On Edge: A Techné of Marginality

Abstract

Technical and professional communication has traditionally been rooted in the white, Western, hetero-patriarchal rhetorical tradition and bound by rigid notions of objectivity and neutrality that exclude historically marginalized and structurally oppressed communities. Using a multi-method analysis of #BlackLivesMatter Twitter activism, this study disrupts that tradition in two ways: 1) it foregrounds Black lived experience as the knowledge base for specialized expertise in navigating oppressive social structures and 2) it highlights skilled, persuasive communication tactics designed to resist those structures. The study concludes by producing a new analytical framework, A Techné of Marginality, which embraces Black subjectivities, values a critical understanding of our marginality, and identifies social justice activism as a kind of technical communication. In a kairotic moment when Black Feminist thinking and activism explicitly inform a broad swath of social justice work, A Techné of Marginality positions technical and professional communication theorists and practitioners to recognize the ways in which Black communities, and particularly Black women, have always, already done the unpaid labor that builds the communication infrastructures for equity, inclusion, and freedom.