communication.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. 38.3 (2008): 189-206. Print.

Savage, Gerald J. “Introduction: Toward Professional Status in Technical Communication.” Power and Legitimacy in Technical Communication; Vol. II: Strategies for Professional Status. Eds. Teresa Kynell-Hunt and Gerald J. Savage. Amityville: Baywood, 2004. 1: 1-12. Print.

Wise, J. Macgregor. “Assemblage.” Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts. Ed. Charles J. Stivale.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005. 77-87. Print.

5371 Decent Draft Wordled

5371: Theory Paper: First Decent Draft

4000 words to editing & 14 sources

Intro Para
Technical communication (TC) is a young professional and academic field. As such, there is little surprise for the identity to still be under discussion and still contested. Unlike philosophy, rhetoric, or physics, technical communication has not had centuries or millennia to develop a sense of itself as a field, nor has it had extended time to establish a series of solid relationships with other academic fields, to develop traditional practices, or to be aware of its place in the larger topography of practice.
Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the assemblage offers a potential solution to the current factionalizing of technical communication into a series of binaries. Instead of seeing these binaries as fixed, inherent to the field, and as separate sides of a coin, the concept of the assemblage offers technical communicators another perspective to see binaries as two ends of a field or line along which they can move or slide.
Historically, technical communication has been a very pragmatic field. This means that there is an inherent resistance to theories and concepts which appear to have little practical or pragmatic value; if theories cannot be applied or improve efficiency, then they have little chance for acceptance in TC except, perhaps, for in limited academic articles and publications. In order to address assemblage’s potential promise to TC, the assemblage’s pragmatic aspects, and the resistance to theory, this paper evolves through a series of steps. First, it situates and identifies several of TC’s major binaries, sites of continued struggle, which attempt to define “what” TC is. Second, the paper identifies core concepts involved with understanding and working with assemblages that are relevant to technical communication’s sense of self. Third, it applies these concepts to TC’s identity in an attempt to demonstrate how assemblages can possibly reshape and contribute to the field.

I Situate the Problem
Binary 1/3 Humanistic v Skills
One of the most prominent binaries is the question of whether or not TC is “humanistic” or skills based. Carolyn Miller indicates that the historical relationship between TC and science and technology has long made TC a positivist practice (Which article? 49). Her article Thus, traditionally, measurable, objective, and scientific criteria have been privileged in TC. Privileging the measurable and quantifiable in terms of professional competence can be seen in the drive for certification. Certification requires fixed standards, a certifying body, and some form of test or exam, and it is currently an important issue within the Society for Technical Communication. Cunningham also sets up a business paradigm as a basis for judging which criteria are important for TC; this clearly establishes his view that the workplace and market should determine TC’s definition (1). This also appears to limit TC’s definition to a skills-based, evaluative position and exclude the potential for larger social action or theory. Certification requires a valid and credible certification board and the demands a stable body of knowledge (Turner and Rainey 227-28). Hughes’ position in “Mapping Technical Communication to a Human Performance Technology Framework” is similar to Cunningham’s in that Hughes defines TC largely by communicators’ tasks, and he identifies how the shift in tasks, moving from writing manuals to helping users, has changed the nature of the field (368).

Binary 2/3 Academia versus Industry split
In establishing TC’s identity, definitions are central. This often centers on who is defining TC: academics or practitioners. The tension between these two populations often plays out as theory versus practice, and the rhetoric often draws in part on the humanistic vs. skills argument for supporting evidence. Knieval’s observation that TC’s historical relationships with and roots in both technology and the humanities might explain the academic/industry tension (66). Another mitigating factor Patrick Moore indicates is the different kinds of capital, social and material, which the academy and workplace prioritize and value (Cruel 208). Mara states, “The argument between overly practical technical communication approaches and more civic-minded approaches, such as service learning, echoes a long-standing technical communication and rhetorical division between the Aristotelian notions of praxis and technê” (219). Mara’s assertion, rooted in Carolyn Miller’s seminal “Humanistic Rationale, implies that academic/practitioner split echoes a much older argument. Savage reframes the academia/industry or theory/practice binary as concepts versus skills (1). Each author is likely accurate; however, given the significant scale of binaries and splits involved, it is unlikely that the academia/industry binary will be overcome or resolved.

