[KB] Editing Redux

[Edward C Appel]

Burkophiles,


          Onemore thing on “Archetype and Entelechy” in DD:That’s a book of Burke’s not much referenced, it seems. I probably wouldn’teven have a copy of it, except for the retired Clark U. professor who used topost on this list. He sent me a copy back in the day. I thought I saw thatsecond lecture anthologized somewhere, but do not recall the work. It’s not inGusfield’s collection. Has anybody else seen it somewhere outside of Dramatism and Development? It is, Ithink, an important and useful lecture/essay.


          Letme conclude, or maybe not conclude, by pointing to just some of the passages inearly Burke (that is, Burke’s writings before he gets to the generally“un-Troubled” concerns of a highly-abstracted pentad in the Grammar), that conjure the “Trouble”inherent in dramatic action as “conflict” of one degree or another in quest of“redemption” of some kind:


          “Recommendingby Tragedy” and “The Peace-War Conflict” in the Chapter “The Ethical Confusion”in P&C, pp. `93-98, and Burke’s “moralsare fists” interpretation of Bentham, the chapter just before. See, also, in P&C, Burke’s earlier reference tothe scapegoat mechanism as faulty means selection.


          “PoeticCategories” and “The Destiny of Acceptance Frames,” pp. 34-105; the distinctionbetween “universal” and “factional” tragedy in “The General Nature of Ritual,”pp. 188-90 note, in ATH. Burke couldhardly talk about, or distinguish among, genres or “Categories” of dramawithout getting into aspects of disorder through disobedience, guilt,sacrifice, and redemption---“Trouble,” if you will.


          Theubiquity of terms and concepts spelling out the “Trouble” of dramatic conflictin the “Philosophy of Literary Form,” PLF,pp. 1-137 (“Aspects of the Scapegoat in Reidentification,” “purification,”“redemption,” “burden,” “debt,” “disease,” “problem,” “evils,” “indictment,”“sacrifice,” etc.) And, of course, note Burke’s analysis of the scapegoatmechanism in “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle,’” pp. 191-220, a treatment oftroublous drama that does actually conclude with Burke’s using the term “trouble”  as “locus of” a drama’s inception on p. 220.


          And,although A Rhetoric of Motivesappears after, not before, the Grammar,RR still precedes Burke’s shift to“logology” and its more focused concerns with the negative, the motive ofperfection, the terms for order, and theological drama as epistemologicalfilter or frame, as master “terministic screen,” if you will. And I’m talkinghere about Burke’s later, more systematic “logological” treatments, sinceadumbrations of such concerns appear, for example, in RM in the “Pure Persuasion” section, and Divine action as “ultimate”anecdote of action in the Grammar (p.61 ff.). Hints of the logological or epistemological turn are scatteredthroughout early Burke.


          So,observe in RM the very opening ofBurke’s case for “identification” as “substance” applied to persusion/communicativegroup-cohesion-building in general: Burke starts via illustration ofColeridge’s insight, “’. . . in His vast family no Cain/ Injures uninjured (in her best aimed blow/ Victorious Murder ablind Suicide).’” That is, Burke begins with the fundamental “Trouble”inaugurating the human drama, the internal one, Freud’s indictment of the Egoby the Superego, generating and “Qualifying the Suicidal Motive,” or “Self-Immolation,”as Burke puts it (pp. 5, 7). We’ve got Milton’s Samson pulling down the ceilingon himself and the Philistines together, Arnold’s Empedocles jumping into avolcano, Arnold’s Rustum killing his son Sohrab as proxy for himself (like thefather Burke elsewhere references [RM,pp. 260-63] who felt an urge to through his son down from the top of a tallbuilding, as a form of self-destruction, that expresses the same motive inancient cultures in the sacrifice of the first-born, male, or male or female;in enlightened Biblical Israel, that first-born child was “redeemed,” boughtback from such a fate by payment of 5 shekels of silver; Exodus 13:1-2, 11-16;Numbers 18:15-16). 


