Tactical Approaches to Technical Communication: Reimagining Institutions, Transforming Society

Delves into how individuals tactically exist within communicative systems, carving out spaces for themselves in places they don't necessarily fit.

In 1984, Michel de Certeau described the terms "strategies" as how institutions communicate their wants/demands/desires and "tactics" as how individuals navigate these potentially hostile, unwelcoming systems. A little over two decades later, Miles A. Kimball solidified the idea of tactical technical communication, laying the foundations for a new area of inquiry and scholarship. Today, many academics and researchers have imbued the concept of tactical technical communication with their own ideas and perspectives. This essay collection spotlights a meaningful diversity of tactical technical communication scholarship, exploring topics like the feminist punk magazine BIKINI KILL, the phenomenon of copwatching, the usage of fictional narratives in technical writing courses, and the challenges of LBGTQ+ visibility in local libraries. In many ways, the contributors are partaking in their own forms of tactical communication as they carve out spaces for themselves and their ideas within the academic discourse.