Attempted solutions to the split
Davis asserts that there should separate definitions and criteria for academic and practitioner technical communicators (84). This cementing the field’s split personality might result in developing two completely different communities with two different sets of standards and identities. For a nascent field like TC, already struggling for power and legitimacy, this is not promising. While it might reduce the nature of volume of some current conflicts, the long-term damage could be permanent. Miller’s assertion that technical communicators do practical rhetoric seems like a clear bridge between the practice/theory divide and instead of encouraging division, urges collaboration between academia and industry (Practical 23). Unfortunately, rhetoricians often reject “practical” applications of their art while practitioner often reject “rhetoric” out of hand. Cunningham indicates that the split nature of the field results in varying expectations from graduates of TC programs—what they are expected to do depends upon where they will work (2). These diverse expectations and priorities serve to reify and perpetuate the binaric divisions.
Rivers’ suggestion seems more viable and reasonable. Rivers does not deny the split between science and politics, objective and subjective, or demonstration and persuasion in TC. Instead of giving preference to one or the other, he asserts technical communicators can create new spaces and translate between different fields (191). This shifts TC being a transmitter to collecting and articulating information between different stakeholders (193). While discussing graduate student training, Johnson-Eilola and offer a model or approach which can potentially influence TC in a positive way. “Sketching a Framework for Graduate Education” offers a three dimensional chart with no clear external borders or limits in its representation of teaching, thinking, and doing (416). The open, unbordered nature of this model, its openness to outside influences, corresponds well with an assemblage-based approach. Rather than attempting to reduce TC to a limited set of borders or simplifying it, Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s approach enables not just openness but it also allows for continual growth, development, complexity, and fracturing and growth within the field. This view makes approaching assemblage as a concept and practical tool in TC easier because complexity and fracturing are inherent to assemblages. Assemblages constantly shift to produce signs, not language, and an assemblage’s territory defines what it is. As an assemblage’s territory shifts, which is constant process, its identity transforms as do the signs it produces.

Interstice
Assemblage is a complex concept that is not clearly defined, with all of its associated terms, at any one textual site. Assemblage is explicated rhizomically: Deleuze and Guattari discuss it in a number of their works, and there is a complex working vocabulary that is interlocking and shifting. Thus, it is important to that this article’s selection of key terms about assemblages is not comprehensive. I have selected terms and facets which relate most directly to developing another perspective on Technical Communication’s professional identity. In order to situate the assemblage, a bit of background is necessary.
Deleuze and Guattari’s work is Postmodern, and the different emphases between Modern and Postmodern views of organizations and fields is useful. As Cooper and Burrell explain, Postmodernism centers on non-human actors and moves away from anthropocentric views. They elaborate on the significant differences between Modernism and Postmodernism and claim that the essence of Modernism is a belief in humanity’s capacity to use rational thought to perfect itself. In contrast, Postmodernism centers on critical questioning and, often, rejecting rationalism (92). The role of human actors is one difference between the two views. While Modernism centers humanity and treats them as primary actors; Postmodernists like Foucault and Deleuze decenter human agents regard social life as indeterminate and paradoxical (91). As the authors state, “In the postmodern view, organization is less the expression of planned thought and calculative action and a more defensive reaction to forces intrinsic to the social body which constantly threaten the stability of organized life” (91). Thus both human and non-human forces shape human response. From this perspective, it is possible to see the binaries themselves as potential actors/operators which help define TC instead of just having the binaries defined by TC or technical communicators.
Get transition here
Valuing and replicating binaries not only seems like engrained cultural practice, it also appears to reinforce the construct of Foucault’s disciplinary society instead of recognizing how contemporary society is shifting from disciplinary society to control society. Deleuze argues in “Postscript on the Societies of Control” that Foucault’s disciplinary societies are “finished”; societies of control are replacing disciplinary societies just as disciplinary societies replaced societies of sovereignty (4). In disciplinary societies, “vast spaces of enclosure” were organized. People moved from one enclosure to another; for example, they moved from home to work. Each enclosures had its own laws and regulations; regulating bodies in space and time in order to organize a symbiotic productive force more powerful than each individual alone was the goal of each enclosure’s (3). Unlike these fixed spaces, controls are modulations that constantly regulate individuals (4). Unlike the continuous modulation of control in control societies, each disciplinary space has different rules. Additionally, when an individual enters a disciplinary space they start from the very beginning; individuals are constantly regulated in control societies, and they are never able to finish or complete their task (5). One of disciplinary societies’ binaries, Deleuze indicates, is individual and mass; this binary does not exist in control societies—what matters is the code. The code is a password, is access, to information, places, and power (5). In disciplinary societies, individuals produced energy or profit which was controlled by the disciplinary space. In control societies, people produce networks (6). Deleuze claims that culture is moving away from binaries’ confining nature and towards the code. Attempting to retain the binaries which define or structure a culture or field, like TC, is a naturalized, reactive approach towards the field. The importance of this will be developed later in the article.

