a paradox

The textual productions surrounding the scientific laboratory hinge on a paradox. Though the production of papers is the chief objective of participants’ activities, writing and reading--the very activities which are crucial to this process--are seen as extraneous to facts, which emerge as a result of these same operations (Latour & Woolgar, 1986, p. 76). Documents are the means by which scientists accrue rewards; they must communicate their findings with the scientific community via papers if they are to reap significant benefits from their work. In order for these papers to be accepted as valuable and true, they must obscure their rhetoricity. Successful documents also erase the circumstances of their production in order to throw more focus on the facts these documents showcase (p. 63). Latour and Woolgar explain:

Once the data sheet has been taken to the office for discussion, one can forget the several weeks of work by technicians and the hundreds of dollars which have gone into its production. After the paper which incorporates these figures has been written, and the main result of the paper has been embodied in some new inscription device, it is easy to forget that the construction of the paper depended on material factors. The bench space will be forgotten, and the existence of laboratories will fade from consideration. Instead, “ideas,” “theories,” and “reasons” will take their place. Inscription devices thus appear to be valued on the basis of the extent to which they facilitate a swift transition from craft work to ideas. The material setting both makes possible the phenomena and is required to be easily forgotten. Without the material environment of the laboratory none of these objects could be said to exist, and yet the material environment rarely receives mention. (p. 69)

An inscription, once produced, dominates participants’ discussion, and the intermediate steps that preceded its production are forgotten or disregarded as “merely technical.” Attention is drawn away from the material settings and individuals implicated in the manufacture of these facts. The cumulative effect of these erasures is the perception of documents as simple, objective records; their social, material, rhetorical, and historical contexts—on which the production of these facts notably depends—are removed. Relying on the laboratory metaphor to align wireless writing instruction with an arhetorical, ersatz place is particularly problematic for technical communication classes.