Concept Maps as Rhetorical Sites of Investigation
“As organizations become more complex, technologies more pervasive, and rhetorical intent more diverse, it is no longer tenable to divide the world into human choice and technological or environmental determinism. Professional and technical communication is a field that is perfectly situated to address these concerns. Because it is already predisposed to see the writer in larger organizational contexts, the moment is right to explore technical communication’s connections to posthumanism, which works to understand and map these complex rhetorical situations in their broader contexts.”
—Andrew Mara and Bryon Hawk, “Posthuman Rhetorics and Technical Communication,” (2009)
Technical Communication Quarterly, p. 3
A film still image features Rachel Rubino’s brother, Nicholas Rubino, in a neutral tone collared shirt. He sits on a white sofa in a room with orange walls, and plays the acoustic guitar. IMAGE REFERENCE: Rachel Rubino. (2023) Nicholas Rubino Guitar [film still]. Video by Rachel Rubino. Photo by Rachel Rubino.
Threshold Concept:
posthumanism (n.): a general category for theories and methodologies that situate acts and texts in their complex interplay among human intentions, organizational discourses, biological trajectories, and technological possibilities[1]
Click “play” to access an auditory transcription of the following webtext (Conclusion), as written and read by Rachel Rubino. 3:48-5:21 of this audio features an original song (untitled, 2023) composed by Nicholas Rubino on the electric guitar.
“What does it mean to know, and how do we teach what we know to others?” Dr. Price prompted these questions for the knowledge map assignment that she gave during the Fall 2022 Disability Studies seminar I previously referenced within the Introduction of this webtext. Her assignment invited my first critical engagement with research-based project mapping. The key topics I went on to explore throughout this project specifically emerged as I considered knowledge maps alongside class discussion about transformative access. Notably, knowledge maps evoke a broad schema for both concepts and procedures. In this way, the knowledge map can be thought of as an umbrella term and generative method for approaching big ideas.
With the scholarship we’ve examined thus far in mind, I advance a posthuman perspective of rhetoric as it is taken up by Andrew Mara and Bryon Hawk in their Technical Communication Quarterly article, “Posthuman Rhetorics and Technical Communication” (2009). Mara and Hawk distinguish posthumanism as “a general category for theories and methodologies that situate acts and texts in the complex interplays among human intentions, organizational discourses, biological trajectories, and technological possibilities” (3). In this light, I clarify my aim to investigate concepts maps along the discursive thresholds that inform knowledge as both an organizational construct and as an applied pedagogical practice.
I sustain this concern as I set out to interrogate the dominating discourse and popular conceptions of visual concept maps. To support this objective, I recall Hamraie’s definition of access-knowledge as “specific arrangements of knowing and making” (Building Access, 5). Like Kerschbaum, Shankar, Kleege, and numerous other scholars invested in the digital humanities for which this project has left yet unaccounted, Mara and Hawk peruse the complicated web of interactions between humans and technology. Given the domain of their research endeavors, Mara and Hawk are particularly concerned with how technical communicators can harness their expertise to map the rhetorical situatedness of “traditional humanistic tools and heuristics for anticipating systemic complications—like audience analysis, user testing, and peer review” which “quickly become swamped when trying to account for the tendential forces of nonhuman actors and activities” (2). My interest in Mara and Hawk’s stance stems from their attention to technical communicators as writers who navigate densely entangled information sets for the purpose of facilitating their audience’s understanding of said complexities.
Throughout my time studying technical communications, I have come to discern the field’s critical awareness toward the multi-levelled interplay of actors, actants, and structures that work from and influence the broader network(s) of a given rhetorical situation. My experiences with making and sharing concept maps have directly influenced my interest in technical writing, and the attention it affords to my positionality as a scholar who seeks to effectively convey complex interrelations between people, technology, ways of knowing, and measures of access. As I conclude this project, I reflect on my aims to continue developing my knowledge of technical communication and exploring how concept maps can be conceived as rhetorical sites through the lens of the field’s tenets.
When I think about the concept map as a product, I do tend to visualize. That is, I tend to see. I see what I know. And what I know is what I’ve been taught, what I’ve read and all with whom I’ve engaged. But I think we often forget to look in the places we see most. Here’s the thing, though. When I think about the concept map as a process, I begin to listen. I hear sounds that stall and pivot. Sounds that lull like static energy. I hear a process that is messy and real in a way my eyes do not comprehend, but for which my ears do not need an answer. My ears do something else instead. They hear the process, and they don’t think about product.
When I talk to my brother, a musician, he speaks to me about a different kind of knowledge. He hears the sounds of his guitar and thinks about product. The kind of knowledge of which he speaks is one I can hear in the acoustics of his strumming. Without musical training, however, I remain unfamiliar with the mechanics of the song that entails his product. If I engineer a concept map through audio to identify a locus of meaning, my knowledge of that meaning is transformed. There is an ambient attunement there, in what and how I know. Here is my urge to defy the impulse toward wrapping up this webtext like a product with a bow. And so the refrain again goes, what does it mean to know, and how do we teach what we know to others?
[1] This threshold concept is defined on page 3 of Mara and Hawk’s article “Posthuman Rhetorics and Technical Communication” (2008). See “References” for an extended citation of this source.
Charting the Crossroads of Knowledge and Making: Concept Maps as Rhetorical Sites of Transformative Access 