Key Assemblage Aspects
Definition
Deleuze and Guattari define assemblages in A Thousand Plateaus as “tetravalent.” The horizontal axes are expression and content, in their terms bodies and passions, while the vertical axes are territorialization and deterritorialization (88, 505). This presents a representation similar to the one by Johnson-Eilola and Selber as described above. Deleuze and Guattari claim that content does not cause or determine expression (89). Continuing, they assert that “Content is not a signified nor expression a signifier; rather, both are variables of the assemblage” (91). That is, language depends upon the machine; the abstract machine does not depend upon language. This is a reversal of the human-centered notion that language is a creative or generative source. These terms can be confusing, and this sparse discussion cannot fully elaborate them, but several key concepts emerge. First, assemblages are constantly shifting on the axes described above; they do not possess fixed borders or limitations. Second, assemblages are the result and the expression of multiple complicated and developing relationships between the different forces represented by the axes. Third, assemblages operate in material and non-material manners, and language is not a determining or driving element in assemblages.
Wise presents a useful perspective on these facets of assemblages:
“To summarize, Deleuze and Guattari write that assemblages have two axes. One axis is the creation of territory, on strata, thus moving between making (territorialization) and unmaking (deterritorialization) on the Body without Organs. The other axis is the enunciation of signifiers, collectively, moving between technology (content, material) and language (express, non-corporeal effects). Assemblages are made and unmade along each of these dimensions (80).”

Again, the importance of material and non-material action, constant changing of borders, and the centering of signifiers, not language, are made clear.

Assemblage: Constantly de/territorializing
Bodies and their movements take primacy over tools and goods in the assemblage; these bodies, their movements, and their processes of territorialization and deterritorialization quantify assemblages’ forms and largely define what they are (ATP 90). Similarly, the processes of territorialization and deterritorialization define assemblages as both material and enunciative; they say and do (ATP 504). This specialized terminology can confuse, but the fracturing and multiplicity of the terms surrounding assemblage is a demonstration of the term assemblage as an assemblage—the discussion embodies its very nature and acts as well as signifies assemblages. Rather than generating or presenting a holistic, self-contained body of explications or definitions which would, by its nature, be in direct conflict with the definitions of assemblage, the confusing nature of assemblage is an accurate reflection of the idea itself. Remembering this can make approaching assemblage as a concept and research process somewhat easier because complexity and fracturing are inherent to the process. Most relevant to TC is that assemblages are constantly shifting bodies which shift to produce signs, not language, and that an assemblage’s territory defines what it is. Language comes after. As an assemblage’s territory shifts, which is constant process, its identity transforms and as do the signs it produces. While it might not be comfortable at first, this constantly transforming nature is similar to the field of TC where practitioners and academics are constantly working in different fields, undertaking different tasks, and filling different roles.
DeLanda pg 10? +++ parts of one assemblage may become part of another (DeLanda 10)

Assemblages Flow & Slide
[ Wise describes assemblages as working through flows of agency rather than specific practices of power; this emphasizes and enables connections and relations as well as territorializiation and expression (84). These flows of agency operate on local up through the global scale. Just as assemblages operate at these different scales, there are multiple assemblages operating simultaneously and they are constantly changing (Wise 85). Do I even need this section? Or just keep slide?]

