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Week #9: My Lecture NO.tes used for the Seminar, Wednesday, 2000, March 15th.
Previous Notes for 1st two weeks | 3rd week | 4th | 5th | 6th&6bth | 7th| 8th
 The Works (to be studied and discussed): |
 1. Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: U of CA P, 1969.
Supplemental Readings:
1. Booth, Wayne. "Kenneth Burke's Comedy: The Multiplication of Perspectives." In Critical Understanding: Th Powers and Limits of Pluralism. Chicago: The UP, 1979. 99-138. (Includes KB's "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes.")
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Burke, from Comedy to Comedic-Tragedy: |
KB tells us very early,
In our original plans for this project, we had no notion of writing a "Grammar" at all. We began with a theory of comedy, applied to a treatise on human relations. Feeling the competitive ambition is a drastically over-developed motive in the modern world, we thought this motive might be transcended if men devoted themselves not so much to "excoriating" it as to "appreciating" it. Accordingly, we bagan taking notes on the foibles and antics of what we tended to think of as "the Human Barnyard." (GM xvii)
What we have in A Grammar of Motives is a tragic-comedy. The motto is "Ad bellum purificandum" (see title page), by which KB signifies,
human thought may be directed towards "the purification of war," not perhaps in the hope that war can be eliminated from any organism that, like man, has the motives of combat in his very essence, but in the sense that war can be refined to the point where it would be much more peaceful than the conditions we would now call peace [to be read, e.g., as peace = cold war] (305; cf. A Rhetoric of Motives 19- ).
We often say that the difference between Aristotle's and Burke's conditions for the possibilities of Rhetoric/s is that while Aristotle's is agnostics for the sake of winning an argument, Burke's is identification for the sake of the ideal of rhetoric, which is, for him, consubstantiality (i.e., sympathetic understanding among human beings [RM 20-21]).
Identification --> Consubstantiality --> a Peace more peaceful than now
One of the crucial issues here is that agreement is not necessary; understanding (consubstantiality), which is brought about by way of identification, is necessary or at least preferable to war, which would be the attempt to kill the other, to silence the other completely.
Comedic-Tragedy, then, is the multiplication of the possible ways of identifying how we might theorEYEze (see) problems, etc., in the world. (Problems do not exist in the world; they exist by way of How we theorEYEze (see the world, variously). In relation to problems, etc., KB is concerned with "What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it" (GM xv). KB is concerned with "motives": "what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose)" (xv). In answer to the question, Why (purpose) this series of incipient questions?, KB responds, "our book itself is offered as the answer. For, to explain our position, we shall show how it can be applied" (xv; bold face mine).
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A Grammar of the Comedic-Tragedy: |
The ways of theorEYEzing, seeing, form a Grammar, a "generating principle" (xvi). KB writes:
Strictly speaking, we mean by a Grammar of motives a concern with the terms alone, without reference to the ways in which their potentialities have been or can be utilized in actual statements about motives. Speaking broadly we could designate as "philosophies" utilized. Random or unsystematic statements about motives could be considered as fragments of a philosophy." (xvi; bold face mine)
"fragments"! The sybil wrote down her message of the Truth to the questions asked and on countless leaves but when the people took the baskets of leaves from her cave, the wind took them and scattered the leaves to the four (five?) corners of the world and we have, ever since, been trying to piece them together into their original whole. Welcome to Modernism. Fragments = Modernism. (We will return to this discussion when we read J-F. Lyotard.) Something in human motives always remains enigmatic, hence, incomplete. Motives remain in fragmentation and never whole and complete, even after a pentadic (dramatistic) study.
The particular grammar that KB would use--and does use--would be the conditions for the possibilities of generating exhaustively the philosophies of the world, though, again, they would remain incomplete. His primary example in GM, in terms of Way of Placement (Part One), is the philosophies of the world.
