From VM Mon Sep 11 10:59:48 2000 Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 10:59:48 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Permanence and Change X-IMAPbase: 1235162992 3323 Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1 "He was a sincere BUT friendly Presbyterian"? I love it! Good to hear from Bernie again. He's done so much to promulgate the thought of Kenneth Burke, especially being a mover and shaker behind the appearance of Dramatism and Development, for which he wrote the preface. Put me in the same camp as Ed, Michael, and Bob (love his Shakesperean powers of metaphor) in emphasizing the rhetorical center of not only P&C, but also of all of Burke from CS onward. James says the book is primarily about ethics. Ethics is certainly a prominent theme in P&C. It is one of the focal themes of Part III, perhaps THE focal theme. Burke is saying that language is inherently moral, connotative, "weighted," "censorial," "emotional," "poetic," even "active." Note, though, how the ethical dimension of language Burke most explicitly takes up in the final section of the book fits within and carries forward the more overarching concept of "interpretation" with which Burke begins the work (e.g., "Things MATERIALLY PROFITABLE can be interpreted as SPIRITUALLY 'GOOD,'" from p. 167, the intro to Part III). Talk about terms Burke is actually using in P&C, he entitles the first section "On Interpretation"; offers a new synonym, or analogous term (on p. 69 he treats it as a synonym), for it, namely "orientation"; labels his last section by another synonymous phrase, a "new way of reading the signs" (p. 167); and treats Part II as "deal[ing] with the intermediate stage between an old and new way of reading the signs" (p. 167). Interpretation and orientation, it seems to me, are the more general notions Burke developes in P&C, notions that fit under the rubric of rhetoric. Burke's conceptions of language are ethical from beginning to end. Remember, however, that he called himself basically "a word man," not a moral philosopoher. In respect to what I wrote last week, and on several other occasions, about the implicit reltionship between the pentad/hexad and the terms for order, note also Burke's subtitle for this volume: "An Anatomy of Purpose." Burke elaborates in the intro to Part III: "Above all, the search is for arguments (with their burdensome complications!) whereby Purpose may be restored as a primary term of motivation. [Remember when Burke is writing this: In the hayday of behaviorist psychology.) Such a project is called a 'Metabiology.' (Burke calls it "physicalist-plus in PLF.) The term is justified insofar as each biological organism has 'purposes' intrinsic to its nature. (A specific nature which aims at some kinds of 'good' rather than others.) When applied to human beings, it transcends biology in the strict sense of the term, in that men's [sic] social motives are not mere 'projections' of their nature as animal organisms not typically given to the motives of the verbal, or symbolic. Such concerns lead to the 'solution': the view of man [sic] as 'poet,' the approach to human motives in terms of action (with poetic or dramatic terminologies being prized as the paradigms of action, a term that leads happily into the realms of both ethical and poetic piety, or into the scientific, too, by reason of the fact that 'symbolic' acts are grounded in necessitous' ones)" (p. 168). Distinctively human purposes, those motivated, at least in part, by language, are inherently moral, or morally tinged, as Burke says again in that passage in GM that I've given page numbers for on other occasions, but will not bother to retrieve for you now. Pentadic "purpose" implies "redemption" or "rehabilitation" or "maintenance of or restoration to good social standing," whichever walk of life you are dramatically acting in now. The synthetic moral paradigm of verbal action I offered the other day represents, indeed, the ultimate form or patern of linguistic utterance. Wess and Rueckert speak of "logology" as bringing on a rather sharp break in Burke's thought. I'd rather emphasize the continuities in Burke's philosophical development. Tragically, he worked out the implications of his terminology to "the end of the line." Comically, he did so in fits and starts. He did so elliptically, digressively, none too explicitly. He "muddled through," but did so with something of a sure and clear "purpose" as to where he was going. On the subject of P&C, let me close with an eight-part analysis of an "orientation" I got from Jim Chesebro at Temple U. many moons ago. Burke offers many definitions in P&C. I've listed a half dozen or so in the front pages of my copy of the tome. Here's Chesebro's take. An "orientation" features: (1) Selective perceptions based on group needs. (2) Selective symbolic means, selective utilization of avialable symbols. (3) Selective patterns of arranging those symbols into a logic. (4) Selective relationships with others in a shared symbolic reality, a shared universe of meaning. (5) Selective abilities owing to the selective activities in which members of the orientation engage (i.e., "trained incapacity," "occupational psychosis"). (6) Selective reinforcement of others in the shared values of the orientation. (7) Selective conceptions of causation and linkages of events. (8) Selective motive producing. Have a good one. Ed (that Ed). From VM Tue Sep 12 11:36:24 2000 Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 11:36:24 -0700 From: Julia Major Subject: rotten with perfection Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2 Could anyone tell me where Burke discusses this idea in most detail? From VM Tue Sep 12 19:52:25 2000 Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 19:52:25 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Rotten with Perfection Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 3 In Response to Julia: In respect to Burke's books, look at Language as Symbolic Action, pp. 16-22, and Dramatism and Development, especially pp. 50-55, although Burke talks about the principle of entelechy (read: perfection) beginning on p. 33. Note a harbinger of that notion on pp. 40-42 of the Rhetoric of Religion. There's an aura of that concept also at the conclusion of RR in the closet drama about orthodox "theologies." Actually, Burke is, I believe, proleptically dealing with that very issue in the two conclusions to a Grammar of Motives, pp. 317-320 and pp. 441-443, and in much of Permanence and Change, where he develops the theme of humans becoming so beholden to and blinded by their "pious" constellations of symbols that they'll almost literally go over a cliff before abandoning "what they know goes with what." In respect to Burke's essays, see the two Helhaven texts, Sewanee Review, LXXIX, 1971, and Michigan Quarterly Review, XIII, 1974. Ed From VM Tue Sep 12 13:39:47 2000 Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 13:39:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Stan Lindsay Subject: Fwd: Re: rotten with perfection Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 4 --0-1285228804-968791187=:8162 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Note: forwarded message attached. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ --0-1285228804-968791187=:8162 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Received: from [63.25.200.136] by web1306.mail.yahoo.com; Tue, 12 Sep 2000 13:37:46 PDT Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 13:37:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Stan Lindsay Subject: Re: rotten with perfection To: Julia Major MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Length: 718 GM xviii, 99, 100, 101, 111, 113, 129, 136, 137, 142, 147, 149, 151, 230, 232, RM 14, 18,19, RR 79, 85, 191, LSA 16-22, 25-27, 38-39, 54, 66, 71 These are areas where he uses the "perfectionist" terminology. Of course, he is using "rotten with perfection" to describe "entelechy." The list of texts explodes when you consider all of his entelechial terminology. Stan Lindsay Department of English Purdue University lindsays@purdue.edu --- Julia Major wrote: > Could anyone tell me where Burke discusses this idea > in most detail? > > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ --0-1285228804-968791187=:8162-- From VM Wed Sep 13 10:50:59 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 10:50:59 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Rotten with Perfection Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 5 One more thing that relates to Burke's notion of the "rottenness" of the linguistic motive of perfection: Burke's use of the term "ironic" in relationship to it. On pp. 40-41 in Dramatism and Development, Burke says: "Without casting the slightest doubt upon Freud's concept of a psychopathic tendency, or temptation, to endow wholly different people with imputed roles corresponding to the actual roles that other persons had played in the original inflicting of the psychic wound, we could view such a compulsion as an 'entelechial' or 'perfectionist' motive if we but 'widen the concept of perfection to the point where we can also use the term IRONICALLY, as when we speak of a "perfect fool" or a "perfect villain."' Thus: 'The Nazi version of the Jew, as developed in Hitler's MEIN KAMPF, is the most thorough-going instance of such ironic "perfection" in recent times, though strongly similar trends keep manifesting themselves in current controversies between :East" and "West."'" (Emphasis in the original.) In a letter to me (January 9, 1984), Burke concluded with this relevant clarification: "But in all fairness I should point to this consideration with regard to the 'principle of perfection.' Logology uses the term not just 'straight,' but IRONICALLY. Satan in his way is as 'perfect,' as 'to the end of the line,' as God. Hell is as 'perfect' as Heaven. I 'gin fear that, in o'er-desecularizing my logological involvement with the negative, you will 'prove' me to be a Manichee, with Mephisto as real as the Logos.." (Emphasis in the original.) Burke was, of course. chiding me for claiming he was a theologian, my having made an elaborate case for that thesis in previous correspondence. By the way, not yet mentioned by Stan or me is Burke's first explicit published treatment, I do believe, of the motive of perfection, that in the essay "On Human Behavior Considered 'Dramatistically,'" published at the conclsion of the 1954 editon of P&C, pp. 286-294. This treatise is a revision of a paper Burke had presented at Princeton in 1951. Note Burke's lengthy quotation on the "'dying life,'" which manifests a "'gallant excess of self-control.'" (p. 289). One can translate "excess" into "rottenness" without much altering meaning or connotation. Ed From VM Wed Sep 13 14:37:09 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 14:37:09 -0500 From: lindsays@purdue.edu Subject: Rotten with perfection, more texts Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 6 Ed's recent note reminded me of another list of perfection-related texts I had left off in my earlier note: LSA 90, 104, 112, 116, 160-162, 201, 380, 384, 386, 390, 396, CS 41, 114, 120, 158, 178-181, PC xvii, xxxi, xl, 18, 274, 278, 284, 286ff., ATH 32, 36, 44, 79, 128ff., 130, 132,174, 225-226, 228, CWO 281, 292, 294, "Freedom & Authority" 376, PLF 40, 105, "Poetics & Communication" 405, 409, 413, 417 I think that is now most of what I have. Stan Lindsay Dept. of English Purdue University lindsays@purdue.edu From VM Wed Sep 13 17:43:02 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 17:43:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Jay Gordon Subject: KB and Cognitive Science lecture Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 7 I found this while looking at MIT's "Cognet" web site--- Cognitive Science Lecture/Discussion Series: Rhetoric Old and New: Kenneth Burke and Cognitive Science John Kares Smith Communication Studies, SUNY Oswego The Cognitive Science Lecture/Discussion Series is held in the Formal Lounge of the Hewitt Union. The series is co-sponsored by the Linguistics Program and the Languages Across the Curriculum Program of SUNY Oswego. Date: Thursday February 24, 2000 Time: Talk at 4:15 PM Location: SUNY Oswego From VM Wed Sep 13 17:47:10 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 17:47:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Jay Gordon Subject: OOPS! don't send that out Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 8 My apologies-- it's way out of date... From VM Thu Sep 14 07:59:20 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 07:59:20 -0700 From: Julia Major Subject: Rotten thanks Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 9 To all of you who collectively provided me with a wealth of references on being rotten with perfection-- thanks for giving me, once again, the penultimate Burkeian experience -- step on what appears to be a crack on the sidewalk and find yourself being hurled to the antipodes. julia From VM Thu Sep 14 12:53:08 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 12:53:08 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Rotten thanks Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 10 Wow! I'm sure no one meant to treat you so rudely or misinterpret your question so badly. Please have a better day. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph. D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, Iowa 52241 319-338-1796 (FAX) 319-338-8214 (Voice) mailto:michael@mcgees.net -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Julia Major Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 9:59 AM To: KB@Purdue.edu Subject: Rotten thanks To all of you who collectively provided me with a wealth of references on being rotten with perfection-- thanks for giving me, once again, the penultimate Burkeian experience -- step on what appears to be a crack on the sidewalk and find yourself being hurled to the antipodes. julia From VM Thu Sep 14 12:39:16 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 12:39:16 -0600 (MDT) From: Turpin Paul Subject: Re: Rotten thanks Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 11 Now Julia has me wondering what the *ultimate* Burkean experience is! Paul Turpin +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ Visiting Instructor, Dept. of Communication University of Colorado, Boulder web: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~turpin/Home.html ----------------------------------------- On Thu, 14 Sep 2000, Julia Major wrote: > To all of you who collectively provided me with a wealth of references on > being rotten with perfection-- > > thanks for giving me, once again, the penultimate Burkeian experience -- > step on what appears to be a crack on the sidewalk and find yourself being > hurled to the antipodes. > > julia > From VM Thu Sep 14 17:59:04 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 17:59:04 -0300 (ADT) From: Bob Ashley Subject: Re: Rotten thanks Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 12 On Thu, 14 Sep 2000, Turpin Paul wrote: > Now Julia has me wondering what the *ultimate* Burkean experience is! Discovering him. Like Cortez on that peak in Darien, so the verse goes. The rest is charting, mapping, launching pawn shops. Bob Ashley ****************************** From VM Thu Sep 14 17:28:07 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 17:28:07 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: The Penultimate Burkeian Experience Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 13 Hello all. I found Julia Major's Thanksgiving charged with potential. You really set my wheels spinning. I notice that Michael Calvin McGee, Turpin Paul, and Bob Ashley have since Julia's post responded, so my sense that something is afoot is probably accurate. I wrote the following before reading these three posts, which I will do just as soon as I hit the send button. Your thanks, Julia, to the subscribers for rushing you toward the realization that we're all rotten with perfection I found humorous. I came to the discussion group to find people who talk about and explore Kenneth Burke's ideas and the phenomena to which he refers. A lot of the discussion is about teaching Burke, and I understand that. I'm as new to the list as I am to the author to whom I was introduced in a Rhetoric course at the University of Minnesota last year. I am thrilled (that is, both frightened and elated, by KB's ideas and by each posting, and I am hoping that the clarity we seem to be moving toward is not itself "rotten." I'm sure that all the subscribers are very nice, very human people, afterall they too have been swept up into the Burkeian experience, and people with some of the same interests get along better than those who don't share any. But we get swept up by Office too, and the Power can go to your head. It seems to me, and I have a lot of reading to do before I understand Burke on this issue, that we are not so much rotten with perfection as we are rotten with power. The motive to constantly seek higher and higher orders of perfection may stem from some sort of rottenness as with the individual who let's his irrational and uncontrollable desires spur him on higher and higher up the social hierarchy. There is a fleeting and hard to discern moment when the appel on a tree becomes perfectly ripe (a light hearted, sideways glance here to the very curative comments made by Edward Appel on 9/13 about Kenneth Burke's correction of Edward's thesis that KB was a theologian--thanks Ed), and only in that small window of time is the apple salable. A rose too withers, and beauty and truth are as much of a commodity as are such forms of excess as violence and offal (pardon the rather crude reference). Commodification of even the dirt under my fingernails seems to me evidence enough for the rottenness we're talking about. Speaking from memory rather than from specific references to Aristotelian concepts, it seems to me that Rottenness is passed perfection; the form and the matter of the apple, having been generated and brought to its apex as a perfectly formed and sweetened object that can be consumed, must also be destroyed. Passed perfection the form and the matter breakdown. Generation, perfection, and destruction are perfectly natural. So too it must be natural that people grow, mature and finally go to seed. It is both rotten that the Alpha Male harrasses the chimps "below" him in whatever social heirarchy and that he is enjoying himself while harrassing, biting, killing, etc. (an aside: are we leaving out of account the Alpha Female above the Alpha Male and her own type of harassment?--just a thought). That POWER that goes to your head is like the spirit (the overripeness of the grape) that goes to your head when you enjoy a little social drink. Those who cannot stop and abuse their bodies and become overconfident and beligerent, and eventually unconscious and dead, are the one's who rot. Power is addicting, but it is only addicting "after" reaching and going beyond a certain optimum of order and perfection, and the ferment cascades out of control. We're not rotten with perfection but with the power that drove us beyond perfection. Corruption is with us from the very beginning (though I don't know if this can be proven and made into a theory). It is like the Anti-Seed that grows invisibly all around the plant or animal that is implicit in the seed. The equation seems to be Perfection = Death; Order = Chaos, which is an absurdity, but an absurdity charged with great power. I forget which European Marlborough Man said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's hard to distinguish between that which corrupts and that which becomes corrupt. If Office or power corrupts the man who in turn corrupts his peers by example and corrupts those whom he has power over by counter-example (fearing and hating while also perhaps admiring the man and the power that he abuses or even uses responsibly), then corruption spreads. I'm not saying much more than that the corrupt is corrupt. Not much of a result. These statements, perhaps, need justification so I too will follow up the referrences to see how far off the mark or how close I've come to the essence of the Burkeian experience. If the schools and disciplines are all a parade of essentialisms (which Burke says in the "dreaded" book with the subtitle ad bellum purificandum), I wonder whether Burke might have been trying to do the opposite of "boiling down", and rather than being a theory (Dramatism), or an explanation, his work is a condensation, an act of symbolizing (a writing), a dramatization of the Purification through War, which is obviously our reconcilliation with each other. And I further wonder if such a reconcilliation can occur without a scapegoat, either with an effigy, as in a ritual of purgation where we enact the scapegoating upon a substitute (the flag or scarecrow we burn rather than the man in office or the people in some such jealously guarded office), or by surgically removing the personal, biological, social and cosmological causes of our need for the scapegoat (whew!). Purification thru War sounds dangerously close to "purification thru the elimination of the rotten." Is this desire for purification also a form of perfection, and therefore "rotten" itself? I enjoy reading the posts and participating in the discussion and I would certainly appreciate any clarification or correction of these early musings, especially since they can so easily veer off in potentially grave directions. Thanks all. Leslie Bruder From VM Thu Sep 14 22:46:50 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 22:46:50 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: The Penultimate Burkeian Experience Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 14 Thanks for your moving, fresh reflection on rottenness, Leslie. One sentence seems to me to get at one of KB's nuances about perfection, as the phrase "rotten with perfection" is a central feature of his essay "Definition of Man." You wrote: "Speaking from memory rather than from specific references to Aristotelian concepts, it seems to me that Rottenness is passed perfection; the form and the matter of the apple, having been generated and brought to its apex as a perfectly formed and sweetened object that can be consumed, must also be destroyed." From an apple's point of view, everything turns on the seeds inside. It's seductive sweetness gives the immobile tree mobility, setting the indigestible seed in an animal's fertilizer. If it fails to attract an animal, it will attract bacteria to make of itself the small pile of fertilizer that will nourish the seed. The apple's perfection is its tree. Only human beings define the apple's perfection in terms of themselves. Humanity is itself rotten, ready to nourish collective rebirth, when its very idea of perfection is to enslave all the world to human uses, gratifications, and perspectives. michael From VM Fri Sep 15 12:27:41 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 12:27:41 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Rotten with Perfection Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 15 Whether the original inquirer is still interested in this question, or is by now exhausted by the perfectionistic "rottenness" of those of us who have tried to lend a helping hand, I want to offer an addendum to my statement that Burke appearently deals first with the motive of perfection in the essay at the end of P&C, 1954 edition. I do not recant that claim. Later, it did occur to me, though, that Burke takes up the issue of "perfection," not the motive per se, in CS, pp. 178-181. Here, in the "Lexicon Rhetoricae," Burke is elaborating on his definition of eloquence, a "frequency of formal and symbolic effects." Burke starts off by saying, "Enough has been said to demonstrate that 'perfection' as applied to literature is a meaningless term" (p. 178). Burke is referring here most specifically to the "symbokic effects" side of his definition. Burke goes on: "Perfection could exist only if the entire range of the reader's and writer's experience were identical to the last detail" (p. 179). Burke characteristically backtracks a bit on the next page where he says, "An art might be said to approach 'perfection' in proportion as its appeal is made to the second kind of reader," the "connoisseur" as opposed to the "hysteric." And he adds, "Or we might limit the matter, calling a work perfect if it attains its ends--a patriotic work being in a broad sense perfect if it is written for patriots and moves patriots, and an anti-patriotic play being perfect if it is written for anti-patriots and moves anti-patriots." Burke concludes: "We can save the the concept of perfection [in respect to "symbolic effects"] only by making it of no critical value. If a work of art were perfectly adapted to one situation, by this very fact its chances of subsequent perfection would be eliminated, as the identical situation will not recur" (p. 181). Here's where, it seems to me, we have to make a distinction between literature, on the one hand, and the practical rhetorical appeal of the politician, social reformer, preacher, etc., on the other. literary artists often, to some extent at least, address the ages to come, as well as their contemporary audience. Furthermore, they take a far more scattershot approach to their time-and-place audience, marketing their works in general venues of distribution, not just in publications targeted at ideological compatriots. They covet anybody's patrionage and attention. A practical rhetor, advancing a partisan political or social agenda for near-term implementation, has strikingly different objectives that bring the notion of "symbolic perfection," or relative "symbolic perfection," very much into play in respect to "critical value." I have used that notion in two rhetorical critiques, one on the rhetoric of Rev. Jerry Falwell, Communication Quarterly, Winter, 1987, and one on the preaching of the Rev. Dr. Wallace E. Fisher, Journal of Communication and Religion, March, 1987. And I've made the distinction between the literary and theatrical situations, on the one hand, and the practical, rhetorical situation, on the other, in respect to the concepts of "frames of acceptance" and "frames of rejection," in my essay on the rhetoric of William F. Buckley, Jr., Western Journal of Communication, Summer, 1996. Several of Burke's contentions need modification, depending on the purpose and situation of the symbol-user. Also, Leslie Bruder in her eloquent post asked, "Is this desire for purification also a form of perfection, and therefore 'rotten' itself?" Answers: Yes, to the first part; not necessarily, to the second. Details later. Ed From VM Fri Sep 15 18:05:40 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 18:05:40 -0700 From: "Wess, Robert" Subject: Rhetoric and Permanence and Change Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 16 Just a footnote to the recent conversation about rhetoric and PC-- It comes from a letter Burke wrote to Cowley on September 28, 1932. Burke writes about ACR (Auscultation, Creation, and Revision). He's about done and looks forward to its publication, which of course didn't happen at the time. Instead the ACR project seems to have evolved into the PC project. In the final paragraph of the letter he refers to ACR as a "chapter," since earlier in the letter he refers to it as a chapter in a sentence in which he is thinking of publishing it with "Spring during Crisis." Here is the final paragraph: "Rhetoric? Having given up the attempt to save the word, I offer my new work as an example of 'linguistic.' That is, I try to make prominent the verbal aspect of verbal thinking. Call it putting one's cards on the table. The only hope I have for the chapter is this: that the things, or parts of things, I have written with the strongest feeling of things 'dropping into place' have also been the ones other people have liked more. This I wrote throughout with a sense of things 'dropping into place.' Ergo? Let's hope. I need it ba-yad." From VM Sat Sep 16 22:23:28 2000 Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 22:23:28 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Rotten with Perfection Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 17 Leslie Bruder asked: "Is this desire for purification also a form of perfection, and therefore 'rotten' itself?" Good question. As I indicated in my last post, my answers would be "yes" and "not necessarily." The answer to the second part of the query would depend on how the "drama of purification" (actually a redundancy; we could just say "drama") is played out. First, it's not a coincidence that the three central concepts that informed Burke's logological turn in the 1950's--the hortatory "negative" in the four pieces in QJS (1952-1953) and "perfection" and the terms of the "guilt-redemption cycle" (the P&C Appendix, 1954)--coalesced together, later to find fuller elaboration in RR (1961). The hortatory negative imples perfection and the rules that give shape to perfection in a given arena of life. Those rules of behavior or performance inevitably initiate drama for very imperfect, finite moral beings. E.g., "Thou shalt not ever do, or fail to do, such and such," like maintain a 1.5 gradepoint average. Failure to do so may lead to academic probation, a letter home, a trip to the dean's office, disqualification for extracurriculars, threats, warnings, guilt-tripping. With repeated offenses in respect to his or her academic record, a derelict student might then be "sent down from Oxford," as the English would put it, expelled or banished for a year or more for further maturation. That term in purgatory having been served, redemptive reinstatement might follow, more satisfactory grades might ensue, and the initial vision of a glorious change in identity fulfilled with the conferring of a baccalaureate degree at graduation. The "desire for purification" is, indeed, a "form of perfection." The "terms implicit in the idea of an order governed by rules" ineluctably evolve from the principle of perfection given impetus by the negative of command. Maybe my dour drama of expulsion is passe on some campuses today. My Dickensian "Wackford Squeers" scenario may be laughably outdated where some subscribers to this list now labor for their daily bread. Which brings up the reply "not necessarily" to the second part of Leslie's entreaty. Persons do not have to take a hard-nosed approach in their human relationships, not all the time anyway. They can temper their tragic inclinations (expressive of the full measure of perfection, in Rueckert's view [1963/1982]) to banish malefactors forever and a day with more comic forgiveness and forbearance. On the "homicidal slope," instead of "severe punishment, banishment, or death to the enemy," they can substitute "slap-on-the-wrist instruction and correction of the clown, with, perhaps, the establishment of some social distance for a limited period of time." On the self-sacrifical slope, instead of "intense struggling, straining, striving, intense self-denial, nigh unto, or unto, a martyr's death," they can substitute "moderated, modulated, measured, perhaps programmatic, perhaps routine, perhaps even 'muddling,' effort to achieve their goal." The attitude that propels their actions can be one of "charitableness" instead of "hostility." The motive of perfection is at work in comic drama, just as it is at work in tragic drama. Human beings cannot escape this linguistic drive. They would be "inhuman" without it. They can purge much of the "rottenness" from it, though, via what George Meredith, Burke's mentor in comedy, called the "Spirit" of comedy. Yes, Virginia, or Leslie, there is a Santa Claus. His initials are KB. He teaches us how not to be so "rotten," and why. Ed From VM Sun Sep 17 17:43:49 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:43:49 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 18 Does anyone on the list know whether free internet service is the wave of the future? It's being advertised in various venues. Is there a "catch"? Please tell me about it if you know. Ed From VM Sun Sep 17 17:55:55 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:55:55 -0700 From: "Elaine Burklow" Subject: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 19 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0014_01C020D0.86C1AD20 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Ed: Let me confess to being a "lurker"! I always mean to respond, but = get busy!! The answer to your question about free internet service is = "Yes', it is the wave of the future. I currently have two internet = providers, the university and Lycos. Lycos is free and there are no = strings attached, just advertising, with which I can live. When you = access the Lycos web site there is a screen where you can check for = local access numbers, there was such a number for my area. Word of = warning: when I first installed this the number was not the local = number. However, I called the toll free service number & they talked me = through the directions to change the number. I have never had a problem = with their internet service. Elaine eburklow@siu.edu ------=_NextPart_000_0014_01C020D0.86C1AD20 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Ed:  Let me confess to being a = "lurker"! =20 I always mean to respond, but get busy!!  The answer to your = question about=20 free internet service is "Yes', it is the wave of the future.  I = currently=20 have two internet providers, the university and Lycos.  Lycos is = free and=20 there are no strings attached, just advertising,  with which I can=20 live.  When you access the Lycos web site there is a screen where = you can=20 check for local access numbers, there was such a number for my = area.  Word=20 of warning: when I first installed this the number was not the = local=20 number.  However, I called the toll free service number & they = talked=20 me through the directions to change the number.  I have never had a = problem=20 with their internet service.
 