Buchanan asserts that Deleuze and Guattari’s most utopian idea is that “one can think differently—not merely new thoughts, but an entirely fresh way of thinking” and that “it is the manner or mode that can be new and distinct, thought it may have been around for quite a while” (117). This mode of thinking is nomadism, Buchanan indicates, and its value is that it stands in contrast to other ways of thinking. Assemblage makes nomadism possible because the assemblage “is able to articulate the slide into oblivion of one mode of thought together with the rise to dominance of another without having to explain it in terms of either succession or negation, but can instead stage it as a coadaptation” (118). This appears to remove the necessity for cause-effect explanation, evolutionary thinking of ideas, or arborescent models of thinking, power, responsibility, and/or development. Thus assemblages afford and support what Buchanan labels a utopian agenda because the slide is able to take place without having to justify, explain, or support these human-centered perspectives and models of development and evolution. This can potentially enable new views of TC as a field and discipline by allowing the field and profession to change, slide, and become different without having to worry about explaining or justifying the changes and developments in linear or causal language. Instead, technical communicators could perceive their work as nomadic and fit in wherever it is appropriate as opposed to being concerned about whether or not their work fits any specific regime or label.

Buchanan explains this potential to slide by recalling Deleuze and Guattari’s discussions of the difference between royal science, which consists of reproducing, and nomad science, which is following. Another comparison: observing from a fixed platform versus being carried away with the flow itself (118). It is not claimed that nomadism is better than royal science; instead, Buchanan asserts that assemblages value is that it avoids dualism and valuing by being in dialogue between the two poles (119). Assemblages are not simply arborescent or rhizomic; instead they are more of one and less of the other. Something that can be both rhizomic or arboreal is considered an assemblage (120). Assemblages constantly adapt, mutate, and their constantly changing nature allows them to both create and adapt to numerous kinds of models, contexts, and situations.

Assemblage Trait: Non-human Actors
A Postmodern perspective and the above definitions of assemblage decenter humans and emphasize expression, content, and the processes of deterritorialization and territorialization. The process, objects, and forces are regarded as means by which to understand, analyze, and engage with experience instead of focusing just on some of TC’s favorite themes: humans, language, rhetoric, and action. Bogard, claiming “Ultimately, they [assemblages] have a side that is neither technical, nor social, nor human, but simply the intensive energy of becoming-different of the assemblage itself” emphasizes that assemblages are not limited to or centered on humans and human agency (24). This shift in emphasis does not attend to two central themes of TC, the humanistic practice and ethics, while helping, perhaps, to explain Deleuze’s position that assemblages and abstract machines of control are intrinsically neither redepemptive nor nihilistic (28). Redemption and nihilism are both human-centered values and judgments, while the assemblage is centered on the flow of forces. This approach can potentially encourage valuable discourse about technology in Technical Communication, a central theme in the field, for, as Bogard claims, it problematizes machines. In contrast to Heidegger, this leads away from the concept of an essence to the idea of a multiplicity without an essence. There is no “humanistic” essence to locate, defend, or promote. Unlike Heidegger and other writers on technology, Deleuze and Guattari are not interested in the saving power or nihilistic risks involved with machines; instead, they are interested in experimenting with assemblages and the dangers and safety involved (15).

