Heresthetics; authorship

Just read an interesting article on technical communication and heresthetics ("structuring the world so that you can win"). Essentially, TCers need to be able to maneuver through their employer's politics; it's very much not user-centered, ultimately. Can heresthetics be aligned with user-centered design? Granted, the concept can be applied to user-advocacy: if one wishes to speak for her user, one must first know how to best communicate the user's need to her employer.

A model of heresthetics has, according to Riker (qtd. by the authors), four constituents:

1. People--who are the people directly involved (upwards, lateral, downwards)? What are their values/tastes? What action can/will they take?
2. Alternatives--Person X wants one thing, and Person B wants another. Does A push on B or let B go? If A pushes, what method does A use to get beyond B? (Mentally, I see this as a flowchart).
3. Dimensions--things like time and money may also be a factor. What are these other factors?
4. What are the methods of choosing? Does the problem lie in a democratic or oligarchic setting?

Ultimately, the authors push for a non-utopian view of TC; that is, TCers tend to think that with enough knowledge of rhetoric, they can, in fact, change the world, or at least the documents they're designing. True? Perhaps--but as the authors point out, a utopian view assumes that all TCers are, in fact, inherently good and that all people are changeable. While I wish this were true, I'm enough of a Calvinist to disbelieve this.

Source: Moore, P. & Kreth, M. (2005). From wordsmith to communication strategist: Heresthetic and political maneuvering in technical commmunication. Technical Communication 52(3): 302-323.

As an aside, the authors also critiqued an article of Hart-Davidson's. Although I haven't read said article, and in fact have barely even interacted with Hart-Davidson (or Bill, as he's known here in the R&W department at Michigan State University), my emotional reaction was interesting, to say the least. In The Darker Side of the Renaissance (2003), Mignolo talks about the European conceptualization of the Book as the ultimate authority in contrast to the indigenous rhetorical traditions. I've inherited this more than I know; of course the Bible is still my personal ultimate authority, but I've found myself having a hard time disagreeing with any print materials unless I know for a fact that they are blatantly wrong. I've granted Bill authorship, for example, though I've never read his work; to see a critique thereof throws me into a bit of mental turmoil. Bill's an author, so he cannot be wrong.

It doesn't help that my background is literature, in which no such binary exists in terms of the text itself. The biggest debates even remotely similar to such issues have more to do with a question of authorship and manuscript authority (Did Shakespeare write Romeo and Juliet, or did Bacon? Is manuscript X, since it's older than Y, therefore more "correct," even though more copies of Y exist?) Then there are the cases of deliberate authorial deceit (see Danielewski's House of Leaves or Goldman's The Princess Bride, for example), but I've dealt with those elsewhere.

Slack, Miller, and Doak don't deal with this issue. Perhaps Foucalt does; I've yet to read his work, so I can't say. Perhaps they consider this unnecessary. After all, TC still hasn't shaken off positivism completely--it's the rhetor's responsibility to be as accurate as possible with the information in order to reveal truth, or as close to it as possible. But, again, this brings us back to utopianism. Do we assume that all clearly written TC products are as true and accurate as possible, given the context? (Ah, relativism creeps in.) Do we assume that the TCer/rhetor didn't use a document as a means to his own end? And do we assume that the audience cares enough to discern between what in an article they agree and disagree with?

Interesting. My aside was longer than my actual commentary. Welcome to my stream-of-consciousness.