          &nbs= p;          =20   Elaine
 
eburklow@siu.edu
------=_NextPart_000_0014_01C020D0.86C1AD20-- From VM Sun Sep 17 19:00:52 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 19:00:52 -0700 From: Dan Smith Subject: Counter-Statement Essays Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 20 I am trying to determine when and where the essays that comprise Counter-Statement were (if they were) published before appearing in the book. So far, I've tracked down the essays that make up "The Three Adepts of...," as well as "Psychology and Form," "The Poetic Process," "Thomas Mann and Andre Gide," and "Applications of the Terminology." Were "The Status of Art," "Program," and "Lexicon Rhetoricae," written specifically for Counter-Statement? Many Thanks, Dan Smith From VM Sun Sep 17 19:27:40 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 19:27:40 -0500 From: "David Blakesley" Subject: Re: Counter-Statement Essays Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 21 Dan, I ran a bibilographic search on in the online bibliography (http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/burke/) just to make sure. The results showed, as you suspected, that "The Status of Art," "Program," and "Lexicon Rhetoricae" were not published prior to their appearance in CS. You can see precisely where the others came from if you run a search on . (Follow the same procedure to find out where the essays that appear in Burke's other books first appeared.) Dave -------------------------------- Director of Professional Writing Department of English Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 Email: blakesle@purdue.edu or Phone: (765) 494-3772 Fax: (765) 494-3780 -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Dan Smith Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2000 9:01 PM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Counter-Statement Essays I am trying to determine when and where the essays that comprise Counter-Statement were (if they were) published before appearing in the book. So far, I've tracked down the essays that make up "The Three Adepts of...," as well as "Psychology and Form," "The Poetic Process," "Thomas Mann and Andre Gide," and "Applications of the Terminology." Were "The Status of Art," "Program," and "Lexicon Rhetoricae," written specifically for Counter-Statement? Many Thanks, Dan Smith From VM Sun Sep 17 21:08:52 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 21:08:52 -0700 From: Dan Smith Subject: Re: Counter-Statement Essays Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 22 That's very helpful, Dave. Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Cheers, Dan Smith From VM Sun Sep 17 21:46:55 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 21:46:55 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 23 I thank Elaine for the information about free access to the internet. It sounds like a palatable alternative for net surfers. Ed From VM Mon Sep 18 11:27:38 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 11:27:38 -0700 From: Richard Coe Subject: Fwd: Re: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 24 As far as I know, the catch is advertising. The internet access is "free" is the same sense that airwave TV and radio and free-to-the-reader newspapers are free, i.e., you pay for it by providing an audience for advertisers who pay the provider for access to you, etc. I believe certain minimal cell phone plans operate similarly. Presumably, on average, those who take advantage of the "free" access also buy enough of the advertisers' products to pay for the cost of the "free" access. I THINK BURKE WOULD WANT US TO OVERLOOK neither the role of advertising in such media, nor the nature of the "freedom" created by this "free" access to corporate-owned-and-controlled mass media. I forget at the moment who said, freedom of the press is available to those who own a press. Rick > >At 05:43 PM 9/17/00 +0000, Ed wrote: >>Does anyone on the list know whether free internet service is the wave >>of the future? It's being advertised in various venues. Is there a >>"catch"? Please tell me about it if you know. >> >> >> >>Ed >> (Prof.) Richard M. Coe English Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 CANADA (604) 291-4316 (FAX: 291-5737 From VM Mon Sep 18 12:35:08 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 12:35:08 -0600 (MDT) From: Turpin Paul Subject: Re: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 25 A technical note on free internet access with advertising: the ads, which cannot be turned off, eat up a fair amount of bandwith, what with animation and the like. It often runs *very* slow, a problem which will be compounded if your connection rate is slow (e.g., 28K instead of 56K). Paul Turpin +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ Visiting Instructor, Dept. of Communication University of Colorado, Boulder email: turpin@stripe.colorado.edu web: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~turpin/Home.html From VM Mon Sep 18 17:13:41 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 17:13:41 -0300 (ADT) From: Bob Ashley Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 26 On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Richard Coe wrote: > As far as I know, the catch is advertising. The internet access is "free" > is the same sense that airwave TV and radio and free-to-the-reader > newspapers are free, i.e., you pay for it by providing an audience for > advertisers who pay the provider for access to you, etc. I believe certain > minimal cell phone plans operate similarly. Presumably, on average, those > who take advantage of the "free" access also buy enough of the advertisers' > products to pay for the cost of the "free" access. I THINK BURKE WOULD > WANT US TO OVERLOOK neither the role of advertising in such media, nor the > nature of the "freedom" created by this "free" access to > corporate-owned-and-controlled mass media. I forget at the moment who > said, freedom of the press is available to those who own a press. > > Rick I think Rick's comments are right on. Advertising works. Advertisers know this, confirm this through all sorts of means such as sociological and psychological research and statistics, test marketing, comparative revenue tracking and so forth. The beauty of the set-up for advertisers, to my mind, is mark of a Burkean incongruous perspective, gone awry. That is, although evidence underlining the success of advertising is overwhelming, the average consumer's mind works from the first principle that it *doesn't* work on him/her in particular, only those gullible others. Advertisers are the winners admist our cult of cynicism. Ask yourself: 1) 'Have I ever made the complaint that Christmas has become too, too, commercialized?" 2) Re: the timing of question 1; "Have I ever pondered question 1 mid-December, in the mall, as I haul around your 27 parcels?" Advertising, we obviously can't go far as say, is the causal link, however, it does show something about the power of social influence to get us to do things we think or say we don't want to do. For me, I trust Burke's advice to eye one's own mind as one would eye an untrustworthy dog, eschewing false superiority of cynicism, supplanting it with a humble awarenes of one's vulnerability to professional persuasion. This or that ad may or may not hook us, but if an advertiser happens to drill into the oilfields of one's interests, then, well, "It's a gusher!" And sometimes, like Mobil, advertising can synthesize an interest where no was before. In 1880, was there a pent-up need for Sony Walkmans, it realization with accrued interest not cashed in until a century later? I'm a confessed sucker cynic. And on Saturday I bought my first Walkman! But, years ago, I got 'unplugged'. No television, no commercial radio, no newspapers. Even my internet browser is a text-only based program, thus also no ad banners, no glitzy graphics, no 'streaming' audio or video. A 'No flyers please' plaque on the mail box. No matter, no escape. My weekend purchase appears to show that no matter I do, consumerism has pinned up some mythic persuasive structures in my mind, unimpeded, like voodoo. In voodoo, the victim never recognizes the connexion between the remote 'pinning of the doll' procedure and the deferred transmogrification of the human experience it instantiates. Advertising is voodoo. It frightens me rather disgusts me, and I think the former response is more apposite to the 'pointy' reality of advertising than the latter. Bob Ashley ****************************** From VM Mon Sep 18 16:48:57 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 16:48:57 -0500 From: "Jerald Ross" Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 27 Haven't thrown in an "or" in a long time, so I thought I would...... I'm intrigued by the notion of looking at advertising (specifically within = cyber-media) through a Burkeian lens. And I've really enjoyed the = insightful comments that Rick and Bob have offered. I love how often on = this list a seemingly innoucuous query spirals into intense puzzling over = a Burkeian concept or application (such as here re: free internet access = and previously re: requests for citations). =20 I'm not trying to pick on ya Bob, but I couldn't help noticing your typo: >>And sometimes, like Mobil, advertising can synthesize an interest where = no was before.=20 I know I'm an English teacher, but I honestly ain't bean no dang grammarian= (at least not in the traditional sense--in terms of a grammar of motives, = maybe (hopefully!) :-). Just found it intriguing how such a major = Burkeian notion crept into your sentence by the back door in this typo = (I'm assuming you meant "none" here.) And in the spirit of KB, thought it = might be fun to play around a bit with that "no" in your sentence. "Advertising can synthesize an interest where no was before." One might = rephrase this logologically--advertising creates desire for the product ex = nihilo. It's a magical ('voodoo") operation, a social ritual that induces = belief through its own performance--a self-referential, self-reproducing, = self-sustaining tautology. Economically (or materially), the existence of = a good/service creates its own market/desire--supply drives demand--in = post-industrial capital's field of dreams, if you build it, they will = come. Value is not necessarily determined by a good's pragmatic usefulness= , but by the degree to which skilled advertisers/marketeers can convince = you that you can't live without it [witness the Chia pet]. So even if = you do blow up your teevee, move to the country, and build you a home, = you're still caught by the reigning symbols of authority, by the particular= symbolic order into which you are languaged. (Isn't this what Heidegger = meant by "thrown-ness," that human being-in-the-world means being "thrown" = into a particular set of social, cultural, and linguistic circumstances?) And so, as symbol-used animals, we are linguistically compelled to buy = walkmen. But now that I've articulated this (at least to myself), I wonder how = Napster might have already changed everything. =20 --Jerry=20 >>> Bob Ashley 09/18 3:13 PM >>> On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, Richard Coe wrote: > As far as I know, the catch is advertising. The internet access is = "free" > is the same sense that airwave TV and radio and free-to-the-reader > newspapers are free, i.e., you pay for it by providing an audience for > advertisers who pay the provider for access to you, etc. I believe = certain > minimal cell phone plans operate similarly. Presumably, on average, = those > who take advantage of the "free" access also buy enough of the advertiser= s' > products to pay for the cost of the "free" access. I THINK BURKE WOULD > WANT US TO OVERLOOK neither the role of advertising in such media, nor = the > nature of the "freedom" created by this "free" access to > corporate-owned-and-controlled mass media. I forget at the moment who > said, freedom of the press is available to those who own a press. >=20 > Rick I think Rick's comments are right on.=20 Advertising works. Advertisers know this, confirm this through all sorts of means such as sociological and psychological research and statistics, test marketing, comparative revenue tracking and so forth. The beauty of the set-up for advertisers, to my mind, is mark of a Burkean incongruous perspective, gone awry. That is, although evidence underlining the success of advertising is overwhelming, the average consumer's mind works from the first principle that it *doesn't* work on him/her in particular, only those gullible others. Advertisers are the winners admist our cult of cynicism. Ask yourself: 1) 'Have I ever made the complaint that Christmas has become too, too, commercialized?"=20 2) Re: the timing of question 1; "Have I ever pondered question 1 mid-December, in the mall, as I haul around your 27 parcels?" Advertising, we obviously can't go far as say, is the causal link, however, it does show something about the power of social influence to get us to do things we think or say we don't want to do. For me, I trust Burke's advice to eye one's own mind as one would eye an untrustworthy dog, eschewing false superiority of cynicism, supplanting it with a humble awarenes of one's vulnerability to professional persuasion. This or that ad may or may not hook us, but if an advertiser happens to drill into the oilfields of one's interests, then, well, "It's a gusher!" And sometimes, like Mobil, advertising can synthesize an interest where no was before. In 1880, was there a pent-up need for Sony Walkmans, it realization with accrued interest not cashed in until a century later?=20 I'm a confessed sucker cynic. And on Saturday I bought my first Walkman!=20= But, years ago, I got 'unplugged'. No television, no commercial radio, no newspapers. Even my internet browser is a text-only based program, thus also no ad banners, no glitzy graphics, no 'streaming' audio or video. A 'No flyers please' plaque on the mail box. No matter, no escape. My weekend purchase appears to show that no matter I do, consumerism has pinned up some mythic persuasive structures in my mind, unimpeded, like voodoo. In voodoo, the victim never recognizes the connexion between the remote 'pinning of the doll' procedure and the deferred transmogrification of the human experience it instantiates. Advertising is voodoo. It frightens me rather disgusts me, and I think the former response is more apposite to the 'pointy' reality of advertising=20 than the latter. Bob=20 Ashley ****************************** From VM Mon Sep 18 22:37:20 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 22:37:20 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 28 Jerry wrote: And so, as symbol-used animals, we are linguistically compelled to buy walkmen. I like that "logological rephrasing." That construction certainly underscores, in a mighty way, an important Burkean theme. But: Couldn't that point have been made without calling attention to someone else's typo or grammatical error or slip of the mind during a headlong dash to complete a sentence? This is the internet, not the Quarterly Journal of Speech or College English. Some people are more punctilious than others about dotting I's and crossing T's in this medium. I try to be. Others are not so persnickity. I hate to hear, or see, an unnecessarily discouraging word about something as peripheral as putting a "no" where a "none" can readily be inferred from the context. The putatively "errant" proofreader in this instance has made a multitude of brilliant contributions to the ongoing conversation. In fact, he just made one in the supposedly "offending" post. The proportion of "posters" to "lurkers" on kb is bad enough as it is. Let's not make a concerted effort to make it even worse. A former composition teacher also, who has worn out many and many a red pencil where necessary, needed, and appropriate, Ed From VM Tue Sep 19 00:07:37 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 00:07:37 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Fwd: Re: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 29 Good points, Jerald. Let's not forget, however, that advertisers are too easy a target in this enterprise. The earlier commodification is we ourselves. Advertisers find value in providing "free" access and other "free" services because we are there. They invest in companies that drive the NASDAQ to record heights on a monthly basis, yet have never shown a dime of profit. Why? Because they judge that computer users/literates/addicts will find the content offered by "at your fingertips New York Times," articles neatly separated and ordered according to our own intellectual interests, so irresistible that we will flock to the service like lemmings to a cliff. Once there, we can be sold, especially to companies that are now busily trying to figure out how to commodify intellectualness even as the traditional home of intellectuals, the newly corporatized University, has already been commodified. I wonder how many of us understand that we have lost the war without realizing that we were embattled? And no fair blaming the technology. The technology gave us the opportunity to fight back, if we had been more in a mood to fight than to build kinder, gentler, civil communities. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph. D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, Iowa 52241 319-338-1796 (FAX) 319-338-8214 (Voice) mailto:michael@mcgees.net From VM Tue Sep 19 12:53:49 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 12:53:49 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: Something is afoot! Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 30 Hello All I was going over the last several week's postings this weekend in order = to orient my own place in the discussion and I realized that I had better = take a look at what I have been saying. In this medium (an e-mail = discussion list), persons can respond to what you say without directly addressing = you. I find this kind of Parliamentarian. Also the medium blends = conversation with letter writing which would account for how much more polemical (considered) the postings can be, whereas in live conversation one's response cannot be so deferred. In the light of what many of you have written, here's what I came up with. First a short list: "Julia Major's Thanksgiving was charged with = potential," "Something is afoot," "She has set my wheels spinning," "Are we all = rushing toward the realization we are rotten with perfection?" (Sept. 14). There is this acceleration, this motion indicated in many of these references. I also noted how quick some people were in responding to certain posts. Not to mention that there are all those "lurkers" out = there as both audience and potential actor, perhaps just waiting for their = cue). This discussion is obviously something everyone takes seriously. I = thought Julia Major was poking a bit of fun at the subscribers in her September = 14th post. Michael Calvin McGee attempted to make amends for a perceived offense. I have been known to read a little bit too much into people's words so I began to wonder, in this case, if I was not misreading the possible trend of the discussion. =20 In my first post (September 7) I set myself up as the Knight in Shining Armor rescuing the Damsel Art in distress. In my second post I was the na=EFve, non-academic who's come to the discussion to talk about and = explore KB's ideas and the phenomena to which he refers. "A lot of the = discussion is about teaching Burke and I understand that." I'm actually newer to = the list than to Kenneth Burke...but both are fairly recent discoveries. = What were some of the other terms I used which may have set some of you off = on these new (non) trajectories? "Humor," 'I'm "thrilled", both = "frightenened" and "elated" by KB's ideas and by each post.' 'Is the "clarity" we seem = to be moving toward itself rotten?' =20 No one on the list is probably mortally wounded by anyone's words = alone, and so it is not about "having a better day" or about dealing with a = lingering "psychic wound" which we (I) still want to blame on somebody, anybody. = I'm afraid I've dropped one too many symbolic effects to the neglect of = the formal effects-referring to Ed's reminder of Burke's definition of eloquence, specifically "a frequency of formal and symbolic effects," (Friday, Sept. 15). Let me list them again, "humorous," "nice," = "thrilled," "frightened," "elated." I'm one of those who has just discovered = Kenneth Burke so I guess I'm having the *ultimate* (as apposed to the = penultimate) Burkeian experience. I'm sure that the longtimer's (experts on Burke) = have seen this before, much too often I'll wager, and to them it is but an episode, a "fresh movement," something to wink about. "He was a = sincere but friendly Presbyterian." (Kumiko Yoshioka, Sept, 10). The humor behind these observations, behind this wit and precision, is the generative principle itself, and for me at least it doesn't appear to be rotten at = all. It is more like the giggling of girls or the stifled laughter of exiled Kings who have wormed themselves into the office of Jester to the = Fraudulent King. It (the humor) is the health of a very powerful intellect fully capable of courting not only the mob, not only the Fraudulent King, but other powerful and subtle intellects as well. =20 Please note: I don't believe the drive behind this healthy courtship is = the rotten aspiration to sail to the stars through difficulties, nor that = its object is to perfect human relations and institutions beyond reason. = I'm aware that the "formal effects" are as necessary as the symbolic, = probably more so, but to my mind these shouldn't be confused with traditions, = norms, standards, making of them unchangable authorities. Just as there are different ways of reading the signs, so too there are different = definitions, condensations, institutions, all just as potential, locked away in our "linguistic resources," all just as likely to come out of their bizaar hiding places, none of them perfect, even though the motive behind = bringing them into the light might have been an "obsession" with perfection. =20 Is it not an (Aritotelian) commonplace to say "nobody's perfect?" If = we could only reconcile ourselves to our "original inadequacy," "original = sin," "original inequality," which is our specific and singular shape, our = body type, our face, our specific DNA, as well as with our position in = society and our historical context, then perhaps we'd be able to see well = enough exactly where we fail or exceed our responsibility, our office and = role, and thus forestall the otherwise rampant progression toward social ferment = and dissolution. =20 Burkeian notions are like the pieces or parts of a very interesting and mysterious puzzle-much grander than a rubics cube, more like an alien artifact or the anomalous sunspot on the Star Rhetoricae. We all fit = in or figure in somewhere here. Tugging this way and that, checking a = direction or movement, supplementing with background or foreshadowing the fool's = fate. It would be easy to construct quite the narrative bomb out of all these fissionable materials (weapons of mass construction), and we might = look at Burke as one proposing just such a solution, not to the human = barnyard (that sounds too much like e.e.cummings), but to social pandemonium. Without essentializing I think we can get at what we're "really" = thinking and not just what our "office" is skirting around and around. To resume critiquing my last post in the light of what each of you have said: I compared being swept up into the Burkeian experience with being swept up by Office. I have no doubt that people become experts on = Kenneth Burke because of the very power and subtlety of his thought. I find = Burke extremely crafty and humorous. Unraveling Burke's motives, no doubt a complex affair, seems to be our principle concern. If the act is all important then what was Burke doing? He reminds me of a combination stand-up comedian and oracle-a sphinx. I'm afraid I'm waxing "nice" again and risk with such sweetness = becoming overripe and rotten. There's nothing "perfect" about my supervisor at = work, or her supervisor or his supervisor, etc., etc., etc., nor about = myself. But we are all at our various stations within the social hierarch(ies) = and if EXCESS built the pyramids we're under I wonder if what we're looking = at is not the mighty work of the immortal Dung Beetle? "Commodification of even the dirt under my fingernails seems to me = evidence enough for the rottenness we're talking about." Words to this affect prompted Michael Calvin McGee's hilarious, serious, eloquent = corrective commentary on my guessings. "More thanks (politeness) for my moving, = fresh reflection on rottenness." (smooth!) Note here the identification of = the two opposites: what's fresh is rotten-"the same old same old...again!" = I'm truly curious about how humorous our words and comments are becoming. My ten year old son, interrupting his play Saturday morning, asked me, = "How come the queen in chess is more powerful than the king?" I could only = give him a couple of vague answers. "Maybe because, unlike the animal = kingdom, there is an Alpha Female, not next to but on top of (I used the word = above), every Alpha Male." And I pointed out how much taller the queen was = than the king. It next occurred to me to tell him the ambiguous little I know = of the Judgement of Paris. "Three very powerful and beautiful women pose the following question to the mighty Paris, who was some kind of general = three thousand years ago: "Which of us is the most beautiful?" And this = question so put Paris on the spot that whatever choice he made would result in = war." Damien then asked me the obvious question: "Which girl did Paris pick?" "Helen of Troy, I think was her name, and that was the beginning of the Trojan War." He was satisfied with this story (even though I probably = have it all wrong), wondered about it for a moment before going back to his pretend wars and battle scenes and rescue operations scattered = throughout the apartment. Later when there was a little break in the action I = shared with him what I thought the pyramids were made of. Damien was = impressed that I had put some of his words in the discussion (and he quickly = realized that I couldn't use his words without his permission, which he gave = me). When I told him that the ancient pyramids might have been the work of = the immortal Dung Beetle, he blurted out: "I ain't being no dung beetle. I = seen what they do in dictionaries!" He then picked up some huge imaginary = object and started pushing it along like a snowball, here and there stopping = to take a bite. Then off he danced into his world of make-believe, = laughing at his good humor. I think his input here is just as relevant as my = spotty and incomplete knowledge of history, or Burke for that matter. (Do you = find it as significant as I that a boy, in the middle of his play, hearing this story, should immediately jump to the very top of the pyramid , putting himself in the position of the creator of the pyramid, and then, seeing = the reality of his mistake, is forthwith taken aback by the implications of = his soaring aspirations?). When I put down a Burkeian tome for the night = I'm always left wanting more, fully aware that this desire might be questionable, fully aware of certain other connotations. =20 "It is BOTH rotten that all office harasses the office below AND that = they enjoy and take a sadistic pleasure from this exorcise of power." I = think there is something wrong with my statement that power is addictive. = Yes it is corruptive, is difficult to control, perhaps it is even "anally explosive." But when I look at it more closely it appears that it is pleasure that we become addicted to. We gotta' have not the power, but = the pleasure power brings. =20 "Corruption spreads. I'm not saying much more than that the corrupt is corrupt. Not much of a result." Is there any way to counter or check = the spread of corruption? Our body's seem to be able to carry out this = function adequately but to extend this to cover the body politic is to risk triggering all the vitriol stored up in the term hygiene. Comedy might = be the proper antidote to "the o'er de-decularization of (Burke's) = logological involvement with the negative." (Ed, Sept,13), and I believe Burke was = being funny when he applied this asp to the Logos. "We're not rotten with perfection but with the power that drove us = beyond perfection." Let me try a few substitutions. "We both detest and obsessively admire the power that Marlborough Man and Marlborough Girl abuses or even uses responsibly." Before this power or office we are horrified...both fascinated and repelled. Kenneth Burke laughs. He = called it MYSTERY. His dramatization of war (hot and cold war, war between = the classes or sexes, war between the schools) is a comedy. He has brought = us all together to have a good laugh. This may not reconcile us all, nor = for a very long time, but it is a very great and powerful (Wizard of Oz) = precedent in the history of ideas. His example is here to stay. The only = scapegoat in all this is ourselves, our ignorance, our past mistakes and = blunders, our contortions and near misses. I come away from KB cleansed, renewed, somewhat with a hangover, ready for another round of the sun, or for = another bout with the Sun King or Ra. Saved by an effigy, by a substitution, = (a goat, perhaps pan or satan, hmm?). Father, mother and son are saved by = a transformation, by a change of heart, by the transcendence of custom = and tradition. It is okay to learn, to redefine, to begin again, to put = the past behind. TO CELEBRATE. To my question, "Is this desire for purification also a form of = perfection (Ed says yes), and therefore "rotten" itself?" (Ed says not = necessarily). He's now had the whole weekend to dwell upon and work up the details. = I might try to anticipate here and say that the desire for purification = is not a desire to become perfect, but a desire to return to normal, and thus signifies the work we have to do to maintain an 'equilibrium'. Of = course if we took this purification to an extreme tipping the balance radically = in one direction or another we might have to change an i into a t and turn the = word into putrifaction. There are those who are responsible in office and simply use power. = This office gets abused because people either are or believe themselves to = be free (no free well-no good and evil), and without oversight or some = sort of check, like a set of standards or consenses (plural of consensus) or = norms or laws or principles or sovereign wishes freewill may fall short or = exceed what is responsible. The danger of de-secularizing discourse of course = is that we all start to sound a bit religious (poking our nose in these = dusty tomes and getting ourselves all wet). That's where irreverence and = comedy comes in, checking the comely angelic flight of Icarus, putting the = breaks on the fermentation of the beer and wine so that it doesn't turn to = vinegar. What would we do without a little scandal? Why, I think we would start = one ourselves, just to see what would come of it. A feast perhaps? = Something a little Rabelaisian? (I hope so). =20 During carnival we can divest ourselves of our competitive edge; we can clown or trick ourselves out as satan's (santa's) gothic 'girl', = Quasimodo can be king. It's all you can eat and drink-no charge. (an aside: I = humbly acknowledge how disappointing our state fairs are on this score). = Dagwood Bumstead can be -oh, what is Dagwood's boss's name?), or he can be = Blondie for that matter. Inverts, Uriah Heaps, closet Knights Templar, = Wizards, witches, barbarians...even school teachers who might fantasize about a Hell's Angel Christ with the tatoo "Eat Me!" all come out to play = during carnival, or whenever it is safe to "let one's hair down." It's either blow off this steam or start greasing the guillotine's = track. We're symbolists. We use language to do many things. I truly = appreciated Bob Ashley's take on the *ultimate* Burkeian experience (is this the = same Bob that is so facile with Shakespear, Ed?). "From Cortez to = Pawnshops-what a leap from the tragic to the comic. Good stuff. And Micheal Calvin = McGee: I'm impressed with your modification of the apple symbolism to help me = focus on one of Burke's nuances, bringing the discussion back around to the Marxian arena. Allow me to make a few more modifications to the = picture we've been painting together: The fruit of the union of tree and tree via the mobile tracts of=20 birds and wild animals is another tree not an apple. ^>Fromthe tree's point of view=20 Everything turns on the seeds inside; The sexual and seductive sweetness=20 Of the apple sets the immobile tree free. Even failure to attract an animal Doesn't prevent the seed from=20 hitting the ground because pollination occurred in the spring. Reproduction is the tree's perfection. We left out the bees (I find it funny=20 and somewhat alarming that all trees get laid). It looks like humanity's rottenness=20 Is a good thing, a threshold, a fertile ground; whether from out of the dungheap or the fire, something is birthing. Once slaves of a tyrant's perfection, now always on our guard against=20 the Alpha Male and his Demonic Office, against the banality and ugliness of truth and pain, and sometimes even against the poetry and beauty=20 of truth, the pleasure in truth. For now we should leave the=20 Word truth alone. It's alright to=20 Speculate, but let us not harass.=20 Leslie "and the initial vision of a glorious change in identity fulfilled." Ed = on redeeming yourself (thanks Ed). From VM Tue Sep 19 13:53:50 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 13:53:50 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: Re: Housekeeping Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 31 Persnickity indeed, Ed, on correcting the "grammar correcters"! Can't we call it a serendipitous slip and enjoy where it takes us? As you note, the email context (scene) shapes our expectations of the act (grammatical mistake), so no feathers should ruffle. (Congratulations--you drew out a typical lurker whose administrative duties give him just enough time to read all the fun!) Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Tue Sep 19 22:49:50 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 22:49:50 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Something is Afoot Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 32 In Response to Leslie: It's risky and jejune to reply to a poet with mere prose, so I'll keep my comments brief. Leslie said, among other things: To my question, "Is this desire for purification also a form of perfection (Ed says yes), and therefore "rotten" itself?" (Ed says not necessarily). He's now had the whole weekend to dwell upon and work up the details. I might try to anticipate here and say that the desire for purification is not a desire to become perfect, but a desire to return to normal, and thus signifies the work we have to do to maintain an 'equilibrium'. Of course if we took this purification to an extreme tipping the balance radically in one direction or another we might have to change an i into a t and turn the word into putrifaction. There's such a thing as "relative perfection." Burke speaks of it in RR somwwhere. To return to normalcy and equilibrium--relative respectability once again?