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
Let me complete my series of comments on MacLennan's essay before I get around to Tom Wright's most recent posts.
I like the fact that MacLennan concludes her essay with a generic profile of the incipient serial killer, the practically "motiveless" murderer as a youth. Her piece thus follows something of a problem-solution pattern of arrangement. "How can we put a stop to the carnage?," she asks.
These "unprovoked violent crimes," MacLennan summarizes, "have become a form of public communication in which the message is one of 'domination, manipulation, and control' not just of the victim, but of the police, the media, and the public." Acts in a scene, they are both a "retaliation against," and a mimicking of, social values.
The early-stage explanation for this perverted style of "symbolic redemption" is epitomized by the experts in this way: The Bundys of the world are "more 'made than born.'" If you get near it, take note of the "'homicidal triangle'" in respect to the kids on your block: "'bed-wetting at an inappropriate age, starting fires, and cruelty to small animals or other children.'" Any two of these three aberrations should set of alarm bells.
I can readily see how the "intersection of attitude, form, and scene" can HELP explain the "signature" repetitions of the adult mass murderer, and perhaps also the recurrent bully-boy aggressions of the sociopath in training. Does this mean, though, that the serial killer is MORE made than born? I throw that query out as another potential avenue for discusion. The role of biological heritability in personality formation has been a central emphasis in the psychological research of the past half century. Lykken et al. at Minnesota, Kagan and associates at Harvard, and Eysenck and Eysenck at the U. of London led but three of many programs that have made claims for genetics. Neurological chemistry and hard-wiring have not been afterthoughts in the summary conclusions of these social scientists.
I would like to hear more from John Douglas on this matter before I'd go strongly for scene-act or scene-agent as the main determinants in these cases.
Your KBJournal public respondent and carnie barker.
Ed