Burke Among Others

In reading the chapter on Kenneth Burke, I found myself reminiscing to what little I have read by Jacques Derrida, On Grammatology in particular. In that work Derrida argues that we can never really communicate with each other the thoughts of our minds because they have to be filtered through words, which are really only symbols and have no meaning in and of themselves. Where Burke deviates from this thinking is when he says that words, symbols, are grounded in non-symbols – that the symbol came about ultimately because the thing it symbolizes already existed and we just needed a word for it.

It is a generally well-agreed upon that humans differ from other living creatures in that we respond to symbols and create our own – I found it very interesting when Burke added to that idea the phenomenon of the negative. Humans respond to what isn’t there, or to what is but shouldn’t’ be there – and it affects us profoundly. If there were no negative, there would be no need for politics because we would never fantasize of change! On that same note, I wonder what he would say about the void – those things that simply are not, or were but no longer are. Maybe that’s still a negative.

Weaver says that humans need rhetoric because we have to live together, and that inherently created the need to communicate, which then leads to trying to convince each other of our own beliefs. Burke approaches from the opposite side, assuming that people are already together, that rhetoric exists to separate or divide ourselves into some sort of order or hierarchy. Both are essentially saying the same thing, because that division leads, then to the need to not be divided anymore.

The pentad concept shows another backwards approach to analyzing, that is, that rather than the rhetor trying to convince his audience, Burke tries to figure out what the rhetor is really getting to by saying what he does with the particular words he chooses to use. Here is where we go back to Derrida some, when logology is discussed: “Logology, a rare word for philology or historical linguistics, is Burke’s term for his effort to discover how language workds or to discover motivational systems and orientations through the examination of words.” Derrida would say that there’s nothing really there, though, because in examining words we are using words…so it’s really impossible.

Overall, though, I think that Burke was quite erroneous in calling his thinking “Burkology” because he is really only building a case on what others have laid before him. In fact, it is even acknowledged that his approach of logology is “an approach to the study of symbol systems using a neutralized Christian theology as its model.” He didn’t come up with much of anything he stands for, at its core – very few of us do. And those people probably heard it from somewhere; Burke commented on what cases were already laying open, and he moved things around and questioned things, but there is no Burkology, even if he was as smart as he sounds.