Note: KB's Grammar is part of his overall project of a Symbolic and a Rhetoric (see xviii)
A Caveat: KB warns:
A perfectionist might seek to evolve terms free of ambiguity and inconsistency (as with the terministic ideals of symbolic logic and logical positivism). But we have a different purpose in view, one that probably retains traces of its "comic" origin. We take it for granted that, insofar as men cannot themselves create the universe [the purest Act is God creating from Nothing], there must remain something essentially enigmatic about the problem of motives, and that this underlying enigma will manifest itelf in inevitable ambiguities and inconsistencies among the terms for motives. Accordingly, what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise. (xviii; KB's emphasis)
How would one talk about 'ambiguities'!? Perhaps talk about 7 types? What is nice about KB's modernist understanding of ambiguities is his notion of the value of revealing "strategic spots." He describes metaphorically, in one of his most well-known passages, "the resources of ambiguity" and their various "transformations":
Distinctions, we might say, arise out of a great central moltenness, where all is merged. They have been thrown from a liguid center to the surface, where they have congealed. Let one of these crusted distinctions return to its source, and in this alchemic center it may be remade, again becoming molten liquid, and may enter into new combinations, whereat it may be again thrown forth as a new crust, a different distinction. So that A may be come non-A. But not merely by a leap from one state to the other. Rather, we must take A back into the ground of its existence, the logical substance that is its causal ancestor, and on to a point where it is consubstantial with non-A; then we may return, this time emerging with non-A instead.
And so with our five terms: certain formal interrelationships prevail among these terms, by reason of their role as attributes of a common ground or substance. Their participating in a common ground makes for transformability. At every point where the field covered by any one of these terms overlaps upon the field covered by any other, there is an alchemic opportunity, whereby we can put one philosophy or doctrine of motivation into the alembic, make the appropriate passes, and take out another. From the central moltenness, where all the elements are fused into one togetherness, there are thrown forth, in separate crusts, such distinctions as those between feedom and necessity, activity and passiveness, cooperation and competition, cause and effect, mechanism and teleology. (xix; emphasis mine)
From this metaphoric operation we get
Agent (co-agents, counter-agents)
Agency
Act
Purpose
Scene
And their various ratios, which KB has limited in GM to ten ratios:
scene-act
scene-agent
scene-agency
scene-purpose
act-purpose
act-agent
act-agency
agent-purpose
agent-agency
agency-purpose (see 15-20 for KB explanation of the ratios.)
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The Table of Contents: |
What does the placement of the TOC tell us? If you look at things carefully enough, you will notice two possible, among other, configurations at work in what the TOC promises. When I theoEYEze (look), I see
Introduction: The Five Key Terms of Dramatism (xv-xxiii)
Part One--Ways of Placement
I. Container and Thing Contained (3-20)
...as a THEORY OF INVENTION (which are predominated by the scene-act and scene-agent ratios ["Container and Thing Contained"]).
And I see
II. Antinomies of Definition
III. Scope and Reduction
...as a THEORY OF STASIS (upon and through which the ways of placement, or theory of invention, do their work and play).
And I see
Part Two--The Philosophic Schools (127-322)
...as a Practicum in Employing both the Method of Invention and its underlying Theory of Stasis. KB examines the motives that give rise to the various philosophic schools.
And I see
Part Three--On Dialectic (323-446)
...as KB says, a representative case, yet still more specific, focusing on constitutions and on "judicial tactics in the reviewing of legislative enactments" (323). Again: "And it will show how the grammar of Constitutional wishes relates to the rhetoric of political manifestoes and promises (such as we get in election platforms or a declaration of war aims)" (323).
Through out GM, KB is working synecdochically.
One might be, as is usually the case, inclined to say KB is working all sides, or working primarily with the trope of tropes, IRONY (often associated with Dialectic [see 503]). And yet, even irony is described in terms of Synecdoche (see 514). There is no apparent escape from Container that Contains. Though this description (among other possible descriptions) may be received by others as a reduction (metonomy) of what KB is saying, I think it stands t/ruefully to what he says. After all is said, KB's vision of motives is founded on a dialectic of (comedic-)tragedy. In great part this vision is predicated on his full acceptance of the principle of Negation in his theory of the paradox of substance. He accepts what Hegel accepts to be "determinant negation" and not "absolute negation," which would be a denegation of grounding by way of the negative. He has invested in the economy of negative knowledge, though he partially escapes the modern dogma and its paralyzing effects (See Booth, last week). He is a modernist, a thoroughly modernist thinker. We will discuss this issue in seminar as it relates to what we have thus far read (e.g., Rorty and Aristotle) and will have read (e.g., Berlin and Lyotard).
For now, let's turn to ...
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A Map to the Ways of Placement |
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At this opening level, we are being told, as we've been told for centuries, that a heuristic must be grounded on a doctrine of substance, stasis.
