ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the ability to have an effect in the world as a relational enterprise constitutive of humans and nonhumans in rhetorical practice. Posthumanist accounts therefore lack an apparatus for responsibility. Objects have agency, but can they also be responsible for their actions? To whom or to what are they responsible? How should technical communicators consider responsibility? The chapter addresses these questions through a case involving a public bus system. It reviews literature on posthumanism, new materialism, and responsibility. The chapter provides a framework for analyzing metonymical objects and a heuristic for other technical communicators seeking to identify metonymical objects enmeshed in infrastructure. The transportation coordinator position and the bus driver had been created to metonymically represent the legal responsibility of the school system. Hillsborough County Public Schools transportation services are responsible for moving students to and from home each day. Florida law demands that students between age six and sixteen attend school.
