Beverly Sauer and Privileging
Beverly Sauer takes a postmodern approach to dealing with the construction of the Wilberg Mine accident report, though at first glance, she doesn't seem concerned with how information is privileged in the report. She seems more concerned with showing that a linear model approach is ineffective in preparing the report because the accident and the "events" that led up to it don't adhere to a linear structure: "[these] reports . . . become unwieldy justifications of each player's rhetorical stance" ("The Dynamics of Disaster" 394). But the difficulty of putting the events of a disaster into a linear structure directly relates to what information in such a structure becomes privileged. The effect of such an approach not only produces bad reports, but also oversimplifies the accident. Sauer notes that the agencies involved often produce "unwieldy, disorganized, unreadable reports when writers attempt to reduce the complex elements [of the disaster] to a single, linear narrative--a 'snapshot' of the disaster at a single moment of crisis" (394).
Panoptic Modes of Hypertext
Equal Ground
An Introduction?| Bibliography | Navigation Tips |