Kenneth Burke and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory - Symbolic of Motives

Burke's Simple Mystery of the "Appeal" of Text

Dee Drive — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:32:47 -0500

In SoM, Burke , perhaps more explicitly and cogently than in previous works we have read, plays with connections between rhetoric and poetics. Coming from a literature background, I've always been curious about such connections, and why ancient and contemporary scholars on both sides (excluding sophists of both eras)are at such pains to keep them apart. Burke makes a connection between the two in chapter 3 of SoM that seems blindingly obvious in retrospect, but perhaps was never before stated so concisely. On page 38 of SoM, Burke makes this comment about man's love of his own symbolic creation:

Symbolic extensions

Duder — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:22:56 -0500

So here is an attempt at creating a response for today’s readings. Although, I would like to say that it should be viewed as a naïve attempt at this point to understand, because I don’t think I’ve had enough time to completely digest the readings at this point. So here we go:

Subjective Rationality

mah — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:02:37 -0500

Something I've developed an interest in as of late is how a person's subjective/personal experiences can become a part of the knowledge making process (by knowledge making I mean what type of info/facts/experience are considered as credible/valuable). Modernism stresses the importance of rational, verifiable thought, and this came at the expense of not recognizing certain aspects of a person's character such as his or her emotions, his or her affective responses towards things, etc. that makes that person who he or she is. I see this modernist impulse as a shortcoming as it does not acknowledge the full context of a person's experiences and thus potentially limits the knowledge making process. In The Symbolic of Motives, I see Burke getting at or opening the door a bit for subjective/personal experience in his discussion of entelechy and mimesis.

A look at Godfrey Park

LKC — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:48:23 -0500

What caught my attention was Burke's discussion of movies, specifically his addressing of the claim that movies tend toward the "matriarchal" rather than the "patriarchal" as evidenced by the bedraggled husbands. Here Burke goes into what is essentially a roundabout discussion of audience awareness, saying that the housewife who's watching this needs to find comfort in the portrayal of an ideal that diverges from the reality she finds in her own home.