"Antinomies" comes from "antinomy," self-contradiction in a law; opposition of one law or rule to another. In Kantian Phi., irreconcilability of seemingly necessary inferences or conclusions; paradox [anti-nomos = against the law], which is usually read to be a "crisis"!
Here we have KB exploiting ambiguities for the sake of searching for what he refers to as "strategic spots" (see xviii).
To Act in terms of motives is to act by way of a stasis, status: Antinomies of Definition/s are determined by placing a species (an act, actus) into a genus (scene, status, stasis) and listing the differentiae.
In other words, meaning is derived by a scene:act ratio. Or a scene:agent ratio. Or etc.
Knowing by way of outside the scene gives meaning to the inside, yet the outside is Nothing--the negative--which also invades the inside in separating out those things as being classified, or genus-cided. INSIDE: We get meaning from contextualizing (placing in a genus) a thing (species) merely from custom, a whole constellation of customs for each species in a genus: A sandal (spieces) is a shoe (genus). Plato banked on creating the idea of Ideal forms, which is the OUTSIDE: shoeness, sandleness, etc., all of which are produced again by way of Nothing.
To make things even more ambiguous, there is a constant confusion of species and genus, with species being an incipient genus nested within genus, etc. For example, a sandal (species) might be properly placed in shoe (genus), but confusion between species-genuis begins when we realize that sandal is also a genus that contextualizes many different species of sandals. (BRussell saw this as a major paradox, or what KB would see as a wonderful, magical paradox of substance. For BR it was a problem; for KB is was a wonderful problem that solved human problems.)
In sum then: There is really never a saying what something is but saying what it is not. Inside or Outside! Makes (for) no difference!
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About contextual definitions, KB writes: "Here obviously is a strategic moment, an alchemic moment, wherein momentous miracles of transformation can take place. For here the intrinsic and the extrinsic can change places. To tell what a thing is, you placed it in terms of something else. This idea of locating, or placing, is implicit in our very word for definition itself: to define, or determine a thing, is to mark its boundaries, hence t ouse terms that possess, implicitly at least, contextual reference. We here take the pun seriously because we believe it to reveal an inevitable paradox of definition, an antinomy that must endow the concept of substance with unresolvable ambiguity, and that will be discovered lurking beneath any vocabulary designed to treat of motiation by the deliberate outlawing of the word for substance" (24). An agent just identifies him/herself with a paricular context and then takes on new meaning. A man who owns property is "a man of substance."
About familian definitions, KB writes: "...there is another strategy of definition, usually interwoven with the contextual sort, yet susceptible of separate observation. This is the 'tribal' or 'familial' sort, the definition of a substance in terms of ancestral cause [act:agent || metonymy].... The Christian notion that the most important fact about mankind and the world is ther derivation from God is an instance of 'ancestral' definition on the grand scale" (26).
This metaphor of alchemy is carefully chosen by KB. Later we will get to his notion of Actus in terms of God's Act of Creation. And we will touch on the issue of good and bad "magic."
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Here KB surveys the terms for substance.
Geometrical substance is scene-act, scene-agent and is contextual definition (placement) and basically the trope of synecdoche.
Familial substance is act-agent, and is familial definition (derivation) and the trope metonymy.
Directional substance is "biologically derived from the experience of free motion, since man is an organism that lives by locomotion.... motion as motive.... movement as motive.... emotion as motive" (31-32). It is metaphor.
Dialectic substance is "all the foregoing types ... considered as special cases of a more inclusive category: dialectic substance. Dialectically considered ... men are not only in nature. [I.e., not only scene-agent].... would be the over-all category of dramatism, which treats of human motives in the terms of verbal action" (33).
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KB writes: "We can discern something of the 'tragic' grammar behind the Greek proverb's way of saying 'one learns by experience'; 'ta pathemata mathemata,' the suffered is the learned. We can also catch glimpses of a relation between dialectic and mathematics (a kind that might have figured in Plato's stress upon mathematics) in the fact that mathemata means both things learned in general, and the mathematical sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy) in particular. A pathema (of the same root as our word, "passive") is the opposite of a poiema (a deed, doing, action, act; anything done; a poem). A pathema can refer variously to a suffering, misfortune, passive condition, situation, state of mind. The initial requirement for a tragedy, however, is an ACTION. Hence, by our interpretation, if the proverb were to be complete at the risk of redundance, it would have three terms:
Poiemata, Pathemata, Mathemata,
suggesting that the act organizes the opposition (brings to the fore whatever factors resist or modify the act), that the agent thus 'suffers' this opposition, and as he learns to take the oppositional motives into account, widening his terminology accordingly, he has arrived at a higher order of understanding" (39-40; reformatting mine). Hence,
Act --> the sufference or state (Status) --> the Thing Learned
KB makes it clear that "poiema [Act(us)] by itself" has no meaning unless determined by pathema and mathema [both of which are Status]." Together they are the scene:act (or genus:species) ratio.
