Genre-agent influences

 I've been trying to develop a deeper understanding of the concept of the Genre-Agent.  At first glance, this idea seems roughly analogous to assigning nefarious ulterior motives to a virus.  It appears to be a version of anthropomorphism, giving agency to an artifact.

As David, Jason, and Dr. Moeller said, however, a genre really does exert control over a person's actions: "relative to a genre’s capability to mediate, those human agents are just as likely to be controlled, performed upon, or communicated to by…genres with little or no ability (agency) to do otherwise" (p. 2).  In partnership with human agents, a genre-agent becomes a powerful influence within a genre field.  This genre-agent is not static, as it contains elements that influence the human agent's outlook and behavior relative to social influences inherent in the genre.  McAllister's list of forces within a genre field includes economic, mass culture, and local culture influences.

Ultimately, the genre-agent morphs from one artifact to another during the meaning-making process.  I love Huizinga's concept of a genre field as a playground; the open, questioning mind of a child seems an ideal metaphor for the process that human agents undergo when developing a piece of software or writing a document such as a proposal.  I also love the focus in these articles on the writing process rather than structural archetypes or the content itself.  As Hawk said (quoted by David and Dr. Moeller), “the human and the technical are no longer seen in opposition but as operating together in complex ecologies.”

This “complex ecology” is one of the things I most enjoy about technical writing.  I love working with designers and other writers, sorting out ideas and finding ways to present them so that they can easily be understood by the reader.  I love working within a genre to find ways to communicate effectively.  I love incorporating visual rhetoric to underscore the ideas portrayed by the text.   In this rich environment, human agency is a vital, creative force.

On a slightly darker topic, I have written several successful grant proposals, and the Marxist influences are very real.  I think “posthuman” is an interesting term to use in this case, as it indicates that we have moved beyond considering all human agents together and focused on the forces that influence individuals.  Each grant proposal carries strings with the funding, requirements that must be met to satisfy the funder that the project meets their expectations.  I often felt like a puppet dancing to the tugs of those strings, but as an employee of a non-profit organization, grant funding was essential to our operations.  It was often a tightrope act to ensure that our goals dovetailed with those of the funder, allowing both entities to coexist in a world of limited resources.

These articles have given me much to think about.  Like the works of Deleuze and Guattari, I suspect that this new content needs to be given time to percolate a bit and see what rises to the surface.  I suspect that these genre-agent ideas will profoundly affect my future human-agent actions.