--is to strive for something "better" than the state of moral disorder and disarray that language generates and highlights, and that language affords the means of overcoming. Taking "purification to an extreme" is what tragic drama is so often about. Comedy seeks alternative avenues of redemption, not so radical, final, and destructive strategies of correction, that administer less pain and result in far less "putrification." Comic redemption never, though, totally shakes off the motive of perfection, only its rotten extremes. Leslie asked: "Is this the same Bob [Bob Ashley] that is so facile with Shakespeare, Ed?" The very same. Finally, Leslie wrote in fulsome quotation: "'And the initial vision of a glorious change in identity fullfilled.' Ed on redeeming yourself (thanks Ed)." You're welcome. Ed From VM Wed Sep 20 11:53:48 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 11:53:48 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Early Burke, the Rhetorician Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 33 On the question of whether P&C is mainly about rhetoric or ethics (I sided with those who emphasized rhetoric), here's a nice synthesizing statement by Tim Crusius on CS that can be applied to all of Burke's writings: "Whether or not, then, 'we' were doing poststructualism in the twenties, perhaps it is not so implausible to say that Burke was--or at least doing something postphilosophical akin to it. "Plausibility increases when we look closely at Burke's first collection of essays, COUNTER-STATEMENT (1931). In the midst of formalism and 'art for arts sake,' Burke was reading literature [substitute any symbolic action you please] as rhetoric, and because as rhetoric, inseparable from ethics and politics" (Kenneth Burke and the Conversation after Philosophy, 1999). Burke's "doing something postphilosophical akin to [poststructuralism]," and use of the term "rhetoric" as the more general rubric in respect to what Burke was up to, with ethics and politics as inevitable concomitants of that emphasis--I'd say Crusius has it about right for Burke's career as a whole. Ed From VM Wed Sep 20 17:40:01 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 17:40:01 -0400 From: Robert_Walsh@condenast.com Subject: books Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 34 In his latest catalogue Bert Babcock, a New Hampshire bookseller friend, is offering copies of the 1937 Attitudes Toward History inscribed to John Sibley Watson of The Dial. Price: $150. You can contact him at Bert@BabcockBooks.com if interested. From VM Thu Sep 21 11:08:47 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 11:08:47 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 35 When I suggested that I like to talk to the walls and address the blank screen on my computer just as readily as warm-bodied human beings, I lied. I write to this address because I know you're out there, hiding behind chairs or boxes or cringing in the dark corners of some generically uncomfortable academic office. I've been postponing a reply on Burke and Postmodernism that a kb subscriber requested weeks ago. I couldn't find a copy of my original post on it to send her. So I'll repost my thoughts on the question for all to read and revile. Anybody who remembers that eructation, or who couldn't care less in any case, can click "delete" now. In respect to the tenets of a postmodern philosophy of language, Burke would say, I believe, yes, up to a point, BUT. Here's how: Postmodern Article of Faith #1: All truth, argument, and validity are multiple, local, and temporal. There are no universals. There are no foundations. Indeterminacy reigns. Reality is socially constructed via language at a time and place. Burke's Yes, BUT: It is the case that the content of our symbolic action is situated. The scene-act ratio of relationships and motivations is potent in any dramatistic construction of why people do what they do (GM). The literary works of a given period and locale look, for instance, like so many identical "logs" floating down a river together (PLF). However, dramatic or symbolic form has its universal aspects. ". . . A dramatistic screen does possess the philosophic character adapted to the discussion of man [sic] in general . . . " (LASA, p. 53), Burke says. We can "Avoid Mere Relativism" (p. 52) by contemplating "a 'collective revelation' of long standing" reified in the "key terms" of humankind's master narratives, such titular expressions as "tao, karma, dike, energeia, hodos, actus," "Islam," (p. 54) etc., all articulating or implying the centrality of dramatic action. Then, too, there's the "'self-interference' of 'pure' persuasion" (RM, pp. 269-70) (that is, persuasion that devolves from linguistic motivations alone in contrast to animalistic drives) evident in the activities of all human cultures throughout time. The basic structure of the human nervous system being universal (PLF), and human "action" being dependent on the "motion" that those universal structures (Encyclopedia of Social Science, 1968) serve somehow to generate, all persons in all epochs and venues, according to one socially prescribed pattern of behavior or another, "act," that is, exhibit "muscular contractions that interfere with causes in nature," modify, delay, channel, oppose, or intensify them in ways that the lower animals could not and do not accomplish (Cushman, CQ, 1977). Humans universally "act." They don't, for instance, eliminate on the spot or copulate in the village square. "Physicalist-plus" (PLF), they transcend their bodily situation via clothing, ritual ceremonies and artistic productions that superimpose moral values and meanings on the stark material nature of their life, shape and transform environmntal substances into useful and often artistically adorned artifacts, live and work and play by negatively-charged rules and regulations, create cultures or ritual patterns of social action that they then pass on to their offspring via symbolic education. Whether or not those human "acts" of "self-interference" are "freely" chosen, or "the distinction between THINGS MOVING and PERSONS ACTING is but an illusion, . . . the human race cannot possibly get along with itself [and never has] on the basis of any other intuition" (LASA, p. 53). Persons, in all times and places, have treated other persons differently from the lower animals. They've treated them better, or they've treated them worse, but never the same. Burke says "yes, BUT" to the first principle of postmodern philosophy of language. I'll get to the other three propositions I have in mind, and Burke's ambivilent responses to them, in later posts. Ed. From VM Thu Sep 21 14:25:24 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 14:25:24 -0700 From: Dan Smith Subject: Re: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 36 Hello - Ed Appel wrote: [...] >Postmodern Article of Faith #1: All truth, argument, and validity are >multiple, local, and temporal. There are no universals. There are no >foundations. Indeterminacy reigns. Reality is socially constructed via >language at a time and place. > >Burke's Yes, BUT: It is the case that the content of our symbolic >action is situated. The scene-act ratio of relationships and >motivations is potent in any dramatistic construction of why people do >what they do (GM). [and more very interesting comments. . . DS] Three questions, which I hope will make this discussion more specific and concrete. First, who are you referring to when you use the term "postmodern?" Second, can you tell me where they discuss the reign of indeterminacy and the ontological primacy of language? Finally, what "postmodernist" doesn't think the scenes in which actions take place are vital to understanding how those actions and symbols "work," and what they mean? Cheers, Dan Smith From VM Thu Sep 21 19:07:09 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 19:07:09 -0300 (ADT) From: Bob Ashley Subject: Re: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 37 On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Dan Smith wrote: > Hello - > > Ed Appel wrote: > [...] > >Postmodern Article of Faith #1: All truth, argument, and validity are > >multiple, local, and temporal. There are no universals. There are no > >foundations. Indeterminacy reigns. Reality is socially constructed via > >language at a time and place. > > > >Burke's Yes, BUT: It is the case that the content of our symbolic > >action is situated. The scene-act ratio of relationships and > >motivations is potent in any dramatistic construction of why people do > >what they do (GM). [and more very interesting comments. . . DS] Dan Smith wrote: > Three questions, which I hope will make this discussion more specific and > concrete. > First, who are you referring to when you use the term "postmodern?" Second, > can you tell me where they discuss the reign of indeterminacy and the > ontological primacy of language? Finally, what "postmodernist" doesn't think > the scenes in which actions take place are vital to understanding how those > actions and symbols "work," and what they mean? The idea of pinning anything specific or concrete to the postmodern sensibility is counterpostmodern from the get-go. So I don't think naming names is a charitable way to represent postmodernity. There's a 'voodoo' sense about it. And anyhoo, PM is incorrigible in recurrently (incessantly?) refusing to seriously enter into a collective consensus which then mounts an empirical case for its 'essence'. To risk my own generalism, I'd say PM is more intrigued with surfaces or margins than centers and essences. I'm guessing that the way Ed is writing about it, he prefers to be interpreted as conjuring the generalized ethos of postmodernity. It's the best way to do it, because if you cite Baudrillard, then anyone can find a Spivakian confound, and if you cite Derrida, you'll find a Richard Rorty up in arms about it. Such are 'floating signifiers', like the way chess pieces float on chessboard, and anyone can configure the totality of any of myriad chess (or postmodern) positions any way one chooses. And PM architects won't agree on principles with PM legal scholars, although stepping back far enough to take in the whole barnyard of PM, many commentators do offer useful, insightful generalized sketches which suggest, if not PM solidarity, at least some homologous genes.Resigned, I think it's the best we can do for the moment. Terry Eagleton comes to mind as a good critic of PM (now watch someone say, 'Rook to Queen-4, check!'. Plus, none of these characters, I would imagine, would take to kindly to a view which attempts to epitomize them as a specific, concrete exemplars of postmodern thought. If one of Burke's terms refuses to go away by virtue of its ongoing necessity, it would be 'The Great Scramble', and its application to the postmodern thinkeroos I think is perfect. Thus what Ed is doing is pointing to a postmodern pan of scrambled eggs, and it is one hyper-Herculean task to try to separate out the individual eggs, put them back their individual shells, then hold one up and say, 'This one specific egg, this is 'scrambled eggs'!' Not a good rhetorical strategy, since, as I've suggested about confounds above, someone is bound to say, "But what about those others who hold up an egg and say something different, as in, 'This is postmodern...poached', This is postmodern...fried', 'This is postmodern...beaten'. Cooking eggs, then, and playing chess, appear as cousin activities from this perch. Hence, what Ed has done to put *all* the postmodern eggs in one basket, or one pan, and it's a good thing, too, notwithstanding the commonplace gnome which cautions us to do otherwise. On the other hand, it is modernist's move on Ed's part to surgically set up a generalized coronary bypass of PM ethos to make its heart appear piously docile and obedient to things Ed is calling 'Articles of Faith'. It makes the heart, which PM doesn't possess anyway, appear dark and faulty. This terministic selection deflectively implies a postmodern manifesto drafted by a collective unity of logocentric thinkeroos. 'Articles' occupy constitution and no such constitution exists. This move, too, is a move to try to get the postmodern eggs of the Great Scramble back into their individual shells upon which to paint Easter designs. Hey, everyone's doing it! But postmodernity is maladjusted to survive or thrive in such operations, for without solidarity there is also no solidified defense of it. Thus, replacing the term 'Articles of Faith' with something more charitable would go far to check the negative, connotative baggage it lugs behind it. After all, postmodernity is indefensible, like viscous eggs in a pan. An even better move concripts the kitchen. This is: To 4-6 lightly beaten eggs, add a tablespoon of water (NOT CREAM), a pinch of salt, a pinch of white pepper, and swirl the mixture over medium heat in a non-stick pan, in a most general, nonchalant sort of way. Would not Burke or Derrida, or even Ed, and the Academy of Cooking all agree that a culinary approach to postmodernity might warrant a closer look? If so, then dialectic hits its mark in synthesis, and synthesis is just that ivory tower word for scrambled eggs. Thank you Mr.Burke, for a metphor so filling, it sticks to the ribs. (Sorry for this long rope of a post; I'm sure I've hung myself with it!) Bob Ashley ****************************** From VM Thu Sep 21 18:13:07 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 18:13:07 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 38 You have surely hung yourself, Robert, and you require resuscitation. Or a gentle swat of the stool you used to be standing on, but I'm too tired today to wield my oxygen bottle. (Both of the previous statements are intended to tickle the funny bones of Burkelers, not to put Bob down for an excellent post.) Dan wants specifics because some writers fashionably bash PM with arguments that reveal pretty clearly they've not read much Baudrillard, Lyotard, Rorty, or Fish. Some believe that a charge of "relativism" still has meaning, and so take up a burden of proving that we should be exercised by living in a world devoid of the possibility of absolutes. Now I say that's what DAN wants. That's a convenient way of saying it's what I interpret Dan as saying and it's what *I* would demand in any *serious* discussion of KB and PM. Nor do I think Ed was/is thinking in terms of "essences" -- although he is still infected with the virus we call modernity. I praise him for having arrived at perhaps the single proposition that everyone I've read who has been forced to the vocabulary of PM would find agreeable. I also agree that KB's answer regarding various constructionists would likely be "Yes, but." I remember discussing a title that actually appeared, or KB wanted to see, representing one of his attitudes about pluralism: "Pluralism, When Decidedly and When Decidedly Not." I hope we proceed with this discussion. As we go, however, I want to make Ed and every other participant stick to the ENTIRE "Burkean" response to PM. The YES comes before the BUT, and should be fully explored. I say this because the trajectory of Ed's comments seems to be to use the "But" as an excuse, a rhetorical device to move discussion away from KB's early vision of the postmodern condition toward . . . . . . well, Ed hasn't told us yet. How about we START with the "Yes," just so THIS discussion of PM doesn't resemble others that pre-judge PM or judge it with such alien principles as "PM's too humorless and gloomy for my taste." Also, could we bring the Burke-infected "social sciences" into this? I'm reading papers Bernie Kaplan wrote on "genetic epistemology" in the field of psychology, for instance, and I think these are EXCELLENT exemplars of KB's "Yes." michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph. D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, Iowa 52241 319-338-1796 (FAX) 319-338-8214 (Voice) mailto:michael@mcgees.net From VM Fri Sep 22 01:06:29 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 01:06:29 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 39 Dan Smith wrote: Three questions, which I hope will make this discussion more specific and concrete. First, who are you referring to when you use the term "postmodern?" Second, can you tell me where they discuss the reign of indeterminacy and the ontological primacy of language? Finally, what "postmodernist" doesn't think the scenes in which actions take place are vital to understanding how those actions and symbols "work," and what they mean? First, Bob and Micheal named most of the Postmodernists I had in mind. Were Foucault and Lyotard mentioned? I think they were. Second, I'm basing my general summary of Postmodern philosophy of language on two excellent summary essays, Thomas McCarthy's introduction to Philosophy: End or Transformation (1987, pp. 1-18), which undergirds much of the case for Burke's post-Philosophical texture advanced in Tim Crusius's book; and the equally telling, perhaps even superior, treatment given by Richard Tarnas in The Passion of the Western Mind (1991, pp. 395-410). And finally, Dan, you've misread my meaning in respect to your last objection to my post. Burke's emphasis on the scene-act ratio, the credence he gives to the notion of situated, time-and-place differences between and among eras and cultures, is part of the "yes" he speaks in respect to Postmodernism in general, a stance Burke took long before Derrida and the rest. To Bob, I say, your prose and your piece are simply ineffable. What a wonderfully metaphoric way to characterize Postmodern thought. It ought to find a measure of immortality in a book somewhere. To Michael, I say, yes, we need to start with Burke's "yes" to the Postmodern mind and spirit. When I presented a paper at the 1996 Burke Conference in Pittsburgh favorably comparing Burke and Rorty, Trevor Melia jumped all over me for such "heresy." In Kenneth Burke and the Conversation after Philosophy, Crusius seconds the comparison I made. Crusius did so directly in a letter he wrote to me after the event. There's a "both/and" ambivalence in Burke's stance toward Postmodern thought, not an either/or, as I see it. I emphasize the BUT in my juxtaposition of Burke and the Postmodernists probably because of one of the chief themes in CS: Opposites, and differences, explain. The "counter-statement" Burke is making in his tome of 1931 is, in great measure, postmodern in nature: We need to abjure certainties and dogmatically narrowed points of view, Burke offers. Looking at Burke's career overall, however, one must conclude, I believe, that Burke both falls, and does not fall, under the Postmodern heading. It's way past 1:00 AM in Leola. Time for by-bys. Ed From VM Fri Sep 22 09:54:16 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 09:54:16 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: Re: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 40 For those interested in this question of the relationship of Burke's thought to "postmodern" philosophy, you may want to have a look at my recent attempt to make more sense of this--an article on "Rhetoric and Postmodernity" in _The Routledge Encyclopedia of Postmodernism_ (in press). In that article, I talk about Burke's theory of rhetoric as "something akin" to postmodern thought, i.e., the last major contribution to a tradition I call "antimodern," a tradition that begins with Vico and includes Nietzsche. Here is my discussion of Burke: > The most important twentieth-century heir to the antimodernist tradition of > rhetorical theory is Kenneth Burke (1897-1993). In A Rhetoric of Motives > (1950) Burke rethinks the concept of rhetoric in relation to the demise of its > study and in relation to the impact of science on society. Like Vico, Burke > attributes the demise of rhetorical study to the circumscription of thought by > scientific rationality. As we have seen, Vico responded to the hegemony of > Descartes's critical philosophy, which sought to eliminate not only falsities > but, Vico feared, the beliefs and values that constitute social life. Although > Burke's basic concern is identical to Vico's, he responds to a new structure > of the institutions of knowledge, a new turn of the scientific screw: the > human sciences. Thus, whereas Vico expressed a concern over the neglect of the > study of politics, Burke's concern will be with the scientific appropriation > of the study of politics, i.e., the establishment of Political Science as a > discipline in the postwar American university. In spite of these institutional > differences, Burke inherits from Vico the basic antimodernist apology for the > study of rhetoric: it is the study of rhetoric, not science, that provides an > understanding of the sensus communis, or what Burke refers to as "the use of > language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature > respond to symbols." > > In addition to this inheritance, Burke falls heir to Nietzsche's seminal > recognition of the relation between scientific ideology and authoritarian > politics. Nietzsche had framed his lectures on rhetoric with reference to an > interrelation between the epistemological ethos of modern European culture > (i.e., the desire for "what is true in itself") and the proto-fascism of > "belehrt." Burke calls for a return to rhetoric as an instrument of social > criticism in the treatment of "post-Christian science," that is, a culture in > which the socializing function of the scapegoat has been secularized and is > managed by "a cult of applied science," a culture that had spawned "the > Hitlerite 'science' of genocide" and, in postwar America, the nuclear arms > race. (While finishing the Rhetoric at Princeton's Institute for Advanced > Study, Burke was associated with its director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who, of > course, had refused to participate in the development of thermonuclear weapons > and, as chair of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy > Commission, led the Commission's opposition to the development of the hydrogen > bomb.) The success of this "cult," Burke reasoned, relies on science's > illusory belief in its own "autonomy," the belief that scientific inquiry is > not subject to any law or force outside of itself. That is, it relies on a > metonymic error that extends the autonomy of scientific rationality to the > practical realm of scientific projects, a realm subject to exterior and, as > Burke believed, increasingly "sinister" forces. The study of rhetoric, Burke > contends, would help us to understand the widespread conviction in scientific > autonomy and, more generally, "the persuasiveness of false or inadequate terms > which may not be directly imposed upon us from without by some skillful > speaker, but which we impose upon ourselves, in varying degrees of > deliberateness and unawareness, through motives indeterminately > self-protective and/or suicidal." The primary value of rhetorical study for > Burke is not, as Nietzsche would have it, its potential for deflating modern > scientific philosophy, that is, the project of epistemology. Instead, Burke > regards the concept of rhetoric as the epitome of human interaction and, thus, > of human nature. Does this aspect of Burke's thought remain within the > antimodernist current of rhetorical theory or does it constitute a significant > departure, a departure that should be regarded as a postmodern thinking of > rhetoric? The remainder of the article takes up this question by focusing on the work of contemporary Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo, in particular, his attempt to construct a postmodern philosophy in contradistinction to Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and the role of rhetoric in Gadamer's thought. During the period that this book is "in press," my article is available on the web at this URI: http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/mss/rhetpomo.html Cheers, Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Fri Sep 22 10:54:21 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 10:54:21 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 41 Many thanks to James for that admirable excerpt from his encyclopedia article and for making the entire essay available. And congratulations to him on that upcoming publication. Labeling Burke an "anti-modernist" without placing him foursquare within the Postmodernist camp seems an inspired categorization. I look forward to the publication of Routledge's encyclopedia. Any word, Jim, on the anticipated date? Ed From VM Fri Sep 22 13:51:08 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 13:51:08 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: Re: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 42 On 9/22/00 5:54 AM, Edward C. Appel at edappel@epix.net posted the following: > I look forward to the publication of > Routledge's encyclopedia. Any word, Jim, on the anticipated date? Last I heard, October. Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Fri Sep 22 17:59:15 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 17:59:15 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 43 In my run-down of Burke's relationship to prominent themes in Postmodern thought, I'm still going to use the phrase "articles of faith," and I'll tell you why. In a short piece in the New Republic a few years back, some political scientist from Harvard, I forget his name, inveighed against such philosophers, calling them, among other things, "dismissively arrogant" and cocksure. I think he caught the tenor of some of the pronouncements of a few of them. Many of them don't seem to be come-now-let-us-amicably-and-undogmatically-reason-together-give-and-take-style types. Thinkers can be arrogant in their nihilism as well as in their positivism. As a group, the Postmoderns--in particular the ones Harold Bloom, in a letter I once got from him, called the "Frenchies"--do not exhibit the tone of reasonableness and willingess to "go halfway" that characterizes Burke. I'll continue with "articles of faith" and the big "BUT" to highlight the differences that most spicifically define. Postmodern Article of Faith #2: The human subject is characterized by irrationality, unconsciousness, and radical cultural embeddedness, not by Enlightenment-style sovereignty and autonomy. Burke's Yes, BUT: Burke's position on the human subject surely can be summed up as, "more dramatic than rational." As is his wont, however, Burke charitably substitutes a third term not so invidious as "irrational." Let's call human beings "methodical," Burke says (P&C), and let it go at that. Also, persons "unconsciously" persuade and are persuaded by ambient and regnant symbols in their time and place (RM). In addition, they are without a doubt intensely culturally embedded, formed and shaped by symbolic identifications that constitute a "paradox of substance" or "essence." The more we try to get at persons in terms of who or what they are in and of themselves, the more we have to describe their essence or substance in terms of "what they are not" (GM, RM). Burke is quite close to the Postmodernists in his estimate of the human subject. However, Burke offers more of a glimmer of hope that humans can change, break the shackles of their embeddedness--if they can summon new and revealing perspectives on themselves and their situation. Symbols can reveal and illuminate, albeit narrowly and selectively and deflectively, as well as conceal and obscure. In fact, Burke's entire project seems to have something of this mission as one of its central goals. Burke suggests at least six avenues by which persons individually and collectively might "reorient" themselves away from what's destructive and toward what's productive in human life. They can: (1) Programmatically exercise "perspective by inconguity" (P&C) as a way to switch on a light bulb in the mind, widen the spotlight of thought toward greater circumferences of vision (GM), "clash together" symbols, notions, concepts, and values that they just "know" don't go together. They can look at the cause as the effect or the effect as the cause, the solution as the problem or the problem as the solution. They can be dislogistic where they were eulogistic, and vice versa. They can maximize where they minimized, or do the reverse. They can act, not totally of course, but at least with a nudge in this direction, without the cues afforded by language. Nietzsche, the self-proclaimed "perspectivist," showed the way toward perspective by incongruity. Burke followed and extended Nietzsche's thought. (2) Develop dialectical vision, "double vision." At the SCA Conference in Boston in 1987, Burke said he actually experienced double vision, ocular style, during the time he wrote P&C. It served as a fitting metaphor for what he was trying to do with language: Encourage the ability to seek out the opposites that explain, and pursue the values one might surprisingly find on the other side of "received truth." (3) Respect the parliamentary (GM), try to find the kernel of "truth" or value given voice by every, or almost every, faction in the political or social spectrum. All symbol systems, all orientations, all parties, "see" only a "part" of reality, and even then in a dramatically distorted way. Only the "collective revelation of testing and discussion" (PLF), with as many voices, centered AND marginal, included in the debate, can approximate "truth," generate an "adequate idea" (GM), or some insights that approach an "adequate idea." (4) Cultivate the "comic view" (ATH), seat themselves out there in the orchestra and observe themselves from both the audience's perspective, and their own up there on the stage, as they act. They can learn from such "dramatic irony," and change. The distinctively human motive is "in the symbol." Dramatic irony and comic humility and charity--recognition that we are all in someway, at least, clowns and klutzes and need to be forgiven for our stumbles (at least when they are, in fact, just mistakes, not crimes) as we forgive those who trespass against us--can recast our "pious" constellation of symbols and values, make of us more humane and constructive social beings. (5) Become more aware of language itself as a potent source of their motivations, its sometimes insane and counterproductive promptings toward perfection, its summons to possibly truncating and inhibiting mortification, and cruel and destructive victimage toward others, its tendency, its certainty, to function like blinders on a horse. (6) Move, dialectically, up the ladder of abstraction so as to generate "paradoxes of purity" (GM), see themselves in terms of what Nietzsche called an "average" (the Gay Science), a representative and type of some larger category of being that they both belong to (the "purity") and not belong to (by way of the attributes and features they possess and exhibit that do not "fit" under the larger term). Viewing themselves as an "average" type or part of a abstract class of persons affords a "view from above," a potentially radically new understanding of their plight and condition. Burke holds out hope for human change. When I asked him at that convention in Boston what he thought the chances for survival were for humankind, he vigorously retored, "fifty-fifty." Ed From VM Sat Sep 23 08:45:16 2000 Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 08:45:16 -0700 From: Dan Smith Subject: Re: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 44 Hello again - First, let me thank James Comas for sharing part of what seems like a very insightful and informative essay. Second, I'd like to say that my initial questions were posed, as Michael C. McGee thoughtfully pointed out, to counter what I take to be Edward Appel's problematic use of the term "postmodernist." More specifically, Appel's listing of postmodernist "articles of faith" elides significant differences among numerous thinkers who might be better described practicing *various modes* of structuralism and poststructuralism. If being a "postmodernist" means subscribing to the articles of faith Appel has listed, then I can't think of a single person who can be called a postmodernist. I'm not saying there aren't any, but I'd like to be informed of who they are. Appel cites Lyotard and Foucault as "postmodernists." If he's using his "articles of faith" as criteria for determining who's a postmodernist, I respectfully suggest that he reread Foucault and Lyotard. Bob Ashley remarks that naming names is not "a charitable way" to represent postmdernism. If we're talking about "articles of faith," it seems to me that we should able to name who are amongst the "faithful." Ashley also suggests that "PM is incorrigible in recurrently (incessantly?) refusing to seriously enter into a collective consensus which then mounts an empirical case for its 'essence'. To risk my own generalism, I'd say PM is more intrigued with surfaces or margins than centers and essences." Is it me, or is there an anthropomorphizing of a word/concept here? Is it "postmodernism" (whatever that might be) that is incorrigible, incessant, refuses to enter into a collective consensus, and is intrigued with surfaces or margins rather centers and essences, or are there postmodernists (whoever they may be) who may be described this way? Don't get me wrong, I think words/concepts perform actions, but Ashley seems to be talking about people even though he's referring to "PM." Perhaps there is no "generalized ethos of postmodernism," as Ashley puts it. But if there is, I suspect that it would have be articulated in terms *general* enough that they could be applied to *particular* thinkers, while demanding that one attend to the specifics of how that ethos is practiced by particular thinkers. If a generality can't applied to all the particulars it subsumes, then is it a generality? Quite frankly, the scrambled egg metaphor seems to me a bit of cop-out in this situation. Moreover, it does not capture Burke's notion of "the scramble" of the human barnyard, which acknowledges difference/s and the agon that is its concomitant. Cheers, Dan Smith "Certainty is cheap, it is the easiest thing of a which a a man is capable." KB -- Counter-Statement From VM Sun Sep 24 17:22:46 2000 Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 17:22:46 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: KB Potpourie Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 45 Stephen Jay Gould says this in the July-August, 2000, issue of Natural History: "The bottom-line or take-home message [he talks throughout the article about the differences between "differentiation" and "addition" as models of evolution]--that mind and nature always interact to build our basic concepts of cosmic order--becomes especially relevant in our current scientific age, when prevailing beliefs about the sources of knowledge lead us to downplay the role of the mind's organizing potentials and limits, therefore leading us to regard our theories of nature as products of objective observation alone" (p. 34). Could Gould be referring to "our current scientific age" in terms of recent centuries, or recent decades? Is the scientific mind in our own day still oblivious of the linguistic turn in philosophy and the rhetoric-of-science critique that has pretty much discredited positivist understandings of even scientific language? I know there's an antipathy toward Postmodernism in the scientific disciplines, but are our scientists today, hard scientists and social scientists, still totally unreconstructed empiricists? How much hyperbole, if any, is there in gould's characterization? Mary McGrory, back from an Italian vacation, says this in today's Washington Post: "Italians abhor capital punishment. It goes against the grain, which is that things can be worked out--an attitude that makes being in their company so delightful--and the death penalty is so arbitrary." "Things can be worked out"! What a wonderful expression of the comic frame in relation to the death penalty, such a searing manifestation of tragedy. I've always felt that we can at least generalize about nations and cultures in terms of placement on a continuum between the two generic poles, tragedy and comedy. Certainly, in Europe, Italy and France lean more toward cultural comedy, in relation to the continent as a whole, while Germany is almost paradigmatically tragic. The West in general, I do believe, can be classed as more tragic than the East, a point Burke implies, I suggest, in CS on p. 113. (I remember a point my theology professor at seminary made about German Biblical scholars and theologians, on the one hand, and their Italian counterparts, on the other. For the Germans, everything is "Das Problem." For the Italians, it's "Glory be to God." One further note: In a post about identification last fall, I made illustrative reference to the high-school quarterback phenom up the road, Jeff Smoker, whom, I claimed, you would some day hear about, especially those of you in the Big Ten. I didn't think it would happen only three and a half months after his graduation. He's quarterbacked Michigan State to three straight wins, including MS's last minute come-from-behind victory over Notre Dame yesterday on a 68-yard pass play, on 4th and 10. He won the most-valuable-player award just two months ago in his last high school game, when the Pennslvania all-stars beat the Ohio all-stars at Hershey Stadium. This year, Pennsylvania has not been totally humiliated by Ohio. Almost, but not quite. Ed From VM Sun Sep 24 18:58:21 2000 Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 18:58:21 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: Re: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 46 On 9/22/00 12:59 PM, Edward C. Appel at edappel@epix.net posted the following: > In my run-down of Burke's relationship to prominent themes in Postmodern > thought, I'm still going to use the phrase "articles of faith," and I'll > tell you why. In a short piece in the New Republic a few years back, some > political scientist from Harvard, I forget his name, inveighed against such > philosophers, calling them, among other things, "dismissively arrogant" and > cocksure. I think he caught the tenor of some of the pronouncements of a > few of them. Many of them don't seem to be > come-now-let-us-amicably-and-undogmatically-reason-together-give-and-take-st > yle types. Thinkers can be arrogant in their nihilism as well as in their > positivism. As a group, the Postmoderns--in particular the ones Harold > Bloom, in a letter I once got from him, called the "Frenchies"--do not > exhibit the tone of reasonableness and willingess to "go halfway" that > characterizes Burke. I'll continue with "articles of faith" and the big > "BUT" to highlight the differences that most spicifically define. I think Ed Appel has been describing a "postmodernism" that we have all seen. But we have not seen it in the writings of Lyotard or other "Frenchies" (Bloom's crankiness should be enjoyed, even appreciated, but seldom relied upon). Nor, I wager, will you ever find it in the work of these writers. So, where have we seen this "postmodernism"? It *is* "something akin." It is, I think, a phantom of our own intellectual culture, a culture that too much values the simplicity of opposition and controversy. This phantom appears whenever someone finds it easier or derives some benefit from thinking in oppositions (and we all know how important this dynamic can be in establishing one's career). The common result is, at best, a neglect of the complexities of people grappling with their experience of the world and, at worst, the facile dismissal of other minds. We've all seen this phantom. But I think Burke deserves better than to be pitted against a phantom. In fact, it might be more interesting to use Burke's ideas to analyze this phantom. A final point about the representation of "postmodern thought": Here is how Lyotard in _Le Differend_ (1983) sketched the situation to which he turned his intellectual efforts: > The "linguistic turn" of Western philosophy (Heidegger's later works, the > penetration of Anglo-American philosophies into European thought, the > development of language technologies); and correlatively, the decline of > universalist discourses (the metaphysical doctrines of modern times: > narratives of progress, of socialism, of abundance, of knowledge). The > weariness with regard to "theory," and the miserable slackening that goes > along with it (new this, new that, post-this, post-that, etc.). The time has > come to philosophize. If Lyotard is a "postmodern" thinker, it is not because his thought is grounded in the "articles of faith" that Ed has accurately abstracted from our intellectual culture; it is because he directed his thought toward problems generated by an intellectual/social condition that he characterized with the word "postmodernity." Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Mon Sep 25 10:32:45 2000 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 10:32:45 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: The "other" end of the stick! Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 47 Or 'The Unnamed' Forth Post, September 25, 2000 I wish to perform a little magic trick, a little alchemical voodoo and transform the discussion into gold, golder than the gold it already is. I've placed two month's worth of posts into a multiplexer and hit puree'. I want here to let 'our' ideas speak for themselves, suspending for the moment the demand that they be backed up "in a certain way." "Our" ideas...if I'm not mistaken, cannot be owned or made proprietary (though L.Ron Hubbard has managed to create a religion, and quite the money machine out of "the secret." Again, I want to let ideas speak for themselves; they don't need to be backed up, just adequately expressed. Let me offer a conceit which I will immediately trash. I'm getting rather famous or infamous for speaking my mind, but then I don't have the credentials for disguising my thought. Or again, I don't have to disguise my thought since I'm not in an arena where I need credentials. I'm not trying to publish a credible scholarly article (at least not yet). Those two words, "famous"and "infamous" were completely wrong, weren't they? With them I'm just hanging myself and "no one" is even interested in watching me strangle, after all who am I? "No one." That puts me in the precarious position of the "unnamable," that which we both cannot name and will not mention. Do I lack formality in my thinking? Is it all just a bunch of mush that cannot be backed up by authority (military might)? Either I failed in the sphincter training that is the Schools or the Schools failed to force me into a box, failed to see that I wasn't some simple pile of brick or plain brutal labor. Words fail. I guess that is why there are so many of them. (I don't particularly believe that, but it is a 'commonplace,' which a lot of people fall back on). Most people shudder before that which they cannot name (control). (Don't ask me which people, I haven't a clue) Try as they might they cannot get a hold of the phenomenon (PM, etc.) to examine and pin down its properties (presumably in order to make it into something they can digest or use). Round and round they go like the otter who cannot find a rock hard enough to crack open the "clam" (his mistake was in thinking it "was" a clam). It's not that there isn't anything in my words that can be digested; rather it's a matter of what kind of food I am. I am not fast food. That to me is the essence (I should say anti-essence) of the Postmodern condition. People are discovering ways of avoiding the hog-market, the corals, the system of semi-slave labor. We're very much like the tree frog who is "just" managing to leap out of harms way. All mobile life does the same thing (for example the blowfish)--it strives to remain uneaten (read, un-manufactured, un-prepared for someone else's consumption). Simple is not always stupid, occasionally it is profound. But all these abstractions, all this formality and fulsome quotation is only confound. It is not honest. It is office and jargon and the secret handshake. It is the secular command that all things remain distinct and what they are, or really, what I tell you they are. The name and the definition are a demand. The invisible (and largely non-existent) penal authority demands that we fit in somewhere and begin "churning." In the margins of society you'll find those who could not or would not "churn." The bum who would rather be free (a matter of degree since his is the freedom of the lichen), the circus performer, though he would not work he still has to dance (like the music box which we won't throw away until it stops "working"), or the clergy member on leave from call tending to his parsonage with a tax-free housing allowance. Whether they are on disability, are sponging from their parents, won the lottery or inherited some questionable fortune, or they simply opted out of the stinging tension of the social ladder and found some relatively innocuous and un-exploitable position, there is plenty of evidence all around which speaks against capitalist pandemonium and the vicious predatory drive to make profits. (Can that system be criticized and changed? That is the unnamed question here). The formality imposed on thought by the Schools is a form of de-criminalization. An authority can call a halt to one's progression. If only I would abide by a little law, then I would be admitted into the circle (of lies). And what's so wrong about quoting anyway; what's so wrong with the language of tentativeness, which is the meat of the dissertation? I only find that it reinforces scientific and class distinctions, that's all! Tentative! Is that what we want our scholars to be? I see here, I feel here, I detect here a practical fear and the connotations of nervousness and caution, nervous because we're admitting that we don't really know very much about any one topic, and cautious because we want that title and the privileges which will come with it and know how very tricky it is to earn-one has to obey and abide by a strict set of guide lines. While some people found that easy and floated right to the top, other's inherited the self-destructive rebel gene and barred "themselves" from entry into "The Circle," the whole time blaming some one or something else. This sphincter training that is imposed upon us by "society" is a fiction; it is a hangover from some forgotten and now irrelevant era. The lines that had been drawn are fading--and some of us are actively erasing them. The discussion is a curious affair. We raise objections to each other's comprehension of Kenneth Burke, bickering (more salt here) about whether or not we have him right. "Is he more postmodern than the current generation of postmoderns?" "Was he postmodern first?" We pick up this clean end of the stick probably because the question is the "right kind of question." That is, it is the type of question we can hope to answer (since it is not asking much). It is postmodern to resist definition, essentialism, totalization...each of us would appropriate Burke and make him do our bidding. That he can be so appropriated by dozens and dozens of fields is only evidence for the argument I am making: that Kenneth Burke, for lack of a single definitive term, might as well be considered an Alchemist-but more generally, that he is many things. As Ed Appel and others have written at length in stone... "He both is and isn't." Poetic Truth versus Scientific Reason: this is WAR! Declared! War on every front, utilizing every conceivable resource. Even magicians (the penny-arcade kind with the sleight of hand and the cumberbund) and theatre people were taken up by the Second World War-they painted shadows of aircraft on dummy airfields they built with their own hands. (The Problem, Michael C. McGee, is not only that everything is subordinated to human needs, gratifications and perspectives. The problem is that most people are not used or needed at all. Society finds no use for them and "lets them go"). Who are we at war with? If I were more cautious I wouldn't dare ask this question. The obviousness of the answer is likely to raise no more than a shrug. What do "my" words matter to "you", especially if they seem to be taking something away? I don't write (poetry), I delete. In the end (the one Lyotard talks about in 'The Inhuman'), I am not even alone. I can always talk to myself or, like Edward Appel, address a ghostly computer screen at 1:00 a.m. and hope that "people" are at the other end...and care. But what if I were not real? What if it were an illusion that there was more than one voice AND that that voice was "mine"? So much for dialectic. Rhetoric perhaps would remain as the principle means of hiding such a fact from ourselves and insuring a satisfactory level of complexity and suaveness (bad word) in our lies. But even if it were true that we were not "real" I should still not despair, for some lies are much better than others, and I would still find it entertaining and a challenge to become one of the better story tellers. What kind of a result am I looking for? When I read Burke or Derrida or Nietzsche or de Sade, what am I looking for? Let me take a stab at it. I look for both the essential AND the means to retard the headlong flight to essentialize or reduce everything to some sort of fuel which I can burn to perpetuate my ghostly flesh and bone here among the manswarm. What the philosopher and mathematician reduces the artist and poet augments. It's not that the artist has no interest in reducing an equation to its simplest form. There is admirable skill and subtlety in mathematical languages and talents-the results are rather astonishing if you can perceive them. The artist, however, pioneers in the other direction and expands the equation, complexifies one field after another and discovers new horizons, new fields, new worlds within worlds which can then be grasped and reduced and made available to others. We need to do both: essentialize and de-essentialize. It matters little whether we call the one science and the other art. These terms are (thankfully) interchangable. I will be charged (criminalized) with making everything equal everything else; I will be charged with the destruction of property, with stealing, with corrupting authority (or really obedience); I will be charged with murdering the gods, with dissolving belief, and with turning the pyramid on its head. I will be charged with instigating the very Pandemonium which I have made my business to destroy. You see, I believe that those who "drew the lines" are the one's who really wish to perpetuate the Pandemonium which they started-they profit from the gruesome and deliberately inefficient machinery that is our political economy. If I take away this pacifier I risk a lot more than an hour or two of wailing complaint. Don't worry. I don't plan on going all the way "to the end of the line" and becoming yet another example of what happens when you swallow too much truth. I might also be charged (by a different court) with "taking purification to the extreme" since I have admitted that my wish is to transform a perceived pandemonium into, if not paradise, then at least into something relatively better. It appears that the Schools, the authorities, are engaged in the very humanistic act of wresting this "disease" from the maturing and newly minted educated class. If I am not mistaken this sounds like "There's nothing wrong with the world or system of wage labor, only with those who believe that the world is all messed up." Teachers in this vein see themselves as saving youth and protecting them from problems which are too awesome to comprehend, protecting them from themselves, protecting them from harsh realities. And while that is admirable (no one is going to charge you with malpractice), nowhere, not outside nor inside the institution, is the judgement and criticism of the institution taking place to any significant degree. Yes, it is whispered about. Occasionally someone spills his whisky and "snaps" at the bartender or the "suit" with the dame and the bottle of vintage Merlot (sorry, I don't know my wines). I saw a dozen "radicals" picketting the passers by outside the Target Center Saturday night where Ralph Nader was giving a speech. "Let Ralph Debate!" But I said "significant." I know this is on all our minds. It's breathtaking how very careful we are. I'm afraid I've picked up the "other" end of the stick. When will we recognize how much truth there already is? When will we count it? When will we add it up? Are we not postponing something? I wonder. Are we not keeping it back, just as we hold a student back because we say he/she is not ready? Who here is not ready? We are not ready for the truth. We are not ready to redraft the "constitution." But we're close! Leslie Allan Bruder Minneapolis, Minnesota From VM Mon Sep 25 10:53:39 2000 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 10:53:39 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 48 Since, like, perhaps, Gerald Ford, I have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, I think I'll continue with my current expository project and maybe answer Jim Comas later. Postmoadern Article of Faith #3 (or, for the more persnickity, philosophical tenet in respect to language): Knowledge, as more or less accurate representation of some invariant content out there in the world somewhere, as mediated by language, is rejected. Representationalist, positivist, empiricist, and scientist views of language are rejected. Indeed, language is regarded as a kind of untethered, free-floating balloon, self-referential, ungrounded in the sheer brute materials of the world as it is. Burke's Yes, BUT: In my judgment, Burke is definitely NOT a representationalist or positivist either. His emphasis on the negative as the paradigmatic and pervasive symbol is argument enough for my claim. I give my complete case for this view in "Implications and Importance of the Negative in Burke's Dramatistic Philosophy of Language," CQ, Winter, 1993, where, among other things, I explicitly contrast Burke with the positivists. I won't go over that ground here. And I wouldn't even add the softener "in my judgment" except that John Stewart and Karen Williams argue that Burke is a "Cartesian representationalist" in their chapter on Burke in Stewart's book Articulate Contact (SUNY Press). They presented their case at NCA in Atlanta in 1991 and the book came out a few years later. I wrote a review of that chapter for the KB Newsletter, sent it to the editor, and never heard word of it again. I won't bore you with a lenghy exposition drawn from that piece either. Stewart and Williams's treatment of Burke in their book chapter is selective and tendentious. I don't know of anyone else who would make the case for Burke as a Cartesian. For them, Burke's very use of the word "symbol" is evidence enough. (A symbol "stands for" some "thing," right?) Where Burke does diverge from the Postmoderns, as I see it, is in respect to their radical notion that language responds to material reality almost not at all. In his intro to Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought, Brock labels Burke a "critical realist." I won't gainsay his characterization. I would, though, prefer to call Burke an "interventionist realist" after Ian Hacking's analysis in Representing and Intervening. For Burke, material reality does "intervene" in our symbolic action. We can call ourselves a "bird," start flapping our arms, then jump off a cliff (P&C). If we live through the experience, we will phrase what we can do from the top of some mountain or hill quite differently the next time. Similarly, language "intervenes" in respect to our concrete material environment. Human artifacts are like reified symbols. (Isn't it in RM that Burke notes the shift in motivation embodied in the giant commercial buildings that dwarf the steeples of surrounding churches in contemporary American cities?) "Things" are more the "signs" of "words" than vice versa (LASA). Words are too negatively charged, airy, diaphonous, titular, "ideal," indeed "teleological" (as Cassirer would emphasize) to articulate with, or empirically "represent," anything. Yet Burke says, somewhere in RR I believe: "The way language is, that's the way the world is." Melia is fond of quoting that passage. That's one reason he took me to task for comparing Burke with Rorty. Burke's appraoch is, though, not representational. It is, however, "realistic." Burke cannot be taken the entire way down the road of Postmodernism in regard to language as free-floating and thoroughly self-referential. As an addendum to this rant, I don't think we can label Burke as ONLY a realist. He's also, in my view, a pragmatist, a materialist, an idealist, and a mystic. The central idea of the pentadic ratios is that they selectively restrict our vision of the way things are, truncate and skew our perceptions, deflect away too much "truth." Even the term "act" cannot, by itself, afford an "adequate idea." Ed From VM Mon Sep 25 13:40:05 2000 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 13:40:05 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: The "other" end of the stick! Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 49 Those who do not study the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, sez one sage. Don't stop to look back on the accomplishments of your life of the mind, sez another, because you'll stop making them. Don't look over your shoulder, sez a third, because they might be gaining, three steps back trying to make it two. The nays have it, 2-1. New book, Leslie: Have you seen Antonio R. Damasio, *The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness*? You'll remember that he wrote the acclaimed *Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain* in 1994. He's a neurologist by trade. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph. D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, Iowa 52241 319-338-1796 (FAX) 319-338-8214 (Voice) mailto:michael@mcgees.net From VM Mon Sep 25 13:53:25 2000 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 13:53:25 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 50 There are no "Articles of Faith" among those who study postmodernity. Moments of agreement, perhaps, involving some, maybe even several, but certainly not all. And, sez a fourth sage, beware the intellectual (KB in this instance) who is everything, because he is likely THEREFORE nothing. Great book by Derrida, perhaps his best: *Positions*. To read originals is sometimes a virtue, and to rely on secondaries is sometimes a vice -- was that a Barry Goldwater line? michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph. D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, Iowa 52241 319-338-1796 (FAX) 319-338-8214 (Voice) mailto:michael@mcgees.net From VM Mon Sep 25 15:12:40 2000 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 15:12:40 -0400 From: "Scott McLemee" Subject: Re: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 51 If someone wanted to discuss KB and Lyotard (or KB and Baudrillard, or KB and Rorty) -- that could be interesting and useful. Not necessarily, of course. I recall a paper on Burke and Derrida (according to its title) by someone who evidently cobbled it together after a long weekend spent reading Jonathan Culler. But to lash them all together, with a crowd of other suspects resembling them even less than they resemble one another -- well, that just seems like summary execution, without a trial. The labor-saving advantages are probably inarguable. Otherwise, it's not too instructive. Scott McLemee From VM Mon Sep 25 16:04:08 2000 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 16:04:08 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: Something 'aikin' Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 52 Thank you, Michael M., for the reference to Antonio R. Damasio's work. I've reached across the internet and have already found a sizable amount of material (book reviews and all that) which will give me a good start. I think you and several others have correctly observed that I am falling victim to myself. I'm finding it amazing that what I thought was art is being perceived by others as pain--it's pretty tough to disentangle oneself from a long standing occupational psychosis--can I even call it that? It's more like a non-occupational psychosis (I'm not trying to be funny). The pain that I mentioned is pretty old stuff--over ten years. It hasn't quite dawned on me that I have not dealt with it. I'm currently re-enrolled at the University of Minnesota and am pursuing a Communication Degree with an emphasis in Rhetoric and I thoroughly enjoy it. Now there is a start. As I mentioned in my second post, "I enjoy reading the posts and participating in the discussion and I would certainly appreciate any clarification or correction of these early musings, especially since they can so easily veer off in potentially grave directions." Grave indeed. I hope this little bit of honesty, after so much grandstanding and ill will, is not embarrassing and will be taken as just what it is: a little bit of honesty. Sincerely, Les From VM Mon Sep 25 20:50:07 2000 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 20:50:07 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 53 I have one more post I want to make in this series. Thus far, I stand by everything I've said both about what Postmodern philosophy of language seems to be in general, and what I conceive to be Burke's ambivalent stance toward it in particular. I said out the outset I had two purposes in posting these brief essays: (1) To fulfill a promise to one of the kb subscribers, who expressed interest in my views. (2) To be read and reviled by the rest. I think I've achieved both goalx. Ed From VM Mon Sep 25 22:35:46 2000 Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 22:35:46 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 54 My goodness, Ed! Who "reviles" you? Your soliloquies are a part of what this wonderful new medium is about! I have been advised not to interact with you, yet still I do. You need to know that no matter how Hamletesque and narcissistic you get, at least one person reads your every word. "Revile"? Far from it! You have GOOD ideas. I just want you to know what you're talking about even as you articulate them. READ Derrida and Lyotard and Eco and Rorty. QUOTE them in the same assiduous way, with the same intellectual integrity, that you quote KB. Make me believe that you UNDERSTAND what you disagree with BEFORE you articulate your disagreement. This is not a case of the righteous against satanists . . . something makes good-hearted, dedicated scholars BELIEVE what they say. Why does Lyotard not make reference to KB? I don't know. Is KB in French? In Italian or German? Did he travel in his lifetime, to Europe or elsewhere? Lyotard is in English and traveled in the United States. Baudrillard made a career out of immersing himself in America and its culture, with everything he's written available to English-speaking scholars. What's our excuse for not reading them with the same respect we'd expect from them should they pick up *Permanence and Change*? michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Edward C. Appel Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 3:50 PM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: "Something Akin" I have one more post I want to make in this series. Thus far, I stand by everything I've said both about what Postmodern philosophy of language seems to be in general, and what I conceive to be Burke's ambivalent stance toward it in particular. I said out the outset I had two purposes in posting these brief essays: (1) To fulfill a promise to one of the kb subscribers, who expressed interest in my views. (2) To be read and reviled by the rest. I think I've achieved both goalx. Ed From VM Wed Sep 27 12:01:16 2000 Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 12:01:16 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 55 Was there anything on kb today, Wednesday, before this post of mine? My computer accidentally deleted two messages, at least one of which was labeled "Wednesday." Just asking. Michael, you said you read every word of mine. I'm gratified, flattered, even nonplussed. I do wonder, though, who this person is who warned you not to debate, converse, or dialogue with me. That's the second time you've mentioned this guy or gal. I'm just a harmless little fuzzball, really. (Remember, the internet is full of pretenders, experts manque, Wizards of Ooze who hide behind curtains of seemingly credentialed respectability, laddling out dollops of self-identity that conceal as well as reveal.) I can't imagine my maudlin soliloquies meriting a "warning" FROM anybody TO anybody. Anyway, waxing "narcissistic" one more time, I'll take up Burke's response to what I conceive to be Postmodernism's fourth principle of linguistic philosophy. Postmodern Article of Faith #4 (or, for the more fastidious, philosophical tenet in respect to language): All discourses, even philosophic and scientific discourses, should be regarded as metaphorical, not literal. There are no privileged discourses. Burke's Yes, But (it's not as big a "but" this time): Burke's books and essays certainly underwrite the notion that there are no privileged discourses. All are creative and "magical," selective and tendentious, situated and self-subverting, bound in great measure to questions of the day and vulnerable to exposure through cluster/agon analysis. All require a "linguistic discount." Like words themselves, they all tend to "pull bits of reality apart and treat them as wholes," or are susceptible to that proclivity via the "entelechial" dimension of symbol-using. The Rhetoric of Religion and related writings surely serve, in part, to deconstruct the Bible and the Christian drama of salvation. My theistic take on Burke's theological obsessions would suggest there's a lot more going on here than just euhemeristic gainsaying, but I won't traverse that ground now. See my article "Kenneth Burke: Coy Theologian" in JCR, September, 1993, for particulars. Burke's complementary position on language's metaphorical cast requires a more nuanced treatment. Burke does indeed call attention to, and explain, the necessarily metaphorical nature of symbols (P&C, pp. 102-107). Later in his career, however, he makes the potentially embarrassing and seemingly contradictory claim that human beings "literally act" (Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968). If we examine closely what Burke is saying in P&C, though, I don't think there's a real contradiction. At least one subscriber to this list disagrees with me on this point. He's chided me for being too much of an apologist "for the old man." Here's my apologetic sleight of hand in this matter: Burke says in "The Four Master Tropes" (GM) that "metaphor is a device for seeing something IN TERMS OF something else." "We could substitute PERSPECTIVE" for the term "metaphor." "It [metaphor] brings out the thisness of a that, or the thatness of a this." "To consider A from the point of view of B is, of course, to use B as a PERSPECTIVE upon A" (GM, pp. 503-504). I. A. Richards calls the perspective in metaphor the "vehicle" and the idea or object being considered from the vantage point of the vehicle the "tenor." These labels have become commonplace in literary theory. Now, the section in P&C that claims that all language is metaphorical is entitled "Interrelation of Analogy, Metaphor, Abstraction, Classification, Interest, Expectancy, and Intention" (p. 103). In sum, Burke says here that humans linguistically abstract and classify by way of metaphor and analogy from the vantage point of their interests, intentions (read: purposes), and expectancies. "Interests" [and therefore intentions and purposes] serve as the "perspectives" from which the metaphorical syntheses that make up what we call symbols derive. To wit: "And when he [any symbol-user] changes the nature of his [sic] interests, or points of view, he [sic] will approach events with a new ideality, reclassifying them, putting things together that were in different classes, and dividing things that had been together" (P&C, p. 106). "Interests" serve, for Burke, as the "vehicles" for the "metaphors" that symbols, in the dramatistic view, are. "Interests" are the "points of view," the "perspectives," from which humans classify, and then reclassify, phenomena, "events" to use Burke's favorite term here--the materials, motions, and qualities that inchoately constitute our life, until we speak and give that chaos, or partial chaos, shape and form. Via symbols and the "intentions" that are their essence, we "abstract" certain "analogous" qualities from divergent "events" and materials to serve our "purposes." Symbols have only "ideality," because no "thing" or "motion" or "act" in nature possesses ONLY those abstracted and serviceable attributes. They are littered with what the philosophers call "accidents." No symbol, so "titular" (LASA) and "ideal," can directly articulate with any "thing" that it names. Hence "things" are best construed as the "signs of words" rather than vice versa. Words are metaphors by way of dramatic action in the service of human needs, purposes, and values. Well, how then do humans "literally act"? They do so via recognition of the "doubly metaphorical" nature of the metaphor of common usage. "John was the rock on which we safely stood during the crisis the company faced a year ago." "Four men stood on a rock at the Gettysburg battlefield, while a dozen or so posed in front of it, for a picture taken at the fiftieth anniversary of the great battle there, July, 1863." (I saw such a picture at a birthday party Sunday a week ago.) The first sentence is a commonplace metaphor. "Rock" is a "vehicle." The statement is not to be taken literally. The second sentence is "literal" in nature. Four men were standing there (actually, I must confess, they were sitting) on a real rock. But in both cases, the notion of a "rock" is formed out of human "interests," "intentions," "purposes," and "expectancies." Rocks, in time, are "events" with strikingly variant shapes, sizes, colors, striations, chemical constitutions, locations, processes of origin, The word and the concept are a metaphorical synthesis coalescing around human intentions to exploit, use, reconnoiter around, study, worship, memorialize, and build. They are dramatic "acts" eminating from what Heidegger calls the existential "what for" or "in order to." Burke's declaration in the encyclopedia article that humans "literally act" should, in my view, be taken in this commonplace sense. Humans literally engage in "self-interference." They "in fact" produce muscular contractions that "interefere" with causes in nature. The word "act" itself, though, is, when looked out from what Ahab called a "little lower layer," a metaphrical construction. Got that? Ed . : From VM Wed Sep 27 17:36:17 2000 Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 17:36:17 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: The Cobbler Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 56 Without wishing to revisit my own past errors, and desiring only to be mildly humorous as well as mildly serious about understanding Kenneth Burke and related authors I wanted to respond to Scott McLemee's cautionary post on 9/25 that we should stick to one comparison at a time and be a little more concrete about our discussion and avoid trying to talk about everything all at once. I read Of Grammatology back in the 80's (about three times, thoroughly destroying the book with red ink and dogears) during a course in Semiotics taught by Vlad Godzich. I can't find my copy so I dropped the search term Jonathon Culler in the Yahoo search engine because I wanted to find out if the cobbler was using quality leather. 1 From the internet, "Semiotics and Deconstruction." Jonathan Culler, Cornell University. "Derrida's analyses of the ubiquity of logocentrism - even Georges Bataille can be shown ultimately to be a Kantian - show that analysis is necessarily logocentric: even the most rigorous critiques of logocentrism cannot escape it since the concepts they must use are part of the system being deconstructed. There are, of course, various ways of playing with or resisting the system that one cannot escape, but it would be an error to suggest that Derrida and deconstruction have provided us with an alternative to semiotics and logocentrism. Grammatology, Derrida has said, is not a new discipline which could replace a logocentric semiology; it is the name of a ques- tion (1972: 22). Indeed, Derrida's own writing involves a series of strategic manoeuv res and displacements in which he modifies his terms, producing a chain of related but non-identical operators - diff'rance, suppl'ment, trace, hymen, espacement, greffe, pharmakon, parergon - to prevent any of his terms from becoming "concepts" of a new science." 