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Disciplinarity, Crisis, and Opportunity in Technical Communication

In this thesis I argue that technical communication as an academic curricular entity has struggled to define itself as either a humanities or scientific discipline. I argue that this crisis of identity is due to a larger, institutional flaw first identified by the science studies scholar Bruno Latour as the problem of the "modern constitution." Latour's argument, often referred to as Actor-Network Theory (ANT), suggests that the epistemological arguments about scientific certainty are built on a contradiction. In viewing the problem of technical communication's disciplinarity through the lens of ANT, I argue that technical communication can never be productive if it seeks to locate itself within any of the institutional camps of the modern university. Rather, I contend that technical communication is a strong example of a nonmodern discipline, and that its identity crisis can be utilized to take one step towards rewriting the institutional debate over scientific certainty.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:USF/oai:scholarcommons.usf.edu:etd-5847
Date01 January 2013
CreatorsCarabelli, Jason Robert
PublisherScholar Commons
Source SetsUniversity of South Flordia
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceGraduate Theses and Dissertations
Rightsdefault

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