Spinnuzi, Chapter 4

I'll begin by saying it was nice to see Texas prominently featured in this week's reading--two weeks in a row! However, the reality of Texas being late to the game in terms of recognizing the need for regulation on services and pricing is not surprising, nor is it nearly as captivating as the story of Wiley College.

Methodologically, this chapter from Spinuzzi is interesting because he uses two theories that do not agree on the nature of history in order to illustrate the how defensible and sound claims might be made about the data of telecommunications history. Activity theory is grounded in a notion of dialectical contradictions developing a stabilized object. Alternatively, actor-network theory focuses not on dialectics and development toward a single, stable object. Rather, ANT looks to multiple and contingent translations discusive and material propostions by actants. In this way, history becomes an accounting of temporarily stable propositions--made stable by a layered accumulation (not unlike the Vicki Burton's notion of rhetorical accretion)--that are constantly open to problematization and renegotiation by actants.

Spinnuzi's appeal to Machiavelli serves well his goal to historicize the strategies of a network by making "success" one of his guiding analytics.

Spinnuzi provides me with a way to imagine tracking the accumulation of propositions that making an organization or network: writing departments, major curricula, liturgical practice, layered literacy events. He also challenges me not ascribe an intentionality and coherence on to a set of practices that may not have been intended. In other words, don't read the history of a group or practice in light of its present ideology. Rather, I should look for moments of accumulation and contestation that enable the present articulation of a group.