Writing Workplace Cultures: An Archaeology of Professional Writing (review)

Writing Workplace Cultures: An Archaeology of Professional Writing. By Jim Henry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000; pp. xiv + 260. $34.95.

In the preface to his new book, Writing Workplace Cultures, Jim Henry notes that during the twentieth century "writing in the workplace and writing in academic settings co-evolved perniciously"(i). Throughout his book, Henry establishes the symbiotic but inequitable relationship between academic writing instruction and professional writing practice. He concludes, not surprisingly, that neither writing instruction nor writing practice has evolved beyond traditional forms and, as a result, has continuously limited our understanding of writing as a social, political, economic, and ideological activity. Both have suffered profoundly, he argues, because writing instruction and practice have been complicit in reproducing a "Taylorization of the workplace and of curricula" that generates "impersonal written communication to the ends of executive efficiency" (5). Writing instruction, in particular, has left professional writers (for example, public relations practitioners, copywriters, editors, technical writers, grant writers) with unrealistic expectations and inapplicable skills regarding the use of workplace writing within the political dynamics of organizations.

To date, he suggests that even after recent innovations in writing instruction, universities have furnished the workplace with writers prepared to produce relatively simple, single-authored works best suited to an industrial, high-volume economy. He notes, however, that recent shifts toward process pedagogy, social construction theory, poststructuralist theory, and postmodern theory offer possibilities for critique, opposition, and innovation in writing practices—necessitated by high-value modes of production in organizations that require more complex forms and modes of writing.

Writing in the workplace, he reminds us, is not nearly as clear-cut as composition instructors might suggest to their college students. For professional writers, writing projects are often collaborative, engage co-workers in other professions and hierarchical levels (not to mention different languages and cultures), require constant revision, target multiple audiences, and must incorporate the politics of representation within a unique organizational culture—all in order to deliver an adequate and appropriate "product." In the end, he notes, writers are "positioned" by—and position—their writing within a complex organizational environment, fraught with a habitus of politics. According to Henry, "writers not only compose but are composed by the discourses of the workplace" (6). Throughout his book, though, he seeks to reinvigorate writers as active agents of organizational culture. For him this influence on workplace practices is best accomplished through curriculum design and research in writing instruction.

To support these insightful and provocative claims, Henry analyzes 83 auto-ethnographies over seven years produced by his graduate students, who work as professional writers in the Washington, D.C. area. Soliciting his students' participation in "informed inter-subjective research," he makes problematic the role of writing within their workplace cultures. Using Foucauldian archaeological analysis as a framework, he locates the various "shards" of their writing practices, creating what he refers to as "petits recit" to counter the hegemonic discourses of the workplace that shape the students' subjectivities and others' realities.

His archaeological "dig" is organized in three sections. Part 1, "Writers in Theories," "maps the dig" by explicating recent research in composition, including narratological frameworks that offer new conceptions of subjectivity. Most notably, he suggests that much composition research has focused "on individual authorship, on manifestations of an essentialized and unified self, most often composed in an expressive mode" (17). Similar to Foucault's well-known essay, Henry also asks, "What is a Writer?" and identifies the various subject positions of the students/writers in his course. Here, Henry offers a personal and intriguing glimpse into how professional writers situate their work within their lives, from their early passions for writing to their future aspirations for their work.

Part 2, "Research on Discursive Work in Organizational Settings," is where Henry engages in the arduous task of "uncovering the shards" of his students' writing experiences in diverse organizations, providing the documentation for the claims made in the book. He discusses the workplaces...