A Technological Psychosis: The Problem with “Overfishing” in the Magnuson-Stevens Act

KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society Jan 2023 RSS

A Technological Psychosis: The Problem with “Overfishing” in the Magnuson-Stevens Act

David Blakesley

Abstract

Karen Gulbrandsen University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Abstract A group of scientists publicly advocated to remove the word “overfishing” from the Magnuson Stevens Act, calling its use metaphorical. I draw on Burke’s terministic screens and technological psychosis to trace the implications embedded in the term and show how a terminological screen can become entrenched in dialectics that substantiate technology and innovation. This case raises questions about how to counter-balance a technological rationality that continues to dominate our perspective on many public issues. Introduction Kenneth Burke began his essay “Terministic Screens” by making a distinction between a “scientistic” and a “dramatistic” approach to language: language as instrumental and language as suasive or motivated. In many ways, this distinction illustrates Burke’s ongoing meditations about the power of language to be used as a tool and the need to recognize the ways in which language motivates action. In this essay, I examine “overfishing” as a terminology in a federal regulation. In 1976, Congress approved the Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a law that established a 200-mile fishery conservation zone as well as regional fishery management councils to prevent “overfishing”—certain stocks of fish had been overfished to the point where their survival was threatened; other stocks had been substantially reduced. As the primary law that now governs marine fisheries management in United States federal waters, the Act has undergone many amendments, a name change, and three reauthorizations. Commonly known as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act (shortened to MSA), the Act is once again up for reauthorization. During the reauthorization process, a group of scientists publicly advocated in research journals and other forums to remove the word “overfishing” from the ten National Standards that operationalize the act. Drawing on more than one hundred years of research done across the…

Journal: KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society
Published: 2023-01-13
Topics: rhetorical theory race and writing multilingual writers

Citation Context

Citation data not yet available for this article.

Citation data is not available for KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society. This journal's publisher does not deposit reference lists with CrossRef.