Interstice
Write some transitional stuff here

III Applying Assemblage to TC
The very nature of assemblages, their complexity and constantly shifting development is similar to Technical Communication in a number of ways. Since its inception as a field, TC has engaged a diverse array of practitioners, has operated in a number of different environments, and has been critiqued and applied in a number of political situations. Rather than attempting to limit TC to a simple or single definition, the non-human centered approach of assemblages offers the potential for TC as a field to enjoy and benefit these complexities as an inherent aspect of organizational and perceptual creation, that is, technical communicators would be working with flows of agency instead of attempting to resist them or freeze them with sterile or limited definitions. Of course, temporary and contextual definitions are important for site-specific problem solving; however, those definitions should be considered temporary instead of permanent. For example, there is no reason why TC can be regarded as having been a skills-based and serving providing practice which slid into a humanistic practice and which continues to slide and evolve. Attempting to preserve or establish fixed boundaries harken to disciplinary societies, and it is likely an ineffective tactic.
Many technical communicators, especially those with humanist agendas, have decried the anti-human or “cruel” nature of TC when it does not directly address human concerns. While having an athropocentric view is certainly comforting, it is necessary at some point to put down the teddy bear and realize that there are structures, forces, and flows which operate beyond human creation, understanding, or control. Disconcerting as that may be, it is more disconcerting to not be able to understand how these forces operate. Ironically, technical communicators have been operating within the milieu of non-human actors since the inception of the field. Technical communicators often work within large agencies–corporate, governmental, and non-profit–and these agencies often seem to have lives and processes of their own. As Cooper and Burrell indicate, organizations often develop their own rationale which then makes it appears as if rationality created the organization so the organization appears naturalized. Certainly not all technical communicators can or will accept a postmodern perspective, nor should they. Their very resistance to Postmodernism and adherence to modernist views creates another line in the assemblage of TC along which practitioners can slide. Additionally, given factors like unexpected social change, natural disasters, a globalized economy, and the rapid changing nature of communication and enunciation are clearly outside of human control; but these forces are not in control of humans, either. Instead, humans choose how to respond to these forces and the events that their collision create. Assemblage theory enables technical communicators to interact with, react, and identify these forces for what they are, forces and assemblages which continually change, instead of spending valuable time, energy, and effort attempting to moralize, justify, or condemn what has taken place. Rather than working productively and proactively in their immediate context, these kinds of moralizing responses seem more centered on attempting to find and place blame on a crustaceous binary of good or bad.
Understanding the complex material and enunciative landscapes and experiences can perhaps be more effective by understanding the process of territorialization and deterritorialization. The continual flux and change is important to the field and is one of its primary facets. This can be seen in practice when new skills, research methods, standards, etc., are either adapted, dropped, or change into something new. Alone, the territorialization process is difficult to consider or work with. Fortunately, it is integrally linked to the tetravalent model of axes without borders or limits. Assemblages can shift and flow on these axes with little problem. Rather than resisting change, this model embodies and welcomes change. And, it would appear, that the very nature of these axes is not limited to their current descriptors. Given how assemblages and forces continually flow, there may well be a change in human perception and labeling that emerges to present new models for perceiving, describing, and attempting to understand the flows of agency.
Flowing between assemblages can be seen in the very real and human experience of undergraduates training in TC when they move from academic training into the workplace if they earn a BA; similarly, some professionals shift from industry into academia. Instead of describing or perceiving these as radical transitions from one fixed population, the concept of flow allows a more realistic vision of both technical communicators and the relationships between industry and academia. Few people are 100 percent theory or practice, industry or academia, concepts versus skills. Instead, most people share traits from both ends of the binaries. Instead of regarding this as a point of conflict or contention, seeing it as a line along which to move and flow may enable less time or acrimony between people working on the same line who are simply at different positions on the lines. Rather than expend effort fighting and resisting the changing nature of assemblages and resisting the slide, it is possible for practitioners to effectively make use of the concept of the assemblage as well as the material and enunciated practices. Given the extensive nature of discourse surrounding the symbolic binaries in TC, it is difficult to not know of their existence. With conscious and intentional awareness of these binaries, rather than simple acceptance of them and choosing to fix oneself to one pole or another, an optional strategy is to understand the poles and then slide along the lines between the poles depending upon the situational context.

Conclusion:
If we started to view the field as an intersection of a number of assemblages, it would address the many areas of contention in TC without dismissing them; instead, it could regard them as important contributing factors that were not designed by people or intended to limit TCers to declaring loyalty to one pole or the other; instead, the poles help to define the turf or territory where TCers operate as well as the lines of force upon which they can slide/move

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