A Rhetorical Journey into Darkness
Submitted by Ed Appel on Thu, 2005-09-22 15:03
My overall assessment is that Jennifer MacLennan's essay on crime-scene analysis as viewed in the light of Burke's dramatism makes for a rich, detailed, and generally convincing analogue. Obviously, if Burke's take on human symbolic action has validity, a dramatistic critic can dig up spadefuls of drama in any set of discourses. As she makes clear, though, MacLennan explores not just the way the pentad-related "who, what, when, where, and why questions" pervade the how-to-do-it books of the sleuths who solve serial murders. She unveils "deeper connections" and similarities. Both John Douglas and Robert Ressler, her primary guides in the hunt for what are superficially thought to be motiveless killings, have "assembled . . . a grammar of the symbolic elements of violent crime," a "language of the crime scene," that mirrors many of Burke's primary insights.
Some of those points of overlap between Burke and especially Douglas include:
Treatment of human actions as symbolically infused.
Emphasis on the "situatiod nature of symbolic acts," the "motivational force of the scene-act ratio."
The profound and predictive relationships among agent, attitude, and act.
Use of drama as "an analytic framework."
Stress upon form as "a manifestation of human desire."
"Estrangement" as "the origin" of the "most desparate" strategies of "redemption and reidentification" the criminals in question seek through "victimage."
The "fundamentally rhetorical" nature of serial murders, their character as acts of addressment.
These experts in crime-scene profiling employ different terminology, to be sure. Their conceptualizations are, however, strikingly reflective of Burke's approach to language and rhetoric, MacLennan effectively argues.
That's an overview. Let's get into some of the author's more specific probes in a later post.
Ed
Comments
Tom makes some good points in his post. Certainly, if one takes it literally, the "first among equals" dictum is a contradiction. To be first is not actually to be equal to everyone else or every other thing in the group in question. That phrase really is a manner of speaking that has to be taken with a grain of salt. "You get the idea" is what it more or less implies as subtext.
Yes, as MacLennan suggests, Burke highlights "act" in his presentation of the pentad in particular and in his philosophy in general. See his definition of "dramatism" in the Merriam-Webster unabridged for further particulars. That emphasis should make dramatism/logology, though, more of a realistic philosophy than a materialism, pragmatism, idealism, or mysticism (see the lengthy treatment of the "philosophic schools" in GM). Realism "goes with," Burke asserts, an emphasis on "act."
Can we say such an emphasis is inherently preferable? All the terms of the pentad or hexad have their "blind spots," according to Burke's philosophy. The "entelechial" dimension of symbolic motivation (the "Five Dogs," etc.) almost inevitably results in this kind of "all or none" (ATH) thinking that places one term or concept front and center as globally explanatory. Is the "realist" who deflects motivational accountings away from, say, scenic causes (materialism), the natural proclivities of certain personality types (idealism), and/or consideration of the "at-handedness," "serviceability" (P&C), or beneficent functionality of certain tools or approaches (pragmatism) less given to the tunnel vision language promotes? I don't think so. "Realisic" constructions of what happens, or attributions of motivation, do not overall seem to be privileged by Burke, nor does it seem to me that they should be. (See, for instance, Barry Brummett's article on the gay rights controversy, way back in an issue of CSSJ, I think.)
That's the big problem I have with privileging "act" as pentadic "czar." Epistemically, it's not a "stand out," it seems to me, and Burke's trajectory of thought over the course of his career moved toward climactic concerns with the problem of knowledge.
Hey, let's open this question up for a lot more discussion.
Ed