Kenny Fountain, T. (2014). Rhetoric in the Flesh: Trained Vision, Technical Expertise, and the Gross Anatomy Lab

Abstract

T. Kenny Fountain's Rhetoric in the Flesh: Trained Vision, Technical Expertise, and the Gross Anatomy Lab (2014) is the second of ATTW's Book Series in Technical and Professional Communication (TPC). Drawing from a yearlong ethnographic study of the gross anatomy lab, Fountain explores the role of embodied practices in the development of technical expertise. Specifically, he argues that medical students acquire expertise not through the mastery or possession of abstract anatomical knowledge but through the development of a trained perspective that encourages them to "see, feel, and think the way a physician does, and [learn] to respond to displays and objects, such as the body, as a physician would" (p. 9). At the heart of this argument is a compelling call for scholars of TPC to reimagine learning and the formation of technical expertise as a deeply rhetorical, social, and embodied endeavor.Chapter 1 opens by situating the book's core argument in TPC's long history with questions of what constitutes expertise in technical professions. Building on past conceptions of workplace socialization (