[KB] Congrats on the Books

[Edward C Appel]

All,

	Congratulations to Ann and Jack on the publication of their books. I greatly enjoyed their preliminary presentations on those two projects at East Stroudsburg last year. I followed the link and read the intro to “The War of Words” Jack and his partner provided.  One can understand Burke’s reluctance to publish, given the time-and-place quality of his illustrations. The taxonomy of rhetorical ploys Burke proffers is, though, not at all so limited. The publication may indeed alter the rhetorical landscape, as one of the dust-jacket quotations suggests. A fine array of most-estimable scholars touts the text.

	I read a copy of Ann’s conference address, as well. Great insight into the generation and practical application of Burke’s marvelous tome. Practical application? At the time, I referred in some posts on KB to the “Hat” Ann wore in her speech, when she referenced the “Women’s March” in Austin---and around the world, really---in January, 2017, as a related exercise. My characterization of the “Hat” was a bit vulgar. If I didn’t apologize then, I will now.

	It seems to me that P&C is most responsible for the variety of interpretations of Burke’s place on the scale that ranges from a traditional representationalist interpretation of Burke, to Burke as just a shade short, if that, of the postmodern. I’d put Tim Crusius near the postmodern side of Burkean interpretation. P&C was his favorite Burke book, it seemed to me. Tim appeared to emphasize about everything in P&C up to, but not necessarily including, the section on “Recalcitrance.
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	“Recalcitrance” was, on the other hand, Trevor Melia’s favorite Burkean expression. Melia even associated “mathematical” motifs to Burke in his chapter in The Legacy of Kenneth Burke.

	Stewart and Williams, in their paper presented at NCA in 1992 and in the chapter on Burke in Stewart’s Articulate Contact, simply ignored P&C in their data base, as I recall. They claimed Burke was a Cartesian representationalist, a quite defective reading of Burke, in my view.

	I recall, too, the debate between Jim Chesebro and a partner, and Andrew King and (I think) David Cratis Williams, at Airley House in 1993. Jim argued that Burke was not postmodern enough, bad, bad, bad from Jim’s point of view. King and Williams claimed that Burke’s philosophy was at least aligned enough with the philosophical flavor of the day to render dramatism/logology eminently viable.  That’s my recollection, anyway. How much P&C played a part in that debate I can’t say.  My claim is that it’s central to any such assessment.

	I’d put the matter this way: Burke was proto-postmodern in the 1930s, 30 years before the Derridas. Burke shadowed forth what turned out to be a radical shift with the “Frenchies” in the late 20th century. In the end, however, by way of an inevitable comparison and contrast, Burke has to be judged only quasi-postmodern. Not only the “Recalcitrance” emphasis in P&C, and that cryptic claim of Burke’s Melia was fond of, the way the world is, that’s the way language is, but also Burke’s comments at the Drew Seminary/University symposium in the mid-1960s, to wit, that language is in “dialogue” with those “recalcitrant” materials, materials both physical and social, but does not articulate with, intersect with, or “represent” any such object or function. Look for, in language, a common interest, intention, expectancy, purpose, or value that functions as a unifying, metaphorical, teleological perspective, by which symbols generate the perception of similar strains in dissimilar events, leading to the classification of those events together in a common idealized, essentialized abstraction (“Argument by Analogy,” P&C;, GM; “Theory of Entitlement,” LASA).  By way of that “dialogue” or “conversation” with the “sheer brute materials of the world as it is” in their structure and function, symbolizers will fitfully, erratically, adjust to those materials in “serviceable,” but, let’s not forget, also perverse, ways. (Formal entelechies, in part, constitute our “Fall” into language; note what we’re NOT doing now, as ecosystems scream at us for help; gotta get ALL the fossil fuels out of the ground, sell them, burn them, make money off of them for social “insignia”; maybe then, after California burns to a crisp and Florida is half under water, we can turn to “solving” global warming.)

	Add to the mix what Burke said at New Harmony, when asked whether he was a postmodernist: “I hope not.”

	As an aside on all this: I never saw a huge contradiction in Burke’s “metaphorical” claim in P&C (1930s), his use of the term “literal” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1960s), and the debate on it that followed (in the 1980s). There was enough ambiguity there, in terms of context and meaning, to extenuate Burke’s seeming contradiction.

	Ann has been deeply into P&C and the archival documents that undergirded it. Love to hear her chime in, but only if she’d care to. Ann may be weary from a huge effort that can benefit us all.




	Ed