The quickest way to grasp, without the complications that will follow below, the realtionship between actus:status and the representative anecdote is perhaps to think in terms of the Oedipus story as told by Sophocles. Oedipus, and the narrative of events that makes him "Oedipus" for us, undergoes the dialectic of tragedy:Act --> the sufference or state (Status) --> the Thing Learned
His story becomes, as a result of this dialectical exchange between actus and status, a "representative anecdote." Which is so representative that it is used in many venues, the most notable being Freudian psychoanalysis.
We will return to this mis/adventure, but for now let's go back to the beginning of KB's discussion:
KB begins by examining "Creation," "Evolution," "Novelty" (magic) in terms of representative anecdotes. A Pure Act would be the Act of Creation (a super-act from a super-agent), with no other higher forms of creation (making from nothing) left for us to envision. But while Creation " 'sums up' action," "the theory of evolution sums up motion, but with one notable difference: whereas one must believe in evolution literally, one can discuss the Act of Creation 'substantially,' or 'in principle' " (61; emphasis mine).
In order to understand these three terms (especially the first), "one must select a prototype, or paradigm of action. This prototype we find in the conception of a perfect or total act, such as the act of 'the Creation.' Examining this concept, we find that it is 'magic,' for it produces something out of nothing. This enables us to equate magic with novelty--and leads us to look for a modicum of magic in every act to the extent that the act possesses a modicum of novelty. This consideration also admonishes us, however, to make a distinction between 'true' and 'false' magic. 'False' magic is a quasi-scientific ideal that would suspend the laws of motion, as in the attempt to coerce natural forces by purely ritualistic means. 'True' magic is an aspect not of motion but of action. And if the motives properly assignable to scene, agent, agency, and purpose are already given, there could be novelty only if we could also assign motives under the heading of act itself. That is, there would be something new intrinsic to the act; and this novelty would be the modicum of motivation assignable under the heading of act rather than under the heading of the other four terms, singly or in combination. Thee must, in brief, be some respect in which the act is a causa sui, a motive of itself" (66; KB's emphasis; BF mine). KB attempts to practice good magic as he was explaining earlier in his opening discussion and extended metaphor of alchemy.
KB spends so much time on this trio--Creation, Evolution, Novelty--for he is interested in "the quality of motives: freedom and necessity.... Consideration in terms of Creation leads to 'necessity' when, in accordance with the logic of geometric substance, all the parts of nature are treated as necessarily related to one another in their necessary relationship to the whole" (74). To put it all more simply, the issue here is the conditions of choice, free or not. In acting, what are our choices in terms of freedom of choice? Our freedom lies in circumference, or scope and reduction, or in scene, synecdoche (84). In a phrase, in our ways of placement. In the conditions of the possibilities for the available permutations and combinations that give us our possible choices. However, can we be more precise and offer a better account of being successful in our choices? Yes, I think so, for I remember that one of KB's primary necessary virtues (or tests) for success, for survival, is being ingenious. In his response to WBooth--that is, in his "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes"--he says that besides the question, Is it true?, there is the question, Is it ingenious? (Booth Critical Understandings,132). One (and Oedipus) needs, as KB suggests, a set of Devices, or Artful Dodges, to get along in life. (Oedipus was not initially very good at being ingenious! His interpretation of the riddle only indicates that he is a naive hermeneut!, guessing only one reasonable answer to the question, not realizing that species become genuses, etc.; not realizing that "by four" can also signify not just a cane for a feeble body in old age, but also a cane "to see" with in his tragic, yet paradoxical, blindness.
But a question remains: Does Oedipus, realizing the paradox of substance and its value in answering a riddle, dance with tears in his eyes in the end, or new beginnings for him? Is his virtue finally or rebeginningly a sign of virtuosity [ingenuities]?)
NOtes11 >>>>
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