2 Commentary Maneuvers and displacements. It is a question of escaping the logocentrism that Derrida's criticizing. Logocentrism is wrong; the modern "philosophers" are right, or at least they are not making the same mistakes as have always been made. One avoids the unavoidable prejudices of language itself by playing with language and resisting (since one cannot truly escape). Deconstruction seems to be Derrida's word for anti-essentializing in discourse: desystematizing, unconceptualizing, unthinking. In this way he hopes to profess without the possibility of being shown to be wrong. Call it being certain that no one can be certain, and a standing on a mountain of rubble with a non-flag precariously balancing between being and non-being. It's probably not that Derrida wished to be right or that he wanted to avoid being wrong. Instead he called philosophy literature and literature mythology and mythology ultimately art or play and left it at that. Quite the result. No new science; just an over- and under-standing and a little bit of rather sophisticated humor. But if his work is play, I wonder why he is so careful to prevent his terms from becoming "concepts." Why not just say, "Okay, let's call it for the time being a theory or a science of writing and later we will show why it cannot be and then fall back on the idea that it can at most be an art, as rhetoric itself is an art, whose practitioners are more or less adept?" It is only those who are so seriously clinging to their arguments who need to be purged of their need to be correct in their mastery or understanding of a subject matter. (oops! I find it very difficult to avoid jumping into the ring and swinging blindly-so I will rewrite here and say that it is I who needs to stop clinging onto an argument the origin of which is still a mystery). It's no skin off anyone's back (sheesh! What an awful metaphor) if we are all neither right nor wrong. And we can still keep the lines (limes...limns...the liminary) where they are without fear of conquest or of losing our power to make distinctions. Derrida seems to meet Kenneth Burke precisely in the concept (?) of the negative. For Derrida it is the concept (?) of absence or the difference which cannot be present as such. There is probably not a lot of overlap here but there is some. My question is, what will we gain by comparing the two? In other words, would it be advisable to do a Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (in this case, Lives of the Noble and Ignoble Moderns and Extramoderns), of course without Plutarch's prejudice for the practical and against the impractical arts? Thanks all, for your matchless and calm contemplation of very exciting and pertinent ideas and authors. Les From VM Wed Sep 27 23:17:24 2000 Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 23:17:24 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: The Cobbler Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 57 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0027_01C028D9.1789E060 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit At the risk of being reductionist (who, me?): Logology is the way to go, a major subject of study, because it constitutes the Real. KB Logology is wrong, something to be escaped, because it subverts the Real. JD With regard to substantive development of the point, I am reminded of what I still think is some of her best work, Barbara Biesecker's rethinking of the rhetorical situation. Have you seen it, Leslie? "Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from Within the Thematic of Differance," Philosophy and Rhetoric, 22 (1989), 110-30. michael ------=_NextPart_000_0027_01C028D9.1789E060 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAw OTI4MDQxNzIzWjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUB/6povTBoqQGbmB6GD1LZBqvORkwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEBJgDtwz+w1T3EroRBTEFOheJ+wjapFXc1DGKKemhHTOEdnN0Ep oAq51v/xa7rv69C16kwvSDY1Go/dPUZSUMB3AAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_0027_01C028D9.1789E060-- From VM Thu Sep 28 11:07:50 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 11:07:50 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: Re: The Cobbler Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 58 On 9/27/00 11:17 PM, Michael Calvin McGee at michael@mcgees.net posted the following: > At the risk of being reductionist (who, me?): > > Logology is the way to go, a major subject of study, because it > constitutes the Real. KB > Logology is wrong, something to be escaped, because it subverts the > Real. > JD In the tradition of Burke's trout, surfacing for the bait, I'll respond: Michael's "reductionist" dichotomy appears to be grounded in a conflation of KB's concept of logology and JD's concept of logocentrism. If so, is this conflation warranted? Go fish. Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Thu Sep 28 12:06:03 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 12:06:03 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: The Cobbler's Gone Fishing Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 59 James Comas responded this morning: "In the tradition of Burke's trout, surfacing for the bait, I'll respond: Michael's "reductionist" dichotomy appears to be grounded in a conflation of KB's concept of logology and JD's concept of logocentrism. If so, is this conflation warranted? Go fish." I've been curious about the third book in the series, The Grammar of Motives, The Rhetoric of Motives and the missing third promised in both the previous books, The Symbolic of Motives. Did this book become The Rhetoric of Religion where Kenneth Burke discusses logology? Or is The Symbolic of Motives a work or interest promised but never followed up on? Logology. Definition given on a Bradley University Home Page "Burke's later effort to discover motivational systems and orientations through the examination of words about God/gods/religion. A second "critical metaphor" (after dramatism). The source of this study is theology." This definition seems vastly inadequate but it does point to the possibility that Burke shifted from providing a symbolic of motives to examining theology and religion as symbolic systems and delving into the rhetoricity of such symbols. Should logology turn out to be the study of symbols and symbol systems simply then logology and logocentrism are not the same thing, and perhaps they are not even opposites. While Derrida was critiquing the west's reliance on the logos as a metaphysics of presence that privileges the visual and insists that the visual is the present rather than simply the perceived and fleeting, Burke seems to be simply examing symbol systems, both visual and aural, positive and negative, and he only incidentally criticizes the philosophic schools and idealogies showing how they are, as sets of terminologies, various ratios of the five (or six) pentadic (hexadic) terms of Dramatism. Questions: What happened to the Symbolic of Motives? Which works (by Burke) delve deeply into "Logology"? Leslie From VM Thu Sep 28 12:44:59 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 12:44:59 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: "Logology" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 60 Regarding Burke's concept of "logology," here are a few passages from _The Rhetoric of Religion_ that I happen to have at hand: > If we define "theology" as "words about God," then by "logology" we should > mean "words about words." Whereupon, thoughts on the necessarily verbal nature > of religious doctrines suggest a further possibility: that there might be > fruitful analogies between the two realms. (1) > Our purpose is simply to ask how theological principles can be shown to have > usable secular analogues that throw light upon the nature of language. (2) > Formally, the investigation heads in an attempt to study the point at which > narrative forms and logical forms merge (or begin to diverge!), the exquisite > point of differentiation between purely temporal and purely logical principles > of "priority," an overlap that comes to a theological focus in the shifts > between God as *logical* ground of all *moral* sanctions and God as originator > of the *natural, temporal* order. (4) [This, I think, would provide an interesting entrance into a comparison with Lyotard's concept of metanarrative and, thus, his thinking on postmodernism.] > [On the third of the four realms of words] Third, there are words about words. > Here is the realm of dictionaries, grammar, etymology, philology, literary > criticism, rhetoric, poetics, dialectics--all that I like to think of as > coming to a head in the discipline I would want to call "Logology." (14) [I'm interested in how this "four realms of words" approach displaces the earlier three-part "motivorum" project.] > [On Logology as a discipline] . . . there is a technical sense in which all > specialization can be treated as radiating from a Logological center. Logology > could properly be called central, and all other studies could be said to > "radiate" from it, in the sense that all -ologies and -ographies are guided by > the verbal. They are all special idioms (in the special fields of the physical > sciences, the social sciences and the humanities). Finally, the title of Burke's book indicates that he regarded "the rhetoric of religion" as a "stud[y] in logology." Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Thu Sep 28 14:19:16 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 14:19:16 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) From: "Stromberg, Ernest L" Subject: Incantation Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 61 Just a brief question for the list. I am working on a small project on music and magic. I have read Burke's discussion of magic and Clyde Kluchohn's reports on the Navaho in RM. I have also been reading his various comments on magic, incantations, and spells in PLF. Can anyone suggest other places where Burke discusses magic. Thanks, Ernie -- Stromberg, Ernest L strombel@jmu.edu From VM Thu Sep 28 13:46:25 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 13:46:25 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: Re: Incantation Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 62 On 9/28/00 1:19 PM, Stromberg, Ernest L at strombel@jmu.edu posted the following: > Just a brief question for the list. I am working on a small > project on music and magic. I have read Burke's discussion > of magic and Clyde Kluchohn's reports on the Navaho in RM. > I have also been reading his various comments on magic, > incantations, and spells in PLF. Can anyone suggest other > places where Burke discusses magic. The earliest reference to magic is, I think, in his discussion of ritual in the "Lexicon Rhetoricae." He develops these ideas in _Permanence and Change_. See especially Pt. I, Ch. V, Pt. II, Ch. II, and Pt. III, Ch. V. Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Thu Sep 28 10:50:06 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 10:50:06 -0800 From: "Jeff White" Subject: RE: Incantation Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 63 Ernie- In discussing 'scope and reduction' in GM, Burke discusses 'true' and 'false' magic (pgs 65+). William Covino uses this discussion from Burke, then in "Magic, Literacy, and the National Enquirer" in the Harkin and Schilb collection _Contending with Words_ '91 and _ Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy : An Eccentric History of the Composing Imagination_ '94. Really fun, interesting things to read. -jeff _________________________________ Jeff White | afjcw@uaa.alaska.edu University of Alaska Anchorage From VM Thu Sep 28 15:28:49 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 15:28:49 -0400 From: "Scott McLemee" Subject: Re: Incantation Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 64 There is an account of magic, religion, and science as discrete orders of understanding and action in "Permanence and Change" -- very Malinowski-tinted, enough so that Burke takes some of it back later. He also reviewed Paul Radin's book on" the mentality of the primitive" (for the Dial, I think) -- which would probably be among his very earliest discussions of magic. There's a sense in which all of KB's thinking about "symbolic action" has application to magic, don't you think? I recall a book on satire by Robert C. Elliott that made the case that the whole genre grew out of the formulae for putting curses on people. That always struck me as an argument Burke would have appreciated. Scott McLemee From VM Thu Sep 28 15:40:02 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 15:40:02 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) From: "Stromberg, Ernest L" Subject: Re: Incantation Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 65 James and Jeff: Many thanks for the tips. Ernie -- Stromberg, Ernest L strombel@jmu.edu From VM Thu Sep 28 15:37:01 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 15:37:01 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Incantation Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 66 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0004_01C02961.F1B659C0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In Burke's earlier works, (i cannot give you a citation, but i think it's featured in discussion of science and magic in RM), and I believe as a part of his New York Public Library self-education, Sir George Fraser's book on magic and kingship is cited. These are important references to me because I think KB STUDIED the likes of Fraser, Santayana, et al. who were part of his self-education, whereas he READ later books. This is a projection on my part as I'm trying to rethink my own thinking in positive ways. The "older me" has a bad habit of repeating himself when he does his daily writing, and I see that WHAT I repeat almost always comes from (a) books/essays I went over carefully more than once (STUDIED) and (b) books/essays that angered me to the point of developing a "canned" and all-too-baleful response. (see KB on McLuhan for an example of his witty anger) All this is a too-long reason for paying especially close attention to the Fraser book if you're taking up the subject of Burke on magic. BTW -- I think that in RofR KB treats religion and magic as differing forms of one another. michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Stromberg, Ernest L Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 2:40 PM To: James Comas Cc: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Re: Incantation James and Jeff: Many thanks for the tips. 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KB's publisher decided it would not sell enough copies, and many of his friends considered it to be the "weakest" of the three books of the trilogy. I think it should be published posthumously by his estate, but my opinion will not weigh heavily in that quarter. Logology was thus a new project, except that there were no "new projects" in such situations for KB. As earlier in P&C, when he regarded his attempt to revive "rhetoric" as a failure, he switched to "linguistic," and when his 1937 adventure into literature and politics resulted in his becoming a target of former friends he switched from "people" back to "rhetoric" and then even to "philosophy (of literary form)," KB regarded his technical terminology as disposable. I think this is one trait that marks him as a rhetorician in the communication sense as opposed to rhetorician in the literary sense. michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Leslie Bruder Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 12:06 PM To: 'kb@purdue.edu' Subject: The Cobbler's Gone Fishing James Comas responded this morning: "In the tradition of Burke's trout, surfacing for the bait, I'll respond: Michael's "reductionist" dichotomy appears to be grounded in a conflation of KB's concept of logology and JD's concept of logocentrism. If so, is this conflation warranted? Go fish." I've been curious about the third book in the series, The Grammar of Motives, The Rhetoric of Motives and the missing third promised in both the previous books, The Symbolic of Motives. Did this book become The Rhetoric of Religion where Kenneth Burke discusses logology? Or is The Symbolic of Motives a work or interest promised but never followed up on? Logology. Definition given on a Bradley University Home Page "Burke's later effort to discover motivational systems and orientations through the examination of words about God/gods/religion. A second "critical metaphor" (after dramatism). The source of this study is theology." This definition seems vastly inadequate but it does point to the possibility that Burke shifted from providing a symbolic of motives to examining theology and religion as symbolic systems and delving into the rhetoricity of such symbols. Should logology turn out to be the study of symbols and symbol systems simply then logology and logocentrism are not the same thing, and perhaps they are not even opposites. While Derrida was critiquing the west's reliance on the logos as a metaphysics of presence that privileges the visual and insists that the visual is the present rather than simply the perceived and fleeting, Burke seems to be simply examing symbol systems, both visual and aural, positive and negative, and he only incidentally criticizes the philosophic schools and idealogies showing how they are, as sets of terminologies, various ratios of the five (or six) pentadic (hexadic) terms of Dramatism. Questions: What happened to the Symbolic of Motives? Which works (by Burke) delve deeply into "Logology"? Leslie ------=_NextPart_000_000B_01C02963.848CE060 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAw OTI4MjA0ODE2WjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUP4k2gLhnUK1F4BnPH+iI/xlkYGUwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABECH8NMyenchujk1w1EyfkTZaAVRrScfuw5OCh/ce7xdZtoTfUTE k4oxdi6GBP5DdyRx8fbYRQ0yrkc9BGnr7MnbAAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_000B_01C02963.848CE060-- From VM Thu Sep 28 16:09:43 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 16:09:43 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: The Missing "Symbolic of Rhetoric" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 68 Thanks James for the sound threads on Logology. I'll run them down. Kenneth Burke seems to avoid Jacques Derrida's critique of Western Metaphysics with this notion of logology as "words about words" in that he doesn't try to use words to refer to something (anything) transcendent or beyond words, something supposedly present, but only for the likes of a Plato or Saul of Tarsus. If KB from time to time waxes mystic at least he doesn't try to emmancipate himself from language. But this leaves open a question: if the sublime is what leaves one speechless then is the sublime something necessarily transcendent or would Jacques Derrida point out, as I think he would (?), that we are speechless only because we "haven't yet" found the words to describe the phenomenon? If the latter case is true or plausible then can we conclude that "everything" (and we can't know what all is contained in that scare-quoted word--that "scarecrow") can be described in words, if not today then at least someday? On second thought, Derrida would not say this. It seems that the acid bath of analysis or deconstruction will always reveal holes and inconsistencies in our text(s), and that we "mean" both more and less than what we say (write). It seems that the only things we can be positive about is how someone used words. We're back to Immanuel Kant's criticism of Aristotelian Substance the existence of which we can never know. We can't even know that it doesn't exist. I wonder if that also means that Burke's notion of consubstantiality (that we can share in the same substance), or his notion of a "democratic substance" which identifies Americans with each other, is untrue? In the fragment of your earlier post (12:39 pm central time) which I quote below, you seem to suggest that the three-part "motivorum" project was scrapped after part-two and displaced by the "four realms of words." That leaves me slightly disappointed because I was looking forward to The Symbolic of Rhetoric. But I suppose what he would have written there was simply rearranged in subsequent works. > [On the third of the four realms of words] Third, there are words about words. > Here is the realm of dictionaries, grammar, etymology, philology, literary > criticism, rhetoric, poetics, dialectics--all that I like to think of as > coming to a head in the discipline I would want to call "Logology." (14) [I'm interested in how this "four realms of words" approach displaces the earlier three-part "motivorum" project.] One last note: if things are signs of words (a nice reversal of how we usually think) then we should be able to discover or talk about the rhetoricity of things, for example, a glass of milk on a counter or the scarecrow dummy owls on the roof of the Scotish Rites Temple. Before these became things they were intentions and purposes. It seems there is a lot more to read than just books. Everything "seems". Is that just me, the way I think, or does it appear that way to you too? Later Leslie From VM Thu Sep 28 16:07:52 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 16:07:52 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: "Logology" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 69 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0032_01C02966.3FF815C0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The passages James cites here indicate to me that KB sees logology as the study of logocentrism. JD studies logocentrism, too. I think it would be decisive for me in declaring KB "postmodern" if I came to believe that their motives were the same, which is to say that logocentrism is a bad thing that we ought to rethink and replace; that logology, in other words, was a new science (geisteswiessenschaft) with a built-in self-destruct device such as the one that destroyed plot-setting audio tapes in the old television series Mission Impossible. It would be equally decisive if I came to believe that their motives differed to the extent that Burke regarded logology as a science that justified local criticisms of issues/problems that can be analyzed and responded to because of a techne of some sort. KB would only be "poststructural," definitely a "late modern," a "liberal," and a weapons manufacturer in the continuing war against scientism. michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of James Comas Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 12:45 PM To: Leslie Bruder; 'kb@purdue.edu' Subject: "Logology" Regarding Burke's concept of "logology," here are a few passages from _The Rhetoric of Religion_ that I happen to have at hand: > If we define "theology" as "words about God," then by "logology" we should > mean "words about words." Whereupon, thoughts on the necessarily verbal nature > of religious doctrines suggest a further possibility: that there might be > fruitful analogies between the two realms. (1) > Our purpose is simply to ask how theological principles can be shown to have > usable secular analogues that throw light upon the nature of language. (2) > Formally, the investigation heads in an attempt to study the point at which > narrative forms and logical forms merge (or begin to diverge!), the exquisite > point of differentiation between purely temporal and purely logical principles > of "priority," an overlap that comes to a theological focus in the shifts > between God as *logical* ground of all *moral* sanctions and God as originator > of the *natural, temporal* order. (4) [This, I think, would provide an interesting entrance into a comparison with Lyotard's concept of metanarrative and, thus, his thinking on postmodernism.] > [On the third of the four realms of words] Third, there are words about words. > Here is the realm of dictionaries, grammar, etymology, philology, literary > criticism, rhetoric, poetics, dialectics--all that I like to think of as > coming to a head in the discipline I would want to call "Logology." (14) [I'm interested in how this "four realms of words" approach displaces the earlier three-part "motivorum" project.] > [On Logology as a discipline] . . . there is a technical sense in which all > specialization can be treated as radiating from a Logological center. Logology > could properly be called central, and all other studies could be said to > "radiate" from it, in the sense that all -ologies and -ographies are guided by > the verbal. They are all special idioms (in the special fields of the physical > sciences, the social sciences and the humanities). Finally, the title of Burke's book indicates that he regarded "the rhetoric of religion" as a "stud[y] in logology." Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- ------=_NextPart_000_0032_01C02966.3FF815C0 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAw OTI4MjEwNzUwWjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQU+cEMsum6szqbPM7fCNna+SH5upgwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEB0nQBKXm0RMa4/5Edl/5vRnB9IpJGzsMLuPl2x5/fkgNfCyac7 CxypB85FibGkK1fCVabcoPnJ67PW/wTbO4oUAAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_0032_01C02966.3FF815C0-- From VM Thu Sep 28 16:19:45 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 16:19:45 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: The Missing "Symbolic of Rhetoric" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 70 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0039_01C02967.E988C980 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In comparing JD and KB, and KB and J-JL, let's keep in mind that the LAST of KB's relevant works was published in 1960, while the FIRST of JD's relevant works was published in English in 1974. Lyotard came even later to the English-speaking intellectual world. My point: It makes some sense to hold JD and J-JL "responsible" for not "replying" to KB, but no sense at all vice versa. While these IDEAS are in conversation, their authors were not. And the decision to arrange the ideas ex nihilo is absolutely crucial, a commitment to metaphysics of the most dangerous sort. Ideas have consequences, yes, but ideas are usually "in the air," creatures of context as much as (maybe more than) creatures of text. michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Leslie Bruder Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 4:10 PM To: 'comasJ@missouri.edu'; 'kb@purdue.edu' Subject: The Missing "Symbolic of Rhetoric" Thanks James for the sound threads on Logology. I'll run them down. Kenneth Burke seems to avoid Jacques Derrida's critique of Western Metaphysics with this notion of logology as "words about words" in that he doesn't try to use words to refer to something (anything) transcendent or beyond words, something supposedly present, but only for the likes of a Plato or Saul of Tarsus. If KB from time to time waxes mystic at least he doesn't try to emmancipate himself from language. But this leaves open a question: if the sublime is what leaves one speechless then is the sublime something necessarily transcendent or would Jacques Derrida point out, as I think he would (?), that we are speechless only because we "haven't yet" found the words to describe the phenomenon? If the latter case is true or plausible then can we conclude that "everything" (and we can't know what all is contained in that scare-quoted word--that "scarecrow") can be described in words, if not today then at least someday? On second thought, Derrida would not say this. It seems that the acid bath of analysis or deconstruction will always reveal holes and inconsistencies in our text(s), and that we "mean" both more and less than what we say (write). It seems that the only things we can be positive about is how someone used words. We're back to Immanuel Kant's criticism of Aristotelian Substance the existence of which we can never know. We can't even know that it doesn't exist. I wonder if that also means that Burke's notion of consubstantiality (that we can share in the same substance), or his notion of a "democratic substance" which identifies Americans with each other, is untrue? In the fragment of your earlier post (12:39 pm central time) which I quote below, you seem to suggest that the three-part "motivorum" project was scrapped after part-two and displaced by the "four realms of words." That leaves me slightly disappointed because I was looking forward to The Symbolic of Rhetoric. But I suppose what he would have written there was simply rearranged in subsequent works. > [On the third of the four realms of words] Third, there are words about words. > Here is the realm of dictionaries, grammar, etymology, philology, literary > criticism, rhetoric, poetics, dialectics--all that I like to think of as > coming to a head in the discipline I would want to call "Logology." (14) [I'm interested in how this "four realms of words" approach displaces the earlier three-part "motivorum" project.] One last note: if things are signs of words (a nice reversal of how we usually think) then we should be able to discover or talk about the rhetoricity of things, for example, a glass of milk on a counter or the scarecrow dummy owls on the roof of the Scotish Rites Temple. Before these became things they were intentions and purposes. It seems there is a lot more to read than just books. Everything "seems". Is that just me, the way I think, or does it appear that way to you too? Later Leslie ------=_NextPart_000_0039_01C02967.E988C980 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAw OTI4MjExOTQ0WjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUA7wlAwUCQ/HVA6yP01ydliZy068wMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEAUYiCOD+cxrgaGWZkh0+FIujklqJ/Ed31xTGpg+VNoJtGL/i3I cjTmEMQkeTmnSbQvNDqhUZjWgeHDwysrwswuAAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_0039_01C02967.E988C980-- From VM Thu Sep 28 15:41:13 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 15:41:13 -0600 (MDT) From: Turpin Paul Subject: Re: Incantation Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 71 I just finished using "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'" in my social movements class. Burke 'names' Hitler as a "medicine man," and plays out the various connotations of healer/sorcerer. On the religious/magic connection, Burke talks about National Socialism as a corruption of the religious impulse. Paul Turpin +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ Visiting Instructor, Dept. of Communication University of Colorado, Boulder web: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~turpin/Home.html From VM Thu Sep 28 16:58:20 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 16:58:20 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: The Cobbler Gone Fishing Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 72 Leslie asks: Questions: What happened to the Symbolic of Motives? Which works (by Burke) delve deeply into "Logology"? The Symbolic of Motives was never published in book form, as Burke often indicated he would. In Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations, Rueckert lists the thirty-four essays (pp. 288-290) he believes actually constitute that "book" if someone were to publish it as such. Rueckert says, "Note that twenty-one of the thirty-four items have never been collected and that the majority of these are work of the 1950's" (p. 288), a period of prolific output on Burke's part, during which he actually fashioned his logological approach to the philosophy of language and to criticism, and, if Rueckert is correct, substantially fulfilled his promise to write a "Symbolic." The Rhetoric of Religion (1961) is the book that most fully advances the main ideas that constitute Burkean "logology": the theological paradigm as central for the study of symbol systems in general, language as motive in and of itself, the negative, the motive of perfection, the terms implicit in the idea of order. Other writings preview Burke's logological emphasis, however, including such essays as the four QJS pieces on the negative (1953-1953) and the essay on "Human Behavior" in the second edition of P&C (1954). Later works and essays build on the logological foundations established in RR, like Dramatism and Development (1972) and the "Helhavan" texts (1971, 1974). Burke defines "logology" in general as the study of words as such, the study of the way language presents the world to human beings, tracking down the implications of words in terms of the way in which they do our thinking for us, study of the way humans view the world through the lens of language, particurly the way the positives of nature are seen through the eyes of moral negativity (RR). Most specifically, as Leslie has already indicated, Burke defines logology as, "The systematic study of theological terms . . . for the light they might throw upon the Forms of language" (LASA, p. 47). I see "logology" not as a radical departure from "dramatism," but rather as a natural fulfillment of the implications in dramatism, such as those found in GM, where Burke relates "purpose" to the negative, the ethical, and the totality of things, and those found in P&C, which bubbles over with the ethical nuances of language use in general. Ed Ed From VM Thu Sep 28 16:49:56 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 16:49:56 -0500 From: "David Blakesley" Subject: FW: The Missing "Symbolic of Rhetoric" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 73 Now seems like an opportune time to mention that a substantial portion of what would have been KB's _Symbolic of Motives_ will appear in Greig Henderson and David Cratis Williams's forthcoming _Unending Conversations: New Writings by and about Kenneth Burke_, to be published as the next installment in the Rhetorical Philosophy and Theory series with Southern Illinois UP, January 2001. FYI, here's what's included of KB's: "Watchful of Hermetics to be Strong in Hermeneutics": Selections from _Poetics, Dramatistically Considered_ "'Poetic,' 'Aesthetic,' and 'Artistic'" "Logic of the Terms" "Form" "Beyond Catharsis" "Platonic Transcendence" "Glimpses Into a Labyrinth of Interwoven Motives": Selections from _A Symbolic of Motives_" from "Imitation (Mimeesis)" "Individuation and Amplification" "The Language of 'Thisness'" "General and Particular" "'Concrete' Words Are Abbreviations for Situations" "'Universalizing' a Plot" "Generalized Outline of _Mrs. Dalloway_" "Problem of Literary Genera" "'Poetic Effect,' as a Critical Postulate" There is an additional chunk of unpublished work that we're hoping to round up for a subsequent volume. Dave From VM Thu Sep 28 16:54:49 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 16:54:49 -0500 From: "Huglen, Mark" Subject: Hello Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 74 This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. ------_=_NextPart_001_01C02996.BE591EDE Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" In the chapter "Kenneth Burke and Jacques Derrida," within the book _Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought: Rhetoric in Transition_, edited by Bernard Brock, James Chesebro provides some interesting contrasts between the two in regard to logology and logecentrism. One particular section within that chapter called "Burke and Derrida: A Study in Contrasting Orientations toward Symbol-Using" seems to be helpful at this juncture of the discussion (p. 177-178): Clearly, for Burke the quest is to elevate the status of a symbol, tranforming symbol-using into, and equating it to, other kinds of self-motivating and independent human activities. In proposing this conception, Burke would intentionally release the full power of symbols as self-motivating actions, ultimately holding that symbols should function as actions that are equal to, if not greater, in their influence than other kinds of human actions. In this view, a symbolic orientation is the culmination of an evolutionary process in which the human being has moved from employing language to designate "primitive positives" in reality to the use of "Pure Negatives," devoid of any materiality. Accordingly, Burke embraces logology, and he outlines methods that promote a definition of human being as a logologist. In contrast, Derrida rejects a logocentric theory of human communication, believing such an approach is antithetical to the grammatological program he would posit. For Derrida, human beings have become trapped by their own language, in both its written and its oral forms. Derrida denies that language now has any relation to reality. Reflecting a perspective held by some American critics, Derrida holds that human beings now exist within a socially constructed world of symbolic fantasies, fictions, and narratives, in which all language has become self-reflective and ideological. Rather than celebrating the creativeness of these humanly constructed symbolic enclaves, Derrida has cast these constructions as "rhetorical fabrications" that undermine a dynamic and open relation among sign (language), signified (reality), and signifiers (human beings) (_Margins_, 209-71). Derrida has outlined critical methods designed to achieve this end. Chesebro, p. 177-178 In considering the two views of Burke's logology and Derrida's logocentrism, my personal feeling is that Burke enters the particular enclave with more of an attitude of compassionate critical analysis, whereas I get the feeling that Derrida's becomes a "dead end street." In other words, if for Derrida "logocentrism" is nothing more than a powerful "ethnocentrism," so to speak, then so what is going to take its place? I think that both Burke and Derrida would see our world as socially constructed, filled with symbolic fantasies, rhetorical fictions, visions, and narratives, and that are reflective, deflective, and ideological. But, ok, and like playing a game of poker we see the reality/bluff of the situation; so what's the next step? Do we raise it a nickel and try to keep playing? And what game are we playing-towards a better life? Or what game is playing us? . . . as we live in the world. In terms of "fishing," we might take into account that during Burke's discussion of the idea that even "fish can be critics" was at a period of his life that some have labeled "critical realism," whereas his development of logology in _The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology_ occurred much later in his career, and after evolutionary shifts in orientation and thinking. Sometimes our "complicity" with what "seems" is more valuable than other. Mark Huglen ------_=_NextPart_001_01C02996.BE591EDE Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

In the chapter "Kenneth Burke and Jacques Derrida," within the = book _Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought:  Rhetoric in Transition_, edited by Bernard Brock, = James Chesebro provides some interesting contrasts between the two in regard = to logology and logecentrism.

 

One particular section within that chapter called "Burke and = Derrida:  A Study in Contrasting = Orientations toward Symbol-Using" seems to be helpful at this juncture of the discussion (p. 177-178):

 

Clearly, for Burke the quest is to elevate = the status of a symbol, tranforming symbol-using into, and equating it to, other = kinds of self-motivating and independent human activities.  In proposing this conception, Burke would = intentionally release the full power of symbols as self-motivating actions, = ultimately holding that symbols should function as actions that are equal to, if = not greater, in their influence than other kinds of human actions.  In this view, a symbolic = orientation is the culmination of an evolutionary process in which the human being has = moved from employing language to designate "primitive positives" in = reality to the use of "Pure Negatives," devoid of any = materiality.  Accordingly, Burke embraces = logology, and he outlines methods that promote a definition of human being as a logologist.

 

In contrast, Derrida rejects a = logocentric theory of human communication, believing such an approach is = antithetical to the grammatological program he would posit.  For Derrida, human beings have become trapped by = their own language, in both its written and its oral forms.  Derrida denies that language now has any relation to reality.  Reflecting a = perspective held by some American critics, Derrida holds that human beings now = exist within a socially constructed world of symbolic fantasies, fictions, and = narratives, in which all language has become self-reflective and ideological.  Rather than celebrating the creativeness of these humanly constructed symbolic enclaves, Derrida = has cast these constructions as "rhetorical fabrications" that = undermine a dynamic and open relation among sign (language), signified (reality), = and signifiers (human beings) (_Margins_, 209-71).  Derrida has outlined critical methods designed to = achieve this end.  Chesebro, p. = 177-178

 

In considering the two views of Burke’s logology and Derrida’s = logocentrism, my personal feeling is that Burke enters the particular enclave with more = of an attitude of compassionate critical analysis, whereas I get the feeling = that Derrida’s becomes a “dead end street.”  In other words, if for Derrida “logocentrism” is = nothing more than a powerful “ethnocentrism,” so to speak, then so what is = going to take its place?

 

I think that both Burke and Derrida would see our world as socially = constructed, filled with symbolic fantasies, rhetorical fictions, visions, and = narratives, and that are reflective, deflective, and ideological.  But, ok, and like playing a game of poker we see the reality/bluff of the situation; so what’s the next step?  Do we raise it a nickel and = try to keep playing?  And what game = are we playing—towards a better life?&n= bsp; Or what game is playing us? . . . as we live in the = world.

 

In terms of “fishing,” we might take into account that during = Burke’s discussion of the idea that even “fish can be critics” was at a period = of his life that some have labeled “critical realism,” whereas his = development of logology in _The Rhetoric of Religion:  Studies in Logology_ occurred much later = in his career, and after evolutionary shifts in orientation and = thinking.

 

Sometimes our “complicity” with what “seems” is more = valuable than other.

 

Mark Huglen

 

------_=_NextPart_001_01C02996.BE591EDE-- From VM Fri Sep 29 00:05:58 2000 Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 00:05:58 -0400 From: "Camille K. Lewis" Subject: Performance Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 75 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0013_01C029A9.0C6A9FA0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Okay Burklers – We’ve talked about introducing KB to undergraduate rhetorical *criticism* classes, but I’m wondering if I may pick your brain on another related topic. Could you all recommend a KB text for an MA-level graduate class on performance and praxis? We could go round-and-round that criticism *is* praxis – an argument with which I whole-heartedly agree. But I’m more interested in taking a more performance emphasis here. Whatcha think? Thanks. Camille K. Lewis ------=_NextPart_000_0013_01C029A9.0C6A9FA0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Okay Burklers – We’ve = talked about introducing KB to undergraduate rhetorical *criticism* classes, but I’m wondering if I may pick your brain on another = related topic.

 

Co= uld you all recommend a KB text for an MA-level graduate class on performance = and praxis?  We could go round-and-round that criticism *is* praxis – an argument with which I whole-heartedly agree.  But I’m more interested = in taking a more performance emphasis here.

 

Wh= atcha think?

 

Th= anks.

 

Ca= mille K. Lewis

------=_NextPart_000_0013_01C029A9.0C6A9FA0-- From VM Thu Sep 28 23:49:46 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 23:49:46 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Hello Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 76 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0095_01C029A6.C7CD3BC0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit An interesting debate can occur now, I think, comparing two specifics, JD and KB, with "articles of faith" for the moment suspended. I will style this as a debate, not with any particular feeling even of partisanship toward "my side" expressed here, but with an eye to setting some issues. By living so long, KB was by 1960 a "fish out of water," so to speak, a man so completely out of his context as to be devoid of some understandings that are fundamental to thinking about logology and logocentrism. During his Iowa visit (early '80's), the icon I remember is Burke leaning on his cane looking up at a TV monitor (he had never before been videotaped in interview) while a camera was on him, so that you got an infinite regression on the screen of Burke looking at Burke looking at Burke . . . His comment: "Well I'll be damned," a shake of the head. He had to be physically moved along to get his attention away from the marvel, which he confided to me later he took to be a dream, nightmare. What I see here is an understanding of the mechanism by which logocentrism had been created, but not an understanding of the consequences of logocentrism. JD's project, then, is fundamentally different from KB's, as it is aimed at *consequences.* Among the issues we need to take seriously, Mark and others, is the possibility that the human race may very well be on a "dead end street" where there is nowhere to go. We may be not only at the end of philosophy, but even at the end of letters, of "learning" as that has been practiced through the ages. KB does not consider this possibility (unless one takes a particularly troubling angle on his dialogue with the devil at the end of RofR). Another issue is that finding alternatives to logocentrism is precisely the task of this and the next generation of thinkers, thinkers who must stand with one foot on a KB shoulder and another on a JD shoulder to ask foursquare "where do we go from here"? J-JL gets into the debate with the notion of gaming, and Mark is dead on right in saying that the issue there is deciding what stakes are on the table, what we are playing for. Procedurally, methodologically, the question that interests me most right now is how we go about conflating these ideas (assuming that at least some of you agree this is a game worth the candle). Preserving logology, making of it a human science, would require some major deconstructions, not the least of which is of rhetoric itself (well begun by Jasinski, Schiappa, Wess, the Poulakos brothers, Biesecker et al.). I think what we mean by history must be rethought as well, perhaps along the lines of Zizek and his "quilting." But I get too specific for this point in the dialogue. Just leave it open "Is it good to conflate logology and logocentrism, and how much deconstruction will that project entail?" michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Huglen, Mark Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 4:55 PM To: 'kb@purdue.edu' Subject: Hello In the chapter "Kenneth Burke and Jacques Derrida," within the book _Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought: Rhetoric in Transition_, edited by Bernard Brock, James Chesebro provides some interesting contrasts between the two in regard to logology and logecentrism. One particular section within that chapter called "Burke and Derrida: A Study in Contrasting Orientations toward Symbol-Using" seems to be helpful at this juncture of the discussion (p. 177-178): Clearly, for Burke the quest is to elevate the status of a symbol, tranforming symbol-using into, and equating it to, other kinds of self-motivating and independent human activities. In proposing this conception, Burke would intentionally release the full power of symbols as self-motivating actions, ultimately holding that symbols should function as actions that are equal to, if not greater, in their influence than other kinds of human actions. In this view, a symbolic orientation is the culmination of an evolutionary process in which the human being has moved from employing language to designate "primitive positives" in reality to the use of "Pure Negatives," devoid of any materiality. Accordingly, Burke embraces logology, and he outlines methods that promote a definition of human being as a logologist. In contrast, Derrida rejects a logocentric theory of human communication, believing such an approach is antithetical to the grammatological program he would posit. For Derrida, human beings have become trapped by their own language, in both its written and its oral forms. Derrida denies that language now has any relation to reality. Reflecting a perspective held by some American critics, Derrida holds that human beings now exist within a socially constructed world of symbolic fantasies, fictions, and narratives, in which all language has become self-reflective and ideological. Rather than celebrating the creativeness of these humanly constructed symbolic enclaves, Derrida has cast these constructions as "rhetorical fabrications" that undermine a dynamic and open relation among sign (language), signified (reality), and signifiers (human beings) (_Margins_, 209-71). Derrida has outlined critical methods designed to achieve this end. Chesebro, p. 177-178 In considering the two views of Burke’s logology and Derrida’s logocentrism, my personal feeling is that Burke enters the particular enclave with more of an attitude of compassionate critical analysis, whereas I get the feeling that Derrida’s becomes a “dead end street.” In other words, if for Derrida “logocentrism” is nothing more than a powerful “ethnocentrism,” so to speak, then so what is going to take its place? I think that both Burke and Derrida would see our world as socially constructed, filled with symbolic fantasies, rhetorical fictions, visions, and narratives, and that are reflective, deflective, and ideological. But, ok, and like playing a game of poker we see the reality/bluff of the situation; so what’s the next step? Do we raise it a nickel and try to keep playing? And what game are we playing—towards a better life? Or what game is playing us? . . . as we live in the world. In terms of “fishing,” we might take into account that during Burke’s discussion of the idea that even “fish can be critics” was at a period of his life that some have labeled “critical realism,” whereas his development of logology in _The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology_ occurred much later in his career, and after evolutionary shifts in orientation and thinking. Sometimes our “complicity” with what “seems” is more valuable than other. Mark Huglen ------=_NextPart_000_0095_01C029A6.C7CD3BC0 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAw OTI5MDQ0OTQ1WjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUY2CwamltSJvdyMp8oNpE0DLuydIwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABECSicjOH9Lshu54jT4cN36RF+HJ1hjFLWwMr1UOvgKFTW9kFM18 AhWEDB+8hVF1Wcz2flRGBrR7iEN4IkssYvq0AAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_0095_01C029A6.C7CD3BC0-- From VM Thu Sep 28 23:59:02 2000 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 23:59:02 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Hello Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 77 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_00CD_01C029A8.12D0EB20 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Pardon the double-posting. Seems to have been a problem with my VeriSign authenticator in the first transmission. An interesting debate can occur now, I think, comparing two specifics, JD and KB, with "articles of faith" for the moment suspended. I will style this as a debate, not with any particular feeling even of partisanship toward "my side" expressed here, but with an eye to setting some issues. By living so long, KB was by 1960 a "fish out of water," so to speak, a man so completely out of his context as to be devoid of some understandings that are fundamental to thinking about logology and logocentrism. During his Iowa visit (early '80's), the icon I remember is Burke leaning on his cane looking up at a TV monitor (he had never before been videotaped in interview) while a camera was on him, so that you got an infinite regression on the screen of Burke looking at Burke looking at Burke . . . His comment: "Well I'll be damned," a shake of the head. He had to be physically moved along to get his attention away from the marvel, which he confided to me later he took to be a dream, nightmare. What I see here is an understanding of the mechanism by which logocentrism had been created, but not an understanding of the consequences of logocentrism. JD's project, then, is fundamentally different from KB's, as it is aimed at *consequences.* Among the issues we need to take seriously, Mark and others, is the possibility that the human race may very well be on a "dead end street" where there is nowhere to go. We may be not only at the end of philosophy, but even at the end of letters, of "learning" as that has been practiced through the ages. KB does not consider this possibility (unless one takes a particularly troubling angle on his dialogue with the devil at the end of RofR). Another issue is that finding alternatives to logocentrism is precisely the task of this and the next generation of thinkers, thinkers who must stand with one foot on a KB shoulder and another on a JD shoulder to ask foursquare "where do we go from here"? J-JL gets into the debate with the notion of gaming, and Mark is dead on right in saying that the issue there is deciding what stakes are on the table, what we are playing for. Procedurally, methodologically, the question that interests me most right now is how we go about conflating these ideas (assuming that at least some of you agree this is a game worth the candle). Preserving logology, making of it a human science, would require some major deconstructions, not the least of which is of rhetoric itself (well begun by Jasinski, Schiappa, Wess, the Poulakos brothers, Biesecker et al.). I think what we mean by history must be rethought as well, perhaps along the lines of Zizek and his "quilting." But I get too specific for this point in the dialogue. Just leave it open "Is it good to conflate logology and logocentrism, and how much deconstruction will that project entail?" michael Michael Calvin McGee 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, Iowa 52241 fax:319-338-1796 voice: 319-338-8214 mailto:michael@mcgees.net http://www.mcgees.net/fragments "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin ------=_NextPart_000_00CD_01C029A8.12D0EB20 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAw OTI5MDQ1OTAxWjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQU1L66IMVp6n0M6qww7y8f+Mues5kwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEARnIsXxhqkMw/kJsPeqoau3cocWAe7BFFxyZmJSoCivXga9tQc x5uhDGhIFzbMlSgtavc6CfpFldrxCQIKGprxAAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_00CD_01C029A8.12D0EB20-- From VM Fri Sep 29 09:37:30 2000 Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 09:37:30 -0400 (EDT) From: David Langston Subject: Burke and Derrida Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 78 This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info. ------_=_NextPart_001_01C02996.BE591EDE Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=iso-8859-1 Content-ID: On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Huglen, Mark wrote: > In this view, a symbolic orientation is the > culmination of an evolutionary process in which the human being has moved > from employing language to designate "primitive positives" in reality to the > use of "Pure Negatives," devoid of any materiality. Accordingly, Burke > embraces logology, and he outlines methods that promote a definition of > human being as a logologist. > > In contrast, Derrida rejects a logocentric theory of human communication, > believing such an approach is antithetical to the grammatological program he > would posit. For Derrida, human beings have become trapped by their own > language, in both its written and its oral forms. Derrida denies that > language now has any relation to reality. I have not read James Chesebro's essay, although now I clearly must. But in anticipation of looking over that argument, it may be worth noting that I don't recognize either Burke or Derrida in the preceding description. The missing ingredient is "action." The notion that negativity is devoid of "materialiality" (whatever that might mean) seems far from obvious, and the suggestion that Derrida denies any relation between language and "reality" (which, I trust, does not reduce to "materiality") seems similarly well wide of the mark. But we will see... David Langston ------_=_NextPart_001_01C02996.BE591EDE-- From VM Fri Sep 29 09:16:16 2000 Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 09:16:16 -0500 From: "Huglen, Mark" Subject: RE: Burke and Derrida Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 79 Quickly, just a couple of things: I see clearly that formatting is lost at times as our texts move through these electronic systems, and that certain e-mail programs automatically "mark" who wrote such and such text. Which is probably obvious to most but perhaps not all is that the two paragraphs below are James Chesebro's words--from pages 177-178, "Kenneth Burke and Jacques Derrida" in _Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought: Rhetoric in Transition_. -----Original Message----- From: David Langston [mailto:dlangsto@mcla.mass.edu] Sent: Friday, September 29, 2000 8:38 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Burke and Derrida On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Huglen, Mark wrote: > In this view, a symbolic orientation is the > culmination of an evolutionary process in which the human being has moved > from employing language to designate "primitive positives" in reality to the > use of "Pure Negatives," devoid of any materiality. Accordingly, Burke > embraces logology, and he outlines methods that promote a definition of > human being as a logologist. > > In contrast, Derrida rejects a logocentric theory of human communication, > believing such an approach is antithetical to the grammatological program he > would posit. For Derrida, human beings have become trapped by their own > language, in both its written and its oral forms. Derrida denies that > language now has any relation to reality. I have not read James Chesebro's essay, although now I clearly must. But in anticipation of looking over that argument, it may be worth noting that I don't recognize either Burke or Derrida in the preceding description. The missing ingredient is "action." The notion that negativity is devoid of "materialiality" (whatever that might mean) seems far from obvious, and the suggestion that Derrida denies any relation between language and "reality" (which, I trust, does not reduce to "materiality") seems similarly well wide of the mark. But we will see... David Langston From VM Fri Sep 29 10:34:37 2000 Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 10:34:37 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: "Something Akin" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 80 In response to Jim Comas's post of September 24, I made the comment that I was passing it by for the time being because "I can't walk and chew gum at the same time." I was in the midst of my four-part screed on the topic headlined above. I want to say now, though, that I regard what he said as well-taken and appropriately cautionary in respect to characterizing the thought of a given philosopher or philosophic school. This part of Jim's message is particularly apt and "Burkean": So, where have we seen this "postmodernism"? It *is* "something akin." It is, I think, a phantom of our own intellectual culture, a culture that too much values the simplicity of opposition and controversy. This phantom appears whenever someone finds it easier or derives some benefit from thinking in oppositions (and we all know how important this dynamic can be in establishing one's career). The common result is, at best, a neglect of the complexities of people grappling with their experience of the world and, at worst, the facile dismissal of other minds. Touche. Jim describes the "entelechial" dimensions of symbolic action at work, the inclination to paint with an invidiously broad brush the posture of our opponents, especially. It happens in academe and it is so endemic to political discourse, a nuanced debate style by one candidate in an election would look like political suicide to his or her allies. Jim was especially referring to the Harvard professor's designation of the "Postmodernists" as uniformly "arrogant" and "dismissive." He had in mind also, I do think, the broad-brush treatment I was giving to the Postmodernist philosophy of language in general. He called what I had to say "accurate" with repect to some, but not all, of these thinkers. I will not take issue with his demurrers. Language necessarily paints with a "broad brush" even on the lexical level, a platitude in dramatism. That inherent weakness becomes exponentially stronger on the level of discourse, without careful "discounting," "dialectic," "testing and discussion" in some spirit of good will. Ed From VM Sat Sep 30 11:26:22 2000 Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 11:26:22 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: Logology & Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 81 On 9/28/00 11:59 PM, Michael Calvin McGee at michael@mcgees.net posted the following: > Just leave it open "Is it good to conflate logology and > logocentrism, and how much deconstruction will that project entail?" Since I posted some passages from _The Rhetoric of Religion_ where Burke discusses what he means by the term "logology," let me post a passage from _Of Grammatology_ where Derrida discusses what he means by "logocentrism." This passage is from the book's "Exergue"; so what we are reading is Derrida's effort at introducing this neologism to his readers: > *logocentrism*: the metaphysics of phonetic writing (for example, of the > alphabet) which was fundamentally--for enigmatic yet essential reasons that > are inaccessible to a simple historical relativism--nothing but the most > original and powerful ethnocentrism, in the process of imposing itself upon > the world, controlling in one and the same *order*: > > 1. *the concept of writing* in a world where the phoneticization of writing > must dissimulate its own history as it is produced; > > 2. *the history of (the only) metaphysics*, which has, in spite of all > differences, not only from Plato to Hegel (even including Leibniz) but also, > beyond these apparent limits, from the pre-Socratics to Heidegger, always > assigned the origin of truth in general to the logos: the history of truth, of > the truth of truth, has always been--except for a metaphysical diversion that > we shall have to explain--the debasement of writing, and its repression > outside "full" speech. > > 3. *the concept of science* or the scientificity of science--what has always > been determined as *logic*--a concept that has always been a philosophical > concept, even if the practice of science has constantly challenged its > imperialism of the logos, by invoking, for example, from the beginning and > ever increasingly, nonphonetic writing. No doubt this subversion has always > been contained within a system of direct address which gave birth to the > project of science and to the conventions of all nonphonetic characteristics. > It could not have been otherwise. Nonetheless, it is a peculiarity of our > epoch that, at the moment when the phoneticization of writing--the historical > origin and structural possibility of philosophy as of science, the conditions > of *episteme*--begins to lay hold on world culture, science, in its > advancements, can no longer be satisfied with it. This inadequation had always > already begun to make its presence felt. But today something lets it appear as > such, allows it a kind of takeover without our being able to translate this > novelty into clear cut notions of mutation, explication, accumulation, > revolution, or tradition. These values belong no doubt to the system whose > dislocation is today presented as such, they describe the styles of an > historical movement which was meaningful--like the concept of history > itself--only within a logocentrism epoch. (3-4) A few rudimentary observations of my own: 1. Derrida uses the term *logocentrism* to name an historical condition of Western thought--an epoch of ethnocentrism (a point I like to bring to the attention of those who read Derrida as apolitical). "Logocentrism" names the object of Derrida's inquiry and criticism; or in terms of Derrida's argument, "logocentrism" names what should be the object of contemporary philosophical inquiry. 2. Derrida is more interested in elucidating the object of inquiry than he is in defining his approach because any such definition would be circumscribed by "the concept of science," which in turn is determined by logocentrism. This is why we find Derrida, in the Preface to _Of Grammatology_, so cautious about formulating or adopting a "method." He will talk about his approach, instead, in terms of its results: "I have no ambition to illustrate a new method, I have attempted to produce, often embarrassing myself in the process, the problems of critical reading" (lxxxix). 3. Burke's "logology" does not refer directly to an object of inquiry or criticism, as does Derrida's "logocentrism"; instead, it refers to Burke's project or, even, a discipline that studies words (although, of course, the word *logology* indicates its object of study in the same way that *biology* indicates its object of study while referring to a discipline). The conflation of "logology" and "logocentrism" seems to me a conceptual error. However, I can imagine other lines of inquiry into a possible relationship between the two: 1. On the assumption that Derrida is correct in his characterization of Western thought as "logocentric," should we regard Burke's "logology" as another manifestation of this long tradition or does it manage to breach this tradition? 2. Is there anything in Burke's logological discussions that lead us to question Derrida's historical claim regarding the dominance of logocentrism? Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Sat Sep 30 18:16:05 2000 Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 18:16:05 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Logology & Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 82 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_001E_01C02B0A.7E3BF5E0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thank you, Jim, for the passage from *Of Grammatology.* My problem with the argument, especially your present judgment that conflating logology and logocentrism is a mistake, is that the quoted passage does not support the position you want to occupy in consequence. JComas: "1. Derrida uses the term *logocentrism* to name an historical condition of Western thought--an epoch of ethnocentrism (a point I like to bring to the attention of those who read Derrida as apolitical). "Logocentrism" names the object of Derrida's inquiry and criticism; or in terms of Derrida's argument, "logocentrism" names what should be the object of contemporary philosophical inquiry." MCMcGee: JD writes from the perspective of a totalizing universal *history*. He means that logocentrism is a problem currently, and that it has been a problem since the invention of writing as a technology (see his essay on Plato's "pharmacon"). Logocentrism is only LIKE ethnocentrism -- an analogy is being proposed here. No *particular* "ethno" is in JD's mind, other than the totalized, universalized *history* of the human sciences. In this sense, the term "epoch" makes sense only if we understand the preceding period of orality (before the invention of writing) as an "epoch" and envision a subsequent "epoch" where new technology transforms writing as writing transformed orality. I'm not opposed to this interpretation, but I don't think it's what JD had in mind or what Jim wants to defend. It may be nit-picking, but I think that we must draw an important distinction between "naming the object of inquiry" as JD's rationale for inventing the term "logocentrism" and announcing his intention to *study the consequences* of the object of inquiry. JD has no "constructive case." He writes, and he seems to want, continual expose' of how networks of self-referential signs mask Reality. This is why he can avoid issues of method altogether, because he tries to speak directly about ontic conditions without conceding that these conditions have epistemic "foundations." You cannot re-make a JD into a J-JL no matter how hard you try to find a "politics" in deconstruction. JComas: "2. Derrida is more interested in elucidating the object of inquiry than he is in defining his approach because any such definition would be circumscribed by "the concept of science," which in turn is determined by logocentrism. This is why we find Derrida, in the Preface to _Of Grammatology_, so cautious about formulating or adopting a "method." He will talk about his approach, instead, in terms of its results: "I have no ambition to illustrate a new method, I have attempted to produce, often embarrassing myself in the process, the problems of critical reading" (lxxxix)." MCMcGee I agree. I do want to register a significant demurrer, however: As Jim writes here, it seems that JD is being very specific, an "in the streets" down-to-cases guy. Remember that JD's "object of inquiry" is not a novel written by a talented newcomer, or a presidential speech, but an attitude toward *all of discourse from then until now*. It could be that this is an idea of defining an approach that is not an approach, a methodical non-method. JComas: "3. Burke's "logology" does not refer directly to an object of inquiry or criticism, as does Derrida's "logocentrism"; instead, it refers to Burke's project or, even, a discipline that studies words (although, of course, the word *logology* indicates its object of study in the same way that *biology* indicates its object of study while referring to a discipline)." MCMcGee: This is a most confusing sentence, as the parenthetical ending of it seems directly to contradict the non-parenthetical beginning. KB's "logology" AT LEAST defines an object of inquiry of the same order of magnitude as JD's "logocentrism." The difference is that KB acknowledges a need for method, for discipline, whereas JD attempts to make a non-method method, or to make a virtue of being undisciplined. JComas: The conflation of "logology" and "logocentrism" seems to me a conceptual error. MCMcGee: We may have a misunderstanding here. By "conflation" I mean "read together." I do not mean "integrated." I need some reasons as to what conceptual error there could be in reading the KB corpus and the JD corpus together, perhaps alternating between the two one book per week. JComas: "However, I can imagine other lines of inquiry into a possible relationship between the two: 1. On the assumption that Derrida is correct in his characterization of Western thought as "logocentric," should we regard Burke's "logology" as another manifestation of this long tradition or does it manage to breach this tradition?" For me, the participation of all of discourse, using any technology of communication, self-evidently participates in the network of self-referential, power-coded logocentrism JD refers to. Logology is important because it tells us how it is done and reveals a way to penetrate the network of discourse to the particulars of local, situated human motivation. 2. Is there anything in Burke's logological discussions that lead us to question Derrida's historical claim regarding the dominance of logocentrism? I would love to see some particulars from KB cited here, and I'm sure EAppel can come up with several. I think, however, that nearly every proposition in RofR is on-point with JD's general critique. I think that KB may not be "postmodern," but he is "post-structural" avant la lettre (specifically la lettres of JD). michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph. 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Appel" Subject: Logology and Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 83 Jim Comas asks: On the assumption that Derrida is correct in his characterization of Western thought as "logocentric," should we regard Burke's "logology" as another manifestation of this long tradition or does it manage to breach this tradition? Without contaminating Chesebro's published arguments with a comment of my own, I will simply say that Jim Chesebro claims that logology is, indeed, another manifestation of logocentrism, and that, as a result, it is bad, bad, bad. See QJS, August, 1992, pp. 358-61, where Chesebro says, "Burke provides a logocentric theory of human communication" (p. 358). Chesebro offers three reasons for his jaundiced view of logology's putative "logocentrism." After taking a hit from Phil Tompkins and George Cheney on his forum piece in QJS, Chesebro came back to this theme once more in the February, 1994, issue of the journal (pp. 86-87). Chesebro concludes this section of his essay as follows: "The Burkeian system itself reflects the perceptual understandings of one cultural system: The Burkeian system must be extended if it is to respond to alternative ways in which experiences are understood by others whose symbols are shaped by different kinds of cultural systems" (p. 87). Two months later, however, at the ECA Convention in Washington D. C., Jim was touting a somewhat different approach to Burke studies than merely "extending" them. At a Burke panel there, he said: "Now that he's gone, Burke will be fading from the scene." Now, Jim was my mentor in Burke at Temple University. He was a great teacher of graduate students and a great teacher of undergraduate students (I served as his TA in a course called "Sexual Communication," which dealt with gender and orientation as communication phenomena). He's in my pantheon of the five greatest I've ever had, starting with Miss Hettie Hess, my first-grade teacher at Willow Street Elementary, who was, in our neighborhood, a legend in her own time. Jim's scholarly production has been remarkably prolific and his service to the field of communication almost without equal. To his face and without embarrassment, I once told him he was my hero. I did not experience positive vibes, though, when Jim said publicly that Burke would now be "fading from the scene." (By the way, how many articles and books on Burke have since then come to fruition, or are now "in the works"? Answer: many, many, many.) When, a few issues later, Tompkins answered Chesebro yet again in QJS, I wrote to Phil, applauding him for "standing up to Chesebro," a "giant" in the field as the late Gerald Miller of Michigan State rightly called Jim (At ECA in Baltimore, April, 1988). Tompkins, who was close to Burke, appreciated the support. Without going into the why's and wherefor's, I believe my letter got back to Jim shortly after I sent it to Tompkins (not at all through any devious machinations on Phil's part). Jim has nevertheless remained most kind, cordial, and magnanimous in our relations, for which I thank and admire him. I still hold him in the highest regard. He'll always be in my pantheon. When it comes to Burke's legacy, however, fanatic that I am, I WILL take sides. "Loyal[ty] to the old man," of which someone on this list charged me with possessing in excessive amounts, is thicker than blood or water. If I say Burke responds to the ideas which, in general, constitute Postmodern philosophy of language with a "yes, but," Jim would not only capitalize the "but." He would underline it and put a series of exclamation points after it. He took such a hard-and-fast view in a debate with Andrew King and David Cratis Williams at Airlie in 1993. I forget who was the other debater on Jim's side. Burke was definitely NOT Postmodern, Jim said in that debate. That's enough "true confessions" for tonight (or, once again, early in the morning). Next, I'll be giving away my underwear size (much smaller now, since I lost 45 pounds). My new year's resolution will be to get off this list and give it over entirely to far more prudent and decorous subscribers. Doug Robinson, where are you? Ed From VM Sun Oct 01 10:18:26 2000 Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2000 10:18:26 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: Re: Logology & Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 84 On 9/30/00 6:16 PM, Michael Calvin McGee at michael@mcgees.net posted the following: > My problem with the argument, especially your present judgment that confl= ating > logology and logocentrism is a mistake . . . >=20 > We may have a misunderstanding here. By "conflation" I mean "read togethe= r." > I do not mean "integrated." I need some reasons as to what conceptual er= ror > there could be in reading the KB corpus and the JD corpus together, perha= ps > alternating between the two one book per week. The possibility of a misunderstanding arising from different uses of *conflation* occurred to me, also; so I'm glad Michael mentioned it. I had in mind the meaning that Michael gives as "integrated" (I would say "fused,= " even "con-fused"). It was in this sense that I stated, "The conflation of 'logology' and 'logocentrism' seems to me a conceptual error." I thought th= e two concepts were in danger of being fused within the larger discussion, in part, because such a fusion appears to be a presupposition of the contrast between Burke and Derrida that James Chesebro makes in the passage quoted b= y Mark Huglen. But I clearly misunderstood what Michael had in mind. And I couldn't agree more with the intent behind his use of *conflate*: "reading the KB corpus and the JD corpus together." Michael takes issue with several of the points I made regarding Derrida's definition of logocentrism. I don't have the constitution or time for posting long messages. But I will address one of Michael's main objections, and I will try to respond in a way that keeps Burke in the conversation. Also, I hope to respond in a way that takes advantage of a more general suggestion I see in Michael's post, a suggestion that we compare Burke and Derrida not merely at the level of concepts and theory but at the level of motive, at the level of their respective rhetorics, especially the ways in which they formulate the problems they want to address and, in doing so, th= e ways in which they forumlate historical contexts in which to situate their own writing. Finally, if we compare these two writers at the level of their respective "rhetorics," might we not compare them, as well, at the level of their respective "symbolics"? THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LOGOCENTRISM AND ETHNOCENTRISM Michael believes that I make too much out of Derrida's use of "ethnocentrism" in his opening definition of logocentrism; more specifically, he questions the appropriateness of my paraphrase of logocentrism as "an epoch of ethnocentrism": =20 > JD writes from the perspective of a totalizing universal *history*. He m= eans > that logocentrism is a problem currently, and that it has been a problem = since > the invention of writing as a technology (see his essay on Plato's > "pharmacon"). Logocentrism is only LIKE ethnocentrism -- an analogy is b= eing > proposed here. No *particular* "ethno" is in JD's mind, other than the > totalized, universalized *history* of the human sciences. I agree with what I believe is the main point of Michael's first two statements, though I think it's important to elaborate, or refine the phras= e "from the perspective of a totalizing universal *history*." I would say tha= t Derrida is writing in resistance to "a totalizing universal *history*," mor= e immediately he is writing against Hegelianism without engaging in the facil= e dismissal of the force of Hegel's thought that one finds in Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche (_Nietzsche et la philosophe_ 1962) and Foucault's reading of Bataille ("Pr=E9face de la transgression" 1963): > Misconstrued, treated lightly, Hegelianism only extends its historical > domination, finally unfolding its immense enveloping resources without > obstacle. Hegelian self-evidence sesems lighter than ever at the moment w= hen > it finally bears down with its full weight. ("From Restrained to General > Economy" 1967) I think my refinement helps to emphasize Michael's observation that "logocentrism is a problem currently." Yes; and this highlights a crucial aspect of Derrida's modus operandi (at least from this period): the treatment of current problems as symptoms of much larger historical developments. What would be the parallels in Burke? This leads to Michael's main objection and his counter-claim that Derrida uses ethnocentrism only as an analogy in his definition of logocentrism. First, I don't see anything in the passage I quoted indicating that Derrida intended ethnocentrism only as an analogy. Here's the language, again: > *logocentrism*: the metaphysics of phonetic writing (for example, of the > alphabet) which was fundamentally--for enigmatic yet essential reasons th= at > are inaccessible to a simple historical relativism--nothing but the most > original and powerful ethnocentrism, in the process of imposing itself up= on > the world, controlling in one and the same *order*: To my mind, the phrase "nothing but the most original and powerful ethnocentrism" indicates a relationship more profound than analogy. (At the very least, what a curious analogy coming from the hand of an Algerian Jew writing in Paris!) Also, the introduction of the idea of ethnocentrism, early in _Of Grammatology_, clearly adumbrates the lengthy critique of Levi-Strauss in Part II of the book, a critique that radicalizes Levi-Strauss's long-standing concern with the ethnocentrism. If Michael means to say that Derrida treats ethnocentrism as a symptom of logocentrism= , that claim could be argued; but given the language of Derrida's definition and dominant role of ethnocentrism I don't see how one could argue that Derrida uses ethnocentrism only as an analogy. Michael's objection to my understanding of the relationship between logocentrism and ethnocentrism was triggered (at least in part, I think) by my parenthetical suggestion that Derrida's use of "ethnocentrism" indicates a political dimension to Derrida's thinking from this period: > You cannot re-make a JD into a J-JL no matter how hard you try to find a > "politics" in deconstruction. I agree with Michael's statement about re-making Derrida into Lyotard. But Lyotard does not offer the only way of dealing with the political. Nor does Spivak's and Michael Ryan's reading of deconstruction as a strategy of revolution (although there is some truth to this, as evidenced by Derrida's affiliation with _Tel Quel_ in the post-'68 period). I only mean to say that, like any serious thinker, Derrida's thought does not ignore the political dimension of human existence, a dimension that later (i.e., with the formation of GREPH) would be referred to as *le politique* ("the political") as distinguished from *la politique* ("politics"). Burke, I think, occupies a similar position in his theory of rhetoric; though in RM he is clearly interested, as well, in dealing with contemporary politics, especially the emerging cold-war policy of the US and fascist tendencies in post-war American culture. As interesting as I find this discussion, I'm afraid I don't have enough time to continue as an active participant. So I'll just be watching from th= e sidelines for a while. Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Sun Oct 01 10:31:46 2000 Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2000 10:31:46 -0500 From: James Comas Subject: Re: Logology & Logocentrism (revised) Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 85 My previous posting contained a confusing omission; so please replace it with this version. --=20 On 9/30/00 6:16 PM, Michael Calvin McGee at michael@mcgees.net posted the following: > My problem with the argument, especially your present judgment that confl= ating > logology and logocentrism is a mistake . . . >=20 > We may have a misunderstanding here. By "conflation" I mean "read togethe= r." > I do not mean "integrated." I need some reasons as to what conceptual er= ror > there could be in reading the KB corpus and the JD corpus together, perha= ps > alternating between the two one book per week. The possibility of a misunderstanding arising from different uses of *conflation* occurred to me, also; so I'm glad Michael mentioned it. I had in mind the meaning that Michael gives as "integrated" (I would say "fused,= " even "con-fused"). It was in this sense that I stated, "The conflation of 'logology' and 'logocentrism' seems to me a conceptual error." I thought th= e two concepts were in danger of being fused within the larger discussion, in part, because such a fusion appears to be a presupposition of the contrast between Burke and Derrida that James Chesebro makes in the passage quoted b= y Mark Huglen. But I clearly misunderstood what Michael had in mind. And I couldn't agree more with the intent behind his use of *conflate*: "reading the KB corpus and the JD corpus together." Michael takes issue with several of the points I made regarding Derrida's definition of logocentrism. I don't have the constitution or time for posting long messages. But I will address one of Michael's main objections, and I will try to respond in a way that keeps Burke in the conversation. Also, I hope to respond in a way that takes advantage of a more general suggestion I see in Michael's post, a suggestion that we compare Burke and Derrida not merely at the level of concepts and theory but at the level of motive, at the level of their respective rhetorics, especially the ways in which they formulate the problems they want to address and, in doing so, th= e ways in which they forumlate historical contexts in which to situate their own writing. Finally, if we compare these two writers at the level of their respective "rhetorics," might we not compare them, as well, at the level of their respective "symbolics"? THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LOGOCENTRISM AND ETHNOCENTRISM Michael believes that I make too much out of Derrida's use of "ethnocentrism" in his opening definition of logocentrism; more specifically, he questions the appropriateness of my paraphrase of logocentrism as "an epoch of ethnocentrism": =20 > JD writes from the perspective of a totalizing universal *history*. He m= eans > that logocentrism is a problem currently, and that it has been a problem = since > the invention of writing as a technology (see his essay on Plato's > "pharmacon"). Logocentrism is only LIKE ethnocentrism -- an analogy is b= eing > proposed here. No *particular* "ethno" is in JD's mind, other than the > totalized, universalized *history* of the human sciences. I agree with what I believe is the main point of Michael's first two statements, though I think it's important to elaborate, or refine the phras= e "from the perspective of a totalizing universal *history*." I would say tha= t Derrida is writing in resistance to "a totalizing universal *history*," mor= e immediately he is writing against Hegelianism without engaging in the facil= e dismissal of the force of Hegel's thought that one finds in Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche (_Nietzsche et la philosophe_ 1962) and Foucault's reading of Bataille ("Pr=E9face de la transgression" 1963): > Misconstrued, treated lightly, Hegelianism only extends its historical > domination, finally unfolding its immense enveloping resources without > obstacle. Hegelian self-evidence sesems lighter than ever at the moment w= hen > it finally bears down with its full weight. ("From Restrained to General > Economy" 1967) I think my refinement helps to emphasize Michael's observation that "logocentrism is a problem currently." Yes; and this highlights a crucial aspect of Derrida's modus operandi (at least from this period): the treatment of current problems as symptoms of much larger historical developments. What would be the parallels in Burke? This leads to Michael's main objection and his counter-claim that Derrida uses ethnocentrism only as an analogy in his definition of logocentrism. First, I don't see anything in the passage I quoted indicating that Derrida intended ethnocentrism only as an analogy. Here's the language, again: > *logocentrism*: the metaphysics of phonetic writing (for example, of the > alphabet) which was fundamentally--for enigmatic yet essential reasons th= at > are inaccessible to a simple historical relativism--nothing but the most > original and powerful ethnocentrism, in the process of imposing itself up= on > the world, controlling in one and the same *order*: To my mind, the phrase "nothing but the most original and powerful ethnocentrism" indicates a relationship more profound than analogy. (At the very least, what a curious analogy coming from the hand of an Algerian Jew writing in Paris!) Also, the introduction of the idea of ethnocentrism, early in _Of Grammatology_, clearly adumbrates the lengthy critique of Levi-Strauss in Part II of the book, a critique that radicalizes Levi-Strauss's long-standing concern with ethnocentrism. If Michael means t= o say that Derrida treats ethnocentrism as a symptom of logocentrism, that claim could be argued; but given the language of Derrida's definition and dominant role of ethnocentrism in Part II of _OG_, I don't see how one coul= d argue that Derrida uses ethnocentrism only as an analogy. Michael's objection to my understanding of the relationship between logocentrism and ethnocentrism was triggered (at least in part, I think) by my parenthetical suggestion that Derrida's use of "ethnocentrism" indicates a political dimension to Derrida's thinking from this period: > You cannot re-make a JD into a J-JL no matter how hard you try to find a > "politics" in deconstruction. I agree with Michael's statement about re-making Derrida into Lyotard. But Lyotard does not offer the only way of dealing with the political. Nor does Spivak's and Michael Ryan's reading of deconstruction as a strategy of revolution (although there is some truth to this, as evidenced by Derrida's affiliation with _Tel Quel_ in the post-'68 period). I only mean to say that, like any serious thinker, Derrida's thought does not ignore the political dimension of human existence, a dimension that later (i.e., with the formation of GREPH) would be referred to as *le politique* ("the political") as distinguished from *la politique* ("politics"). Burke, I think, occupies a similar position in his theory of rhetoric; though in RM he is clearly interested, as well, in dealing with contemporary politics, especially the emerging cold-war policy of the US and fascist tendencies in post-war American culture. As interesting as I find this discussion, I'm afraid I don't have enough time to continue as an active participant. So I'll just be watching from th= e sidelines for a while. Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Sun Oct 01 11:07:02 2000 Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 11:07:02 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Logology & Logocentrism (revised) Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 86 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C02B97.B8FFC5C0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have more to say on this subject, which should be near and dear to all us Burklers. But like Jim, I want to step to the sidelines for awhile to see what Mark and others have to say about the discussion so far. I'm really interested in JChesebro's reactions, as well as RMcKerrow's, HSimons' and BKaplan's. michael ------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C02B97.B8FFC5C0 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAx MDAxMTYwNzAxWjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUHfkA3txmAanc2ZnC5T+d0Av7BdgwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEBc7ImM/2UmB0dKtEM1QgMVvOzeCrBFjZSQiokFmb5nVdwf7QBQ K9/E1FT5mwpppnLPXlSDcKvAWiBRUT4oHCR4AAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_0000_01C02B97.B8FFC5C0-- From VM Sun Oct 01 23:35:48 2000 Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 23:35:48 -0500 From: "Huglen, Mark" Subject: Logocentrism and Logology Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 87 What do I think about the possible conflation of the logocentricism and logology distinctions? My belief is that we ought to be finding ways in which these positions can work together. We sometimes get "caught" in our own logical categories of analysis, distinctions, and categories of difference as we talk and write, and perhaps can't see the common grounds among the terms, among different people, among places, and among other things. I think of the wisdom an elderly Indian women had whom I was visiting with friends on a nearby reservation. While we stood on a hill talking, and at a particular point in the course of our conversation, she pointed at some of the houses out there in the distance. Interestingly, one of the houses was nicely and freshly painted, had a nice white picket fence in the shape of rectangular box around it, and a lawn that was freshly cut. To the left of this house, there was another house that was not painted, it did not have any fence, and the grass was as long as grass could grow. She said, "which one do you like better?" Cautiously, I said, "I am not sure: which one do you like?" She said that both had their beauty. Then, she began to explain. While the house on the right was recently painted, that very paint was covering up the natural beauty of the wood, suffocating the wood underneath. While the house on the right had a white picket fence, the woman pointed out that the fence "symbolized" some kind of boundary that left the warning that "crossing" the line would not be permitted without permission. While the house on the right had a lawn recently cut, the severed and "fragmented" individual blades of grass lay helpless, near death on the ground--the steel blade of the "machine" had chopped them down to fragments. In contrast, she asked me to take another look at the house on the left. The natural beauty of the wood was exposed for everyone to see. Without a fence, the area symbolized openness and freedom, and since the grass was allowed to grow tall without the fear of being "severed," "chopped" down, and left to die, it was able to open itself up and reach to the sun, grow tall, and sway and be swayed in the wind naturally in harmony with the great winds of the earth. I asked the wise woman: "who actually occupied the houses, and the many other houses in the area?" and she pointed out that the house with the fence was the principal's of the local high school, which to me personally symbolized a merging as well as a clashing of different cultures, education and other. Were traces of the "Parthenon" located right there over in the distance? The categorical construction, placement, and confirmation in speaking and writing of our two terms in question might just be another trace of that logo-centric construction that is at the heart our question here: and my belief is that we need not think of our categories as separate and distinct but search for ways that as Michael says in so many words "can be read together," for the purpose, as I would put it, of creating some common ground among and between the categories while at the same time allowing them to retain their beauty as something different at other levels of understanding. I think that James Chesebro found a way to allow the different terms to work together in his article. But can we ever escape a logo-centrism, an "ethno-bias," is their a condition, place, method, or rhetorical tool that is not ethno-morally tinged, and do we need that study in terms of a disciplined logology to expose that bias? If we think back to the two houses, I don't think that the convention of argument is the way to understand them, or even the scientific method. It just might be that in some particular instances the logic and "machinery" of argumentation and along with an un-questioned presumption that "putting up a fence" (symbolically speaking in terms of the line that is drawn by us between the two categories-sidedness within an argument) might be one of those areas that Michael talks of that would need to be looked at and deconstructed, as well as the Scientific Method. But in my way of thinking, this doesn't mean the end of argument or the end of the scientific method, it means that the +consequences+ of using such tools will be looked into and questioned with the goal of making our world a better place. I wonder how we cannot escape seeing it and addressing it. And at the same time that we are considering the "logo" category, I can't see how we can leave the traces of our other ways of knowing and sensing such as +feeling+ (Damasio?) out at such a distance for our understanding of the complexity of the human condition either. Mark Huglen From VM Mon Oct 02 08:44:43 2000 Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 08:44:43 -0500 From: Jeffrey Walker Subject: Re: Logocentrism and Logology Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 88 Two quick (and probably digressive) responses to Mark Huglen's interesting post: > Were traces of the "Parthenon" located right there over in the distance? I'm not sure what is meant by this: is the "Parthenon trace" visible in the white-house-with-picket-fence, or in the unpainted-open-weedy house? The Parthenon itself was a public building accessible to all: it (and its uses) should be compared to, say, the Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples that one can visit, today, in Japan. Those places, especially the very old and very venerable ones, are more like the weedy house. The Parthenon itself was originally painted (pretty garishly, by our standards), but for most of its history the paint would have been old, faded & dirty; and the building (and its precinct) had *stuff* stuck all over it -- votive offerings, plaques saying thank-you to the goddess, trophies from battles, etc. Our image of the Parthenon as a "clean, well-lighted place" and palace of rationality is an Enlightenment fantasy with little relation to ancient actualities. > If we think back to the two houses, I don't think that the convention of > argument is the way to understand them, or even the scientific method. I don't follow this part of the argument, in part because I don't accept the apparent identification of "argument" with "scientific method" (if that's what the "or even" slide signifies); and in part because it seems to me that the Indian woman did in fact present you with an argument -- a very subtle and skillfully presented one. Nor do I believe we can legitimately speak of "the convention of argument," as if there is only one. -- Jeffrey Walker English / Emory University / Atlanta, GA 30322 office: N313 Callaway / telephone: 404-727-5274 http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jwalke3 From VM Mon Oct 02 16:35:20 2000 Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 16:35:20 -0500 From: "Huglen, Mark" Subject: Nefos Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 89 In my visit with the Indian woman, she did not make me feel like there was a dirty house or weedy lawn. The Indian Women Saw Beauty in Both Houses The Indian Women Saw Beauty in the Long Grass The Grass Swaying and Being Swayed by The Great Winds of the Earth The Long Grass Reaching for the Sky The Materials of the Earth and Sky As Interconnected The Indian Women Worries About the Constructed Fence Between the Houses And Worries About the Grass that Had Been Chopped and Left to Die Just as a side thought, it's interesting that in the nearby Dakotas the grass that was chopped down by European settlers for the purpose of farming and cattle ranching a few years back is now returning to prairie land as people are now having to abandon their farms in lieu of the problem between the local costs of production and the price variances and competitiveness of a global market. ^>Fromthe prairie to the city, I know that Athens is thought of as a very dirty, messy, and unorganized site today, as well what has been talked about it of the past. The "nefos," smog cloud, is similar to Los Angeles smog. ^>Fromwhat I am told, there are many cars-and they don't have catalytic converters. My friends tell me that trying to drive in Athens is a nightmare-you'd want to take a cab, and very dirty, hot like Texas, lots of garbage, and very little vegetation. This kind of reminds me of our present world in terms of the languages of the streets, and rhetorical and political positioning in all phases of society, including the academy. Most of the time rhetoric and politics are dirty, messy, and often unorganized--+not perfect+ by any stretch of the imagination, which is probably why the people of the past and present are so interested in the topic. There are times when we have to take a stand, and as Michael C. McGee has mentioned on this list before: "don't be afraid to argue for the little "t"-the truth even though we can't know with complete and perfect certainty in the whole Truth, we need to act in the present. And, we have already discussed the dangers and cautions of individuals and groups rising in power to oppress others, mystic interpretations, e.g., recent wars, Hitler and the holocaust, etc. While the rhetorical politics of the day are occurring right before our very eyes, we can't afford to gloss over the problems, we need to draw the lines of competition, and we need to take our stand--both politically and rhetorically. I think that scholars are recognizing this in other fields as well as ours, for example James Hillman and Michael Ventura discuss the lack of political participation and outrage that is not occurring in our country today in conjunction with psychotherapy in _We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy-And The World's Getting Worse_." As an example, people nearly get run off the road by a big truck, go to their therapist to get settled down, but the big truck is still out there. Sometimes we ought not be settled down-we ought to get involved politically. But what is this really About? Knowing what we know about rhetoric, I think that a guiding question for all of this is as follows: If our world is rhetorically constructed through and through, then what kind of world are human beings choosing to construct? And I think that the answer has to do with the way we choose to draw our lines and paint our pictures, and our methods and tools. Does the line in the middle of an argument serve as a tool of oppression? Do the procedures and structures of a Scientific Method (which are no more or no less than a word construction and alignment) serve to oppress certain groups of people at times? I am politely asking what you think. Yes, Derrida is right-logocentric. While we pay lip service to the Cartesian worldview and Descartes' mind/body dualism, along with his rational attempt to logically construct the existence of God, we, ironically, live in that shadow everyday by not allowing our other senses to play a role in our ways we know the world. Look at the elementary schools to the universities, where the primary evaluations relate back to how well the children can read and write to the doctoral dissertations. And while Derrida is right in his way-and to help us in the shaking of rigid foundations, we don't have to follow him in total and drop all our other views. Mark Huglen From VM Mon Oct 02 16:29:10 2000 Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 16:29:10 -0500 From: "Huglen, Mark" Subject: RE: Logocentrism and Logology Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 90 -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Walker [mailto:jwalke3@emory.edu] Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 8:45 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Re: Logocentrism and Logology Two quick (and probably digressive) responses to Mark Huglen's interesting post: > Were traces of the "Parthenon" located right there over in the distance? Jeffrey: I'm not sure what is meant by this: is the "Parthenon trace" visible in the white-house-with-picket-fence, or in the unpainted-open-weedy house? The Parthenon itself was a public building accessible to all: it (and its uses) should be compared to, say, the Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples that one can visit, today, in Japan. Those places, especially the very old and very venerable ones, are more like the weedy house. The Parthenon itself was originally painted (pretty garishly, by our standards), but for most of its history the paint would have been old, faded & dirty; and the building (and its precinct) had *stuff* stuck all over it -- votive offerings, plaques saying thank-you to the goddess, trophies from battles, etc. Our image of the Parthenon as a "clean, well-lighted place" and palace of rationality is an Enlightenment fantasy with little relation to ancient actualities. Mark: Good observations, and I'd also like to focus your attention to the topic of where we are choosing to draw our lines. The ancient Greeks drew lines as well the Buddhists. As McPhail says the Buddhists tried to move beyond rhetoric in their meditative states, the line is drawn between rhetoric and their thought, but Derrida would say that we can't escape our language. As you know, Pirsig likes to characterize the academy of today as the "Church of Reason." I see all of what you describe in both houses. > If we think back to the two houses, I don't think that the convention of > argument is the way to understand them, or even the scientific method. Jeffrey: I don't follow this part of the argument, in part because I don't accept the apparent identification of "argument" with "scientific method" (if that's what the "or even" slide signifies); and in part because it seems to me that the Indian woman did in fact present you with an argument -- a very subtle and skillfully presented one. Nor do I believe we can legitimately speak of "the convention of argument," as if there is only one. Mark: Ah, I see what you are saying. I see both the convention of argument and the scientifc method as rhetorical constructions through and through. Can you see what's inside and outside of all the lines drawn, for both the convention of argument and the scientific method? And then ask, "what are the +consequences+? The consequences might be good for society, but then again they might not be. In this instance, I don't think the "way" is to argue which is better. My point is that we need to ask the question. Other people might take this another way. The question for others might be not which house we like, and why or why not, but how the symbolic construction of houses is very different from the actual thing ... I guess in a way this is a similar thought to before, if our world is a rhetorical construction through and through, then what kind of world are we choosing to construct? One that would allow logocentrism and logology to work together; or one that would keep them separate and distinct. -- Jeffrey Walker English / Emory University / Atlanta, GA 30322 office: N313 Callaway / telephone: 404-727-5274 http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jwalke3 From VM Tue Oct 03 08:59:48 2000 Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2000 08:59:48 -0500 From: Jeffrey Walker Subject: Re: Logocentrism and Logology Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 91 "Huglen, Mark" wrote: > As McPhail says the Buddhists tried to move beyond > rhetoric in their meditative states, the line is drawn between rhetoric and > their thought, but Derrida would say that we can't escape our language. OK, & here "Derrida" (in someone's construction of him) might say that "the Buddhists" (lumping together a multiplicity of sects spread across a variety of widely differing cultures and languages) are deluded. The problem with McPhail's point about "the Buddhists" is that Buddhism (or what I know about it) has no explicit conception of "rhetoric" -- though there may be lots of implicit ones -- so I don't how "the Buddhists" can be "trying to move beyond" what is not a category for them. Perhaps they are neither in it nor beyond it nor trying to be in or out of it. If we are equating "rhetoric" with "language" (and thus logology etc.), even Aristotle will rise to confute us: "rhetoric" involves parts of the psyche -- since it involves all the parts -- that are neither rational nor conceptual nor linguistic (such as appetite and desire), though they may be traversed and interpenetrated by discourse in both conscious and unconscious ways (as in Aristotle's analysis of emotion in the Rhetoric, the Politics, and the Ethics). I have always read Burke this way (perhaps mistakenly, sigh), esp. in his emphases on the biological and material foundations of "symbolic action," motive, and ideology. > I see both the convention of argument and > the scientifc method as rhetorical constructions through and through. Can > you see what's inside and outside of all the lines drawn, for both the > convention of argument and the scientific method? And then ask, "what are > the +consequences+? The consequences might be good for society, but then > again they might not be. In this instance, I don't think the "way" is to > argue which is better. My point is that we need to ask the question. OK, asking questions is good -- though the point of asking them is that we seek to discover answers, and frequently need to make decisions (with consequences). And yes, of course argumentation and "scientific method" are thoroughly rhetorical, though again I would ask you yourself to see what is "inside and outside" of the lines you draw when invoking such a concept as "*the* convention of argument" -- as if there is only one (you seem to be equating it with logic), and is if it is a "convention." What if it is not? What if "argument" is something that all human beings do, in a myriad of ways, regardless of their cultural placement (though that placement will condition how they argue, through what conventions [plural]), as a function of their biologically given nature? When you ask "can you see what's inside and outside of all the lines drawn ... and then ask what are the consequences," you are of course raising a fundamentally Burkean perspective; but this also should be placed alongside Burkean notions of "terministic screen" and "occupational psychosis": it is never possible for anyone ever to "see what is inside and outside of all the lines drawn"; we can only try for some "perspective by incongruity," to get some distance on one set of lines by aligning ourselves with another set. And this is what "the Buddhists" do when they raise questions like, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" > Other people might take this another way. The question for others might be > not which house we like, and why or why > not, but how the symbolic construction of houses is very different from the > actual thing . This sounds an awful lot like Plato! (And maybe Descartes, as well.) > .. I guess in a way this is a similar thought to before, if > our world is a rhetorical construction through and through, then what kind > of world are we choosing to construct? One that would allow logocentrism > and logology to work together; or one that would keep them separate and No, this seems very different: asking about the difference between "symbolic constructions" and "the real thing" leads us toward a Platonic, idealist project; asking about the consequences or "world" implied in one or another construction leads us toward what I would characterize as a pragmatist project. As for allowing logocentrism and logology to work together -- and those terms still seem pretty fluid in this discussion thread -- one can argue that they can only "work together" productively when they remain distinct, and thus are able to create perspective on each other. If they become loose synonyms, they don't really "work together," and do little more than indicate a loose, inspecific, conceptual blob. (Then again, sometimes blobs are useful.) We better "see" the qualities of the open/weedy house when it stands alongside the painted/fenced house, and vice versa. Or is that what you mean? -- Jeffrey Walker English / Emory University / Atlanta, GA 30322 office: N313 Callaway / telephone: 404-727-5274 http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jwalke3 From VM Tue Oct 03 09:50:36 2000 Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2000 09:50:36 -0500 From: Jeffrey Walker Subject: Re: Nefos Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 92 Mark, your further reflections on the Indian Woman and Athenian nefos are interesting; I would reply: [a] your telling/representation of the story does not suggest that there is "beauty in both houses," but that a higher wisdom is being offered and one house (the one that stands for Western rationalism) has something wrong with it (has bad consequences) while the other is closer to "what is real," more natural, and better (a Stoic doctrine, by the way, and thus also Western); and [b] the Athenian nefos (and the city as a whole) isn't as bad as you have heard, though the nefos is indeed comparable to LA smog (nefos is just the Greek word for smog). I spent spring semester there last year, and a half-year (from January into July) in 1993. Athens is one of my favorite cities (much better than LA, at least in my view). And there is plenty of vegetation -- as much as you can expect in the arid climate and sparse, rocky landscape of Greece. The trash accumulations are not as bad as New York. Athens does, as well, raise the "two houses" sorts of meditations that you describe: some of its virtues arise precisely from its chaos, lack of efficiency, irregularity, official corruption, pervasive laissez-faire attitudes, absence of work ethic, and passionate politics; but one sometimes yearns, while one is there, for places where everything works and you can get a telephone installed without needing to have relatives at the phone company; but all business there is personal. (Burke's "Program" applies here, in some ways.) > But what is this really About? Knowing what we know about rhetoric, I think > that a guiding question for all of this is as follows: If our world is > rhetorically constructed through and through, then what kind of world are > human beings choosing to construct? And I think that the answer has to do > with the way we choose to draw our lines and paint our pictures, and our > methods and tools. Does the line in the middle of an argument serve as a > tool of oppression? Do the procedures and structures of a Scientific Method > (which are no more or no less than a word construction and alignment) serve > to oppress certain groups of people at times? I am politely asking what you > think. Well, while agreeing to the first part of this, my short answer to the question(s) at the end would be No. Longer (though not long enough): argument does not necessarily "draw a line in the middle," and even when it does that line in itself is not necessarily a tool of oppression, nor is the process of argumentation itself -- in a rhetorical universe. The ancient metaphor of rhetoric (or "eloquence") as an open hand and logic (or "dialectic") as a closed fist makes this point succinctly: rhetoric invites adherence, identification, agreement, etc., but cannot compel it; whereas logic forces an interlocutor who has (perhaps unwittingly) accepted the starting premises to accept as well the "logically necessary" conclusions that follow from them. (2+2=4 whether you like it or not.) But if the world we inhabit as human beings is fundamentally rhetorical -- or rhetorical all the way down (or up) -- the judgments that guide and determine our lives are seldom or never matters of simple calculation (as Chaim Perelman argued so well) -- then the persuasive force of an argument is virtually always a matter of willing agreement. I see little that is truly coercive, either, in the usual methods of scientific argumentation: otherwise, we would not see the constant revision of "knowledge" that is characteristic of the scientific enterprise (science would be more like medieval philosophy, though even that was a field of contestation); most of the sceintists I meet are much more intellectually flexible than most of my colleagues in the English department, who tend to be dogmatic (even as they are very nice people). As people like Stephen Jay Gould like to point out endlessly, a theory is "scientific" only if it is open to falsification: science operates in a realm of contingent, revisable belief. Of course, science can be co-opted by corrupt or destructive motives (cf Burke on the Nazi scientist, in RM); and oppressive regimes can use the illusion of "scientific certainty" as a tool of oppression, to force unquestioning acquiescence to the official ideology (as in "scientific Socialism"): that is, they foreclose argument. But that oppressiveness does not inhere in science itself, nor in the processes of argumentation themselves; nor does it mean (as Burke points out) that one can remain innocent of oppressive or destructive motives by appealing to the idea that what one does is "scientific" or "objective" or "open and fair argument "or a "disinterested search for truth." > Yes, Derrida is right-logocentric. ... And while > Derrida is right in his way-and to help us in the shaking of rigid > foundations, we don't have to follow him in total and drop all our other > views. Well, sure; yes. -- Jeffrey Walker English / Emory University / Atlanta, GA 30322 office: N313 Callaway / telephone: 404-727-5274 http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jwalke3 From VM Tue Oct 03 16:43:01 2000 Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2000 16:43:01 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Logology and Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 93 Michael wrote: I would love to see some particulars from KB cited here, and I'm sure EAppel can come up with several. I think, however, that nearly every proposition in RofR is on-point with JD's general critique. I think that KB may not be "postmodern," but he is "post-structural" avant la lettre (specifically la lettres of JD). Michael said, also, that he'd like to hear from Jim Chesebro on the topic, as well as from some other esteemed scholars he mentioned. I doubt that Chesebro is on the discussion list. He wasn't a part of it anytime I ever checked. I'll be Jim's surrogate, and critic, and throw his two cents into the fountain anyway, as per the debate he had with Tompkins and Cheney in QJS a few years back. I said I applauded Tompkins and Cheney for "standing up to Chesebro." I did not mean by that acolade that I didn't think Jim had made some good points in his two forum articles. He said some noteworthy things. Burke's dramatism/logology is not the be-all and end-all of linguistic or rhetorical studies. Lots of ideas in Burke call out for, and even presignify, "extension." What I objected to in these pieces, and still do, is Jim's mischaracterization--maybe we can call them exaggerations for effect--of some of Burke's positions. The sections on "Logocentric Bias" in both essays (August 1992, pp. 358-61, and February 1994, pp. 85-86) provide cases in point. Before he even gets to his three arguments against what he calls Burke's "logocentric" conception of language use, Jim exaggerates, it seems to me, Burke's notion of "symbol-using" as "an independent and self-motivating action," a theme Jim repeats several times. What we have here, I do believe, is a textbook example of what Burke calls in GM "the strategic use of ambiguity" for persuasive purposes. (There's a bit of burlesque built into all tendentious discourse, and maybe we can dispense with the modifier "tendentioius.") In a sense, Jim is right in his statement, but he overplays his hand. Language is, for Burke, an independent source of motivation, but it is not an unresponsive source. It does not act altogether independently of nonsymbolic motion. For Burke, language "interferes" with "self" (RM), interferes with causes in nature, but it does not obliterate nonsymbolic drives. Burke says as much, in RR I believe. His significantly caricatured construction of Burke on the influence of the symbolic motive established in the introduction to this section of the essay, Chesebro then, in arguent #1, says Burke is, in effect, a structuralist, like Saussure. He quotes Terence Hawkes at length to prove his point about structuralism's detachment from the material environment that surrounds, even though Hawkes was not talking about Burke at all in the passage quoted. (Tompkins and Cheney make much of this strategy of argumentation in their reply, QJS, May 1993, pp. 228-29.) On this score, Burke is supposedly "logocentric" because words in themselves and in their grammatical relationships are "independent" of everything, and therefore foster exclusively "'word-centered' thinking." Now, Chesebro and Brock cannot both be right about Burke's philosophical orientation. Chesebro is calling Burke a "structuralist" here, carrying with it the vision of language as a kind of untethered, free-floating balloon, ungrounded in "the sheer brute materials of the world as it is" (GM). Brock, in his into to Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought, labels Burke a "critical [verbal] realist." "Structuralism" is not verbal "realism." It is something radically other. I find Brock a lot closer to the truth for reasons I posted last week. I prefer the term "interventionist realism" for reasons I gave then. Also, the label "critical realism" has a pretty carefully worded history in the field of philosophy. I'm not altogether sure Burke has given us precise enough an explanation of his epistemology to distinguish his "critical realism" from "pragmatism." Pragmatists avow the reality of the material world just as realists do. Their epistemology centers, though, on what Burke might call "serviceable experience" rather than on somekind of knowledge of that independently existing "reality" out there. "Interventionist realist," my own coinage (in respect to Burke) after Ian Hacking, does not drag with it decades of baggage from the discipline of philosophy. Argument #2 for Chesebro is as follows: "The structural assumption of a logocentric approach ignores or conceals the privileged origins of symbol-using" (p. 360). I very much support this emphasis in Postmodern thought, and I agree it is not as central a concern for Burke as it might have been, even though Burke does speak of the need for listening to the "marginalized" in the "Program" chapter in CS, and even though the hierarchal motive is right at the heart of Burke's logology. But, again, Chesebro exaggerates here, in my judgment, like several other of Burke's critics. Jim says Burke's use of "'centrally PRIVILEGED forms of signification,'" like, say, the First Three Chapter of Genesis, articulates a cultural myopia, a logological bias, and an approach to symbol-using that lacks universal applicability. Tompkins and Cheney provide an appropriate response: Burke was merely using illustrative materials at hand, given the composition of his Western audience. Burke's "system" is not necessarily wedded to Western forms of thought to the exclusion of those of other cultures. Chesebro's arguent #3: Burke's "logocentric" approach fosters a "unidimensional" understanding of truth and reality, as well as "encourages political oppression" (p. 361). Well, now, that's a mouthful. In sum, Chesebro says, "Burke's logocentric emphasis extends the range of structuralism, isolates symbol-using, and implies that symbol-using is the determinant of all other social systems, ignoring and concealing the privileged origins of symbol-using. Additionally, for others, Burke's logocentric approach is linked essentially to print and ultimately restricts human knowledge itself" (p. 361). I'll have more to say on this later. Ed From VM Tue Oct 03 19:48:49 2000 Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 19:48:49 -0500 From: "Huglen, Mark" Subject: word-thought-thing Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 94 A couple quick responses: to Jeffrey as well as others who are going to chime in at some point. In terms of the symbolic construction not being the same as the thing, Jeffrey suggests that it might be a Platonic bias. As we know, Plato is mentioned quite a bit by Burke. I guess I think of this as the word-thought-thing relation, and C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards have a nice explanation of this in their book, _The Meaning of Meaning_, and provide a nice visual of the relation on page eleven. Of course, this line of thinking is a significant part of the Burkean corpora as well. The word is not the thing. The word "tree" is not the "thing" tree, which means that much of our world is defined in terms of what it is not. And up ladder, down a ladder, across the way, etc., so to speak we may go, from tree to trees, and from trees to the forest-all defined in terms of what they are not. But, as Burke says, such things are citable realites. And perhaps we want to say that they grow out of our human biology and material manifestations. Scientists, therefore, are not recording or talking about their stuff through any direct correspondence with their objects but through their communication; in other words they do not petition and argue with things-they petition and argue with each other. And in their argumentation, they reflect their cultural biases. Knowing this, we don't have to say that "reflecting a cultural bias is a bad thing," because we, I believe, ought to be celebrating a lot of our human constructions. Down the line, I am confident that there will be many more discoveries and creations. In terms of reducing this to the promotion of a single "convention of argument" by me, no, I am not thinking that way, and thankful that you have pointed this out to me. Mark Huglen From VM Tue Oct 03 20:49:08 2000 Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 20:49:08 -0500 From: "Huglen, Mark" Subject: RE: Logology and Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 95 Ed wrote: ------------------ Now, Chesebro and Brock cannot both be right about Burke's philosophical orientation. Chesebro is calling Burke a "structuralist" here, carrying with it the vision of language as a kind of untethered, free-floating balloon, ungrounded in "the sheer brute materials of the world as it is" (GM). Brock, in his into to Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought, labels Burke a "critical [verbal] realist." "Structuralism" is not verbal "realism." It is something radically other. I find Brock a lot closer to the truth for reasons I posted last week. I prefer the term "interventionist realism" for reasons I gave then. Also, the label "critical realism" has a pretty carefully worded history in the field of philosophy. I'm not altogether sure Burke has given us precise enough an explanation of his epistemology to distinguish his "critical realism" from "pragmatism." Pragmatists avow the reality of the material world just as realists do. Their epistemology centers, though, on what Burke might call "serviceable experience" rather than on somekind of knowledge of that independently existing "reality" out there. "Interventionist realist," my own coinage (in respect to Burke) after Ian Hacking, does not drag with it decades of baggage from the discipline of philosophy. ------------------ Mark Huglen says, Yes and No. In _Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought: Rhetoric in Transition_," Brock identifies three different stages in the evolution of Burke's thought. Brock does identify Burke as a "critical realist" during _Counter Statement_, _Permanence and Change_, _Attitudes Toward History_, and _The Philosophy of Literary Form_, and this is what Ed seems to be referring to in his recent post. Brock labels Burke a "conceptualist" in the middle stage, which includes the books _A Grammar of Motives_, _A Rhetoric of Motives_, and Burke's transitional book _A Rhetoric of Religion_. Finally, Brock labels Burke's third stage "symbolic coherence," and launched by the article "Dramatism" (p. 1-33). ^>Fromwhat I see here, Ed's argument hinges on Burke as a "critical realist," which holds together with quite truthfulness based on the facts of the category. However, Chesebro's argument seems to be coming out of another stage of Burke's thinking as he refers to _The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology,"--the transition book between stages two and three. My thought is that both Ed's and James Chesebro's arguments are true by themselves as well as contrary to each other, and even perhaps contrary to yet even another if we brought in a third stage. In this way of thinking, both Chesebro and Brock are right simultaneously. Mark Huglen From VM Wed Oct 04 10:44:37 2000 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 10:44:37 -0400 From: "Camille K. Lewis" Subject: Christian Scientist Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 96 Yesterday, a colleague made a casual reference that KB infused his writing with Christian Science "doctrine." Anybody have any clues to this? Camille K. Lewis Doctoral Candidate Communication and Culture Indiana University Bloomington From VM Wed Oct 04 12:56:46 2000 Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 12:56:46 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Logology and Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 97 Michael, Thank you for the info. I tend toward the attitude you describe when you say, Burke may not be the best at characterizing his own position in terms of a general label, or in terms of things that have been written about him. I remember his once saying that the 1952 article by Marie Nichols introducing him to the field of communication was the best piece that had been written about him. It was, indeed, a good article for the time, but it can hardly be said to be the "best" interpretation of Burke, even up to that moment. It looked at Burke through an Aristotelian lens, not too helpful, really, in getting at what's unique about Burke. I trust what Burke has written about rhetoric and language-use in general much more than what Burke has said about himself. I think Chesebro and Hawkes, whom Chesebro quotes at length, offer an accurate description of structuralism in that QJS article. I don't believe Burke quite fits that mold. "Up to a point, yes, but." "'Something akin,' to use Crusius's phrasing, yes. Burke as a "structuralist" in some ways, yes. But not in terms of the relationship between language and the environing material scene. I believe Chesebro exaggerates Burke's position on this score to make a point. I don't go as far as Stewart and Williams and call Burke a "Cartesian representationalist." I don't go as far as Trevor Melia and say that Burke has very little resemblance to Richard Rorty. I tend to see in Burke what Tim Crusius calls in his book the "Otherness" of the man. Both/And rather than Either/Or--that, as I see it, seems to hold true for Burke's thinking as a whole, as well as for his critical methods. Best wishes. Ed From VM Wed Oct 04 13:08:30 2000 Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 13:08:30 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Logology and Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 98 The post I just made to kb was NOT MEANT for kb! It was meant to go only to the person I was addressing. Before I wrote the message, I took down his e-mail address on the tablet I keep by my side, but then failed to send it to that address. Instead, I "acted," if I can call it that, out of unconscious habit, and posted on kb. I didn't realize my error until I got back two copies of my statement rather than the one copy I was expecting. My profound and sincere apologies go out to the subscriber I was addressing. I meant that post for one set of eyes only. I try to make it a point to keep public and private posts separate, unless I recieve permission to make private posts public. Ed From VM Wed Oct 04 17:25:47 2000 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 17:25:47 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: Echelons of Thought Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 99 We are all young once. For me that was 1984; the twenty-three year old will-be-philosopher-artist-king takes his first baby steps into the Mountain Ranges of Human Thought. I had enlisted in a course in Semiotics at the University of Minnesota; bought a stack of notebooks and twice the number of texts I needed for the course, and with virtually no training in composition and social scientific research methodology, I attempted to tackle graduate level reading and thesis writing in the most recent (and enticing) fields of Literary Criticism, Comparative Literature, and Postmodernist Philosophy of Language and "reality." I found the following definition scribbled on the cover of my first notebook for the course: Synectics--to bring forth as in dialectic. Def., a theory or system of problem stating and problem solution based on creative thinking that allows free use of metaphore and analogy in informal interchange within a carefully selected small group of individuals of diverse personality and areas of specialization. If it weren't for the fact that this is supposedly a theory or system, and for the seemingly senseless restriction of this "theory" to a carefully selected (by whom?) group of individuals of diverse backround, I would be tempted to say that "we" (the group in the KB discussion) were doing synectics, and that it is not necessarily logocentric. (Logocentrism is using words about "reality" while logology and deconstruction (metanarrative) avoid the pitfalls of such a step and focus instead upon "words about words."). In the beginning we are lost (speaking mostly for myself); starting with no previous experience, a helpless infant whose only wisdom to date is that encoded in his dna (so the scientists conclude). "In the beginning," sounds both too religious and like the kind of phrase Jacques Derrida would take apart in a thousand ways. "In the beginning," at the origin we are lost, or "we are not we" and are certainly not in any "scene"...not yet. It is the immediacy of Being which has been shattered by the folding back of language upon itself; whereas a return to "the innocense of becoming," (Of Grammatology, p. xvi, Foