Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn

Building Coalitions for Action

Rebecca Walton, Kristen Moore, Natasha Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429581878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This is the first scholarly monograph marking the social justice turn in technical and professional communication (TPC). Social justice often draws attention to structural oppression, but to enact social justice as technical communicators, first, we must be able to trace daily practice to the oppressive structures it professionalizes, codifies, and normalizes. Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn moves readers from conceptual explorations of oppression and justice to a theoretical framework that allows for the concepts to be applied and implemented in a variety of practical contexts. It historicizes the recent social justice turn in TPC scholarship, models a social justice approach to building theories and heuristics, and presents scenarios that illustrate how to develop sustainable practices of activism and social justice. Its commitment to coalition building, inclusivity, and socially just practices of citation and activism will support scholars, teachers, and practitioners not only in understanding how the work of technical communication is often complicit in oppression but also in recognizing, revealing, rejecting, and replacing oppressive practices.

SECTION II

Strategically Contemplating the 3Ps

3

POSITIONALITY

Positionality is a way of conceiving subjectivity that simultaneously accounts for the constraints and conditions of context while also allowing for an individual’s action and agency. In other words, positionality asserts that the meaning of identity categories (such as race and gender) are not essential but rather are fluid and contextual. For example, there is no universal meaning for what it is to “be Black.” Rather, what it means to a Black, young woman in rural Georgia in 2019 differs from what it means to be a Black, gay man in Harlem in the 1910s. At the same time, aspects of identity are not wholly determined by context but rather allow for a person’s own interpretation and construction of values. In other words, social contexts and constraints do not create an identity which a person then discovers but rather form a position from which a person can craft meaning and use as a point of departure for action (Alcoff, 1988, p. 434).

It is this relation to taking action that makes positionality especially relevant to social justice. If social justice is collective and active (Chapter 2), then positionality offers a useful lens for seeing how people (including one’s self) are positioned relative to one another in the social fabric and, relatedly, for identifying our margins of maneuverability for action in pursuit of justice. In this section (Chapters 3–5), we build upon the foundations laid in Section I (exploring oppression and justice) by re-theorizing three central concepts: Positionality, privilege, and power. These concepts comprise a framework for enacting inclusivity and social justice in the field of technical and professional communication (TPC) and beyond. Examining our own positionality (what our identity means in particular contexts of action) and our own privilege (the types and extents of unearned advantages we are accorded) provides keen insight into the types and amounts of power we may have for taking coalitional action in support of justice (see Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 Relation of the 3Ps: Positionality, Privilege, and Power.

Primarily drawing upon the work of activists and scholars of color under-examined in the field of TPC, this conceptual framework of positionality, privilege, and power (the 3Ps) provides a lens useful for change-making and coalition building. In other words, understanding the 3Ps is necessary if we want to build coalitions across the field and in our local communities. As we discussed in the introduction and in Chapter 1, our field is well positioned to engage in coalitional work. For example, TPC’s long history of user advocacy and intercultural communication can be augmented for social justice, but doing so requires the kind of structured reflection facilitated by the 3Ps.

What Is Positionality?

Positionality¹ asserts that aspects of identity (such as race, gender, nationality, religion, etc.) are complex and dynamic. In other words, what it means to “be a woman” or to “be American” has no single, fixed meaning but rather is

•Relational: It is more meaningful to consider what it means to be a person with disabilities when considered alongside what it means to be able bodied

•Historical: What it means to be Black in 2018 is different from what it means to be Black in 1918 or even 2008, and this historicity changes how we interpret the past and envision the future as well

•Fluid: What it means to be a gay man may be different when a man is in his teens compared to his 50s

•Particular: What it means to be a devout Hindu differs among individuals ascribing to the same religion

•Situational: What it means to be a woman of color is different in the boardroom than it is in the courtroom than it is in her aunt’s kitchen

•Contradictory: What it means to be a successful technology professional may be perceived to conflict with what it means to be an immigrant, even for a person who is both

•Intersectional: What it means to be transgender is different for a person who is white than for a person of color and for a person with disabilities than for an able-bodied person

In threading this complex perspective on identity, positionality offers an alternative to simplistic perspectives such as essentialism, social determinism, and dyadic perspectives.² Essentialism is a Platonic notion that aspects of identity (such as race or gender) make a person what they are, that identity categories are the “essence” of a person. Not surprisingly, essentialist perspectives underlie scientific racism,³ which has been used to explain away patterns of difference in wealth, education, and other factors as stemming from essential differences among groups of people (rather than oppression, inequities, and injustice). For example, as discussed in Chapter 1, essentialism is often a key ingredient in cultural imperialism,⁴ an association that shows how dangerous essentialist positions can be. Yet essentialist arguments have also been embraced by some activist groups, which try to reclaim and reframe essentialist messages of oppressors: For example, women are not weak and overly emotional; they are nurturing and caring. This claim, like the one it refutes, is based on an essentialist premise. In some ways opposite of essentialism is social determinism, which argues that people are not what they are because of any innate quality of “gay-ness” or “Black-ness” or “woman-ness” or other identity markers but rather that people’s identities are determined by socially and culturally prescribed designations: For example, women are emotionally expressive because that is the role prescribed for them in society. Some might describe this as the nurture perspective opposite essentialism’s nature perspective. Yet, as feminist philosopher Linda Alcoff (1988) points out, neither perspective leaves room for agency, for change over time, and for other types of complexity. Similarly simplistic is a dyadic or dualistic perspective of identity: For example, a woman is either a lady or a whore. Called out and rejected by Chicana activist Gloria Anzaldúa (2007), dyadic perspectives and categorizations operate as oppressive ideologies which offer only two options: Full obedience to racist patriarchies or utter social rejection. Dyadic identities tend to be extreme and permanent, making for an effective tool of social control and oppression. In contrast to these perspectives on identity (essentialism, social determinism, dyads), positionality offers a useful tool for engaging complexly with issues of identity.

Positionality equips us to analyze the micro (i.e., the meaning of particular identity markers in particular combinations for a particular person within a particular context) within the macro-level social structure. Social structure is a multidimensional space within which members of society are positioned, and the positions stand in determinate relation to each other (Blau, 1977). As Young (2000) explains, “Structural social groups are relationally constituted in the sense that one position in structural relations does not exist apart from a differentiated relation to other positions” (p. 94). A person’s position within the multidimensional social structure governs the opportunities, resources, and capital available to them, shaping numerous facets of life: For example, labor and production, desire and sexuality, rules of authority and subordination, and prestige (Young, 2000, p. 94). But it is important to note that although social structures are real in that they constrain and enable people’s life chances, they are not natural in that they exist apart from the people whose choices and behaviors construct these social structures: “social structures exist only in the action and interaction of persons; they exist not as states, but as processes” (Young, 2000, p. 95). These processes, then, form a context for crafting positionality, thus influencing the meaning of particular identity markers.

Positionality allows for people to recognize, account for, and hold as true conflicting, contradictory aspects of their own identity, as well as that of others. Positionality provides a frame for understanding that, perhaps counter-intuitively, many people simultaneously occupy some seemingly contradictory identities: For example, college-educated professional with mental illness and disabilities, rural Southern Christian lesbian, etc. These supposed contradictions among our identity categories create points of tension as we try to live out what it means to be supposedly contradictory things simultaneously. For example, whereas dominant perspectives may insist upon what Anzaldúa (2007) calls “an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one [sex] or the other,” positionality accounts for complexity in which, for example, Anzaldúa (2007) occupies a both/and position, explaining, “But, I, like other queer people, am two in one body, both male and female. I am the embodiment of the hieros gamos: the coming together of opposite qualities within” (p. 41).

This “coming together of opposite qualities within” is at the heart of Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness, which we read as a theory of positionality. She advocates for a new consciousness that breaks down dualistic thinking: A new way of seeing the world, our own position within it, and the identities of others that transform how we behave and interact. This new consciousness refuses to accept the binaries that not only sever social groups (e.g., man/woman, white/nonwhite)⁵ but also place them in subject-object orientations, order them hierarchically, and strip groups of their power and humanity. The new consciousness is based on a concept of unity that is not simply the balance of opposing forces or the connection of previously severed components but rather a synthesis in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (pp. 101–102). She envisions this new consciousness emerging first from multiply marginalized people, those whose identity markers are not only nondominant but also clashing and contradictory. Multiply marginalized people are well positioned to develop this new consciousness because they have had to cultivate “a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (p. 101) for their own sanity: To resolve, accept, and live out their own positionality in social contexts that prescribe categories and combinations of identity with which they do not fit.

Occupying clashing, contradictory identity markers is not easy; it can be dizzying and straining, confusing and painful. Anzaldúa (2007) speaks particularly to struggles of being mixed race:

The ambivalence from the clash of voices results in mental and emotional states of perplexity. Internal strife results in insecurity and indecisiveness. […] Cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two cultures, straddling all three cultures and their value systems, la mestiza⁶ undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war.

(p. 100)

And this tension emanates not only from racial identity; clashes and contradictions spark across many identity categories. For example, professor of Asian American studies Trinh Vo (2012) discusses the tensions inherent in being a tenure-track scholar and a child of immigrants. Occupying this combination of identities, she straddles cultures with conflicting norms and values: Academic culture, which requires direct and explicit self-promotion to be recognized for her accomplishments, and an ethnic and familial culture that expects humility and deference to her elders (p. 95).

In addition to allowing for contradictions, positionality also accounts for how combinations of identity markers affect meaning. For example, Anzaldúa (2007) makes it clear that to understand what it means for her to be Chicana means considering her ethnicity alongside what it means for her to be a lesbian, to be a writer and artist, to be from the Texas/Mexico border, and her identity must be contextualized within norms and myths and atrocities and beauties of the multiple cultures she navigates, rails against, and claims. Her mestiza consciousness (read as a theory of positionality) makes clear that membership in a powerful or elite social group does not neutralize the effects of one’s membership in marginalized or otherwise oppressed social groups. Rather, these identity markers shape respective meaning. In other words, a privileged identity marker, such as “rich” or “famous,” does not balance or cancel out all social disadvantages of less-privileged identity markers, such as “Black.” Rather, each affects the meaning of the other because identity markers are not interpreted in isolation but are perceived and interpreted alongside and in light of each other. This is why positionality allows us to recognize that what it means for an unemployed man in his 20s to be Black and what it means for a famous football player in his 20s to be Black differs—and yet shares some meaning, some oppressive constraints and injustices due to shared historical and geographic context. Being attuned to positionality means recognizing that what it means to be one of the things you are—say, “professor”—is affected by other aspects of your identity such as your race, gender, age, nationality, and other factors. And for those who do not fit the normative myth of a particular identity, the fit (or lack thereof) can cause strain.

Positionality provides a lens that brings into focus some of the precarity and difficulties associated with claiming and performing identity. If the professional identity marker “professor” is associated with the racial identity marker “white” and the gender identity marker “male,” then professors whose racial and/or gender identity conflicts with this normative expectation must not only fulfill official requirements for success (e.g., number of publications) but also constantly navigate murky, unspoken, and often unconscious hurdles triggered by the dissonance of their identity. And though these hurdles may be unconscious and murky, they have actual, material consequences. For example, after reviewing decades of research on student evaluations and other evaluations of academics’ professional competence, professor of constitutional law Sylvia Lazos (2012) concludes,

Unconscious stereotypical beliefs create expectations about someone before that person walks in the door. When women and minorities enter their classrooms, their students, too, have expectations about them. Their majority counterparts do not face this obstacle. As women and minority instructors labor to make their classrooms friendly and warm (so that they can get decent student evaluations), they must ponder how their conduct will be perceived by their students in the context of their gendered and raced role expectations. From the get-go, the task is daunting.

(p. 176)

As we see, positionality places identity markers alongside each other and within broader cultural and historical contexts to demonstrate that identity has very real meanings (e.g., what does it mean to be a good teacher) with very real consequen...