          In RM, Burke goes on to classify the rhetoras, in a sense, a “killer” who, by way of such symbolic aggression, usuallyturned outward, effects “transformation” via a reidentification that can knitspeaker and listeners together in common cause. Rhetoric, Burke says, “mustoften carry us far into the lugubrious regions of malice and the lie,” thesymbolic and so often material “Human Barnyard” (p. 23). Talk about “Trouble”!See “Order, the Secret, and the Kill” and “Pure Persuasion” for more dramatic“Trouble” and extreme self-sacrifice and/or extreme dramatic self-aggrandizement.


          That’sall I have to say in particular about the partly “Trouble[some],” as I see it,article in the current KBJ. However,Stan’s well-taken note that Burke’s “grammar of motives” is rooted in the basicgrammar of language raises for me, at least, the question: Does Burke own thepentad, or only his creative use of it?


          Again,inquiring minds want to know.



 
          Ed        

          

 

    On Thursday, January 26, 2017 3:53 PM, Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com> wrote:
 

 Les,
In respect to your three posts in this thread:
On the first, I would differ with your rejection of "The Iron Law of History." Remember that there is "comic" drama, as well as the more intensive genres. "Victimage" in comedy is most attenuated, but the mere reproof or "slap on the wrist" or social distance still comes under the heading of "sacrifice" of the other. 
On the second, great job, no qualms.
On the third, again, most illuminating and insightful on CS, but a bit beside the mark maybe in your first sentence. Burke devoted a whole lecture at Clark U. to the topic "Archetype and Entelechy," published in his Dramatism and Development (1972, pp. 33-55).  The entelechialized "perfect form" Burke cites as example is "the Freudian archetype of the 'primal crime'" (p. 42 ff.). In this revised lecture, Burke analogizes archetypal, prototypical, entelechial, paradigmatic, summational, culminative, idealized, essentialized, rounded out, perfected, thoroughgoing, taken to the end of the line, the form that would best fulfill the symbolic telos, striving after complete satisfaction, at a high or highest level of generalization or abstraction, pure form, condensatiion, completion, mythic, absolute, a key terminologu and resultant attitude that functions as a generating principle, and a compulsion to conform perfectly to such a pattern
The notion of "archetype" thus fits well with the thought of late, logological, Burke.


Ed.  

    On Thursday, January 26, 2017 1:05 PM, Leslie Bruder <bruderian at gmail.com> wrote:
 

 Burke was careful to avoid the wordarchetype, though I am not sure why.  WilliamRueckert in The Drama of Human Relationssays tragedy is Burke’s representative “anecdote.”  In Counter-Statementmetaphysical universals become psychological universals, the divine formsbecome “conditions of appeal,” and a consequence of the naturalization of theseuniversals is to convert them into the tools of the craftsman or wordsmith(reversal, contrast, crescendo, repetition, balance, etc.,).  Dramatismas a full-fledged theory emerges from the process of refinement going on in hisearly work.  Rueckert sizes it upconcisely (trues it up): every poem is simultaneously revelation, ritual andrhetoric.  I imagine that as Burke thinksthrough how “universal situations give rise to recurrent emotions then to fundamentalattitudes and finally typical actions” he recognized [that] this “pattern ofexperience” was thee creature he was tracking down.  Precisely when this “pattern of patterns”came to him, and precisely how (in a dream?) I don’t know, but at this earlystage, steeped in “mountains of words” and mulling over  the anthropologist’s “universal pattern” hemust have felt he was getting close. Standing just behind the scenes contemplating the poet/metaphysicians conditionsof appeal and the nine “potentials” of the anthropologist’s universal pattern (speech,material traits like tools, art, mythology, religion, social systems, property,government and war) it was the process of individuation that must have beenparticularly fascinating to him.  Inmaking a poem the poet ritualizes his revelation (CS 168-169).  Since Burke wrote that the poet communicateshis idea to others I would amend the above formula: the poem is the ritualized(he also says “stylized”) revelation of the poet’s vision or epiphany. Aninteresting question at this point is whether the inspiration of the poet’ssymbol is passively suffered (Burke uses the example of a poet suffering from afeeling of inferiority or depression).  Hedistinguishes the poet from the dreamer as one who not only spontaneouslygenerates images but one in whom the “desire to communicate becomes consciousmotive, dreaming passes into creating.” (Rueckert 6)  The conversion of the suffered into “equipmentfor living” moves through diagnosis toward illumination which as Burke says isthe chief function of art as revelation. Certainly a ritual of initiation isonly a beginning of the human apprenticeship, theory leads to practice,revelation to knowledge, early reproductions to master works.   Les
On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 7:23 PM, <wessr at oregonstate.edu> wrote:

Hi all, interesting discussion. Just want to add a comment on the pentad--

The pentad comes from drama, of course, and drama is conflict and resolution. Burke sees characters and ideas as interchangeable--that is, characters in a drama can be viewed as ideas and ideas in a philosophy can be viewed as characters in a drama ("Poetic Motive," p. 60). Ideas can conflict and their conflict can be resolved, analogous to drama. A particularly clear example is Burke's analysis of Kant in GM. Agent in Kant resolves conflict, both the particular conflict that Hume uncovered and that awoke Kant with a "jolt" (GM 186) and more generally the conflict between motion and action. Agent is where Kant positions both empirical science (motion) and moral freedom (action). Philosophy's "basic ways and aims," Burke insists, "are to be viewed in terms of poetic action" (GM 190).

Drama is also arguably the archetype of archetypes.

Bob

Quoting Edward C Appel <edwardcappel at frontier.com>:


Jim M,


          There?sno doubt that Burke did not invent or first discover and explore the ?Trouble?or ?conflict? inherent in drama. Such analysis has been around for a long, longtime, as we know.


Phil,


          Thanksfor those quotes from your letter from Burke back in the 1970s. The more we getgeneral access to those more informal statements of Burke?s, the better. Thenotion of Burke urging a further ?perfecting? of his philosophy by his readersand interpreters is both encouraging and characteristic of his style of thoughtand composition.


          JimK,


          Yousay you basically agree with me. I say I basically agree with you. In sayingthat I agree with the way you characterize the pentad and its function is tosay, also, that I agree with the authors of the ?Trouble[some]? article in the KBJ on that score. They can?t find?Trouble? in the Grammar. There?s no need for ?Trouble,? i.e.,the ?conflict? of full-fledged drama and all its consequences, to be in the Grammar. These ?basic forms of[pentadic] thought,? as Burke calls them, for ?attributing motives,? derived asStan says from the grammar of language itself, can be used on what Burkeindicates is a ?general,? high level of abstraction to bring to the surface ina discourse the motivational strategies at work to finesse listeners andreaders into concerted action. Those twists, feints, and sleights of hand maynot be apparent on the surface.


          WhatI disagree with in the KBJ article inquestion is the authors? broader statement that ?Trouble? is not to be foundanywhere in Burke?s corpus, that, indeed, this implicit and ultimatelynecessary dramatic concept should be attributed to Jerome Bruner, as Bruner hasinterpreted and employed Burke. Various terms and uses of the ?Trouble[some]?guilt-sacrifice -redemption cycle are scattered throughout Burke?s earlywritings, and then in more detailed anatomical analysis, starting at least inBurke?s Princeton conference paper (1951), published as an appendix to the 2ndedition of P&C in 1954. Thechapter, ?The First Three Chapters of Genesis,? in RR, we surely know, brings this trajectory to a most thoroughgoingconclusion.


          Now,in my Primer, I do two relevantthings: In the first three chapters, I show, I do believe, how theguilt-redemption cycle, or terms implicit in the idea of order, devolve fromthe pentad, or the basic grammar of language. Drama in all its aspects isimplicit in the language humans use even ?trivially,? as Burke says early in RR, the book that brings this trajectoryof implications into full view, ifelliptically. I entitled Chapter 1 in the Primer, ?The General, Implicitly MoralPattern of Verbal Action?; Chapter 2, ?The Specific, Explicitly Moral Patternof Verbal Action?; Chapter 3, ?A Paradigm for Invention of Discourse andAnalysis of Texts That Combines the Two Patterns.? This generic pattern thenbrcomes the basis for distinguishing Burke?s notions of ?tragic? drama, ?comic?drama, and ?burlesque? drama, by way of various levels of dramatic intensity. Iadd my conception of ?melodrama,? about which Burke does not have as much tosay.


In my Addendum 3, Iexplain, in my humble way, how the pentad can be detached from the trajectoryof implications Burke explicitly offers in ?Terministic Screens? in LASA, and used as a ?Separate CriticalTool.? I highlight three aspects of Burke?s creative employment of thesefundamental grammatical concepts:


First, in discurse, asin philosophies, one pentadic term, one of these basic forms of thought, tendsto get emphasized. I tie this tendency to Burke?s notions of ?perfection? or?entelechy.?


Second, another pentadicterm will often be coupled with this source of overarching explanation in whatBurke calls a ?ratio.?


Third, these basicforms of thought that imply one another are, in each case, not tied down to anyparticular entities or processes whatsoever. Pentadic terms are eminently?flexible.? I use ?war? and the ?human body? to show how they each can be anagent, act, purpose, means, or scene, depending on the route of strategicambiguity a rhetor chooses. Burke?s metaphor of the ?alembic? of transformationvia the melting of metal serves as descriptive such strategic transformation. Ireference Clark Rountree?s superb book on ?Motives in Bush vs. Gore? asillustration.


So I don?t think I?mstinting on the value and uniqueness of pentadic theory and criticism. I justhave not personally used it. I excuse that lacuna by reference to my admittedly?morbid? personality. That?s what Burke says is the drawback in pentadic theoryand criticism alone. It?s not MORBID enough. And ?morbid[ity]? is ?Trouble?!


All this raises theissue of late Burke in relation to early Burke. My simple mind sees morecongruities than dislocations between Burke before the 1950s, and Burke afterthe turn of the half-century.


But time?s up fortoday. That question for later.



 
Ed

 

                   

         

 



    On Monday, January 23, 2017 4:57 PM, James Klumpp <jklumpp at umd.edu> wrote:


 I am not certain that I disagree at all with Ed Appel.  But I do think
that we err when we try to overburden the pentad by loading all Burkean
insights on it.  Trouble is one of those.  We need to remember that the
pentad was a vocabulary designed to work with variety of accounts. 
"This book is concerned with the basic forms of thought which, in
accordance with the nature of the world as all men experience it, are
exemplified in the attributing of motives. . . We shall use five terms
as generating principle for our investigation.  In a rounded statement
about motives . . ."  Now when we accomplish this task of understanding
the ways in which the symbol using animal attributes motives, provides
symbolic accounts of situations, we have not said all that is to be
said.  Very well. Why does the pentad need to capture all of the world's
insight?  Let Ed say that the dramatistic process is necessary to a
fuller statement about diachronic narrative (and to human conflict).  I
am fine with that.  I agree.  And, drama is a natural metaphor because,
Burke argues elsewhere, the state of Babel creates disorder and
conflict, as Jim Moore adds.  But let us not lose sight of the necessary
work that the pentad does so well -- illuminating the variety of motives
that mark the Babel of human speech.  Let it do that work well and let
other insights take that necessary work and proceed further in the human
drama.

In short, the addition of Trouble into the pentad does not enhance its
ability to clarify accounts, in my judgment.  Save the insights that
flow from Trouble and the many other terms of disorder that Ed has
cataloged for a fuller discussion of the rich complex of terminologies
of which the pentad is one.  Let the humble pentad do its work well.  If
we do, I think that we will have less chance of losing the point that
the pentad was posited for in the first place: to capture ways that
symbolic accounts carve up the world differently.

Jim Klumpp

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