Feminist Technical Communication: Apparent Feminisms, Slow Crisis, and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster by Erin Clark

A Call for Improved Efficiency: Clark's Feminist Technical Communication Draws Allies in to Apparent Feminisms

Abstract

This editorial reviews Erin Clark’s Feminist Technical Communication: Apparent Feminisms, Slow Crisis, and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, which theorizes a flexible and temporary feminism for technical communicators based on an expanded framing of efficiency as the cornerstone of successful and effective technical communication. As the first book of its kind, Feminist Technical Communication situates feminism as necessary to ethical and efficient technical communication and as supportive to the social justice turn within the field. Clark interrogates issues of gender and feminism within technical communication, especially as it shows up at the intersection of risk communication and the rhetorics of health and medicine. This case study of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster examines the impacts on human health beyond the boundaries of the data collected, reports written, or public statements made. Her study uncovers the influences, impacts, consequences, and results that are often overlooked in the name of efficient crisis response and how the prioritization of economic and ecologic concerns over human health results in avoidable short- and long-term negative impacts disproportionately experienced by marginalized communities. This book calls technical communicators to critically analyze and learn from slow crises with a feminist orientation that values embodiment and dynamic movement to improve their contributions to communication regarding human health before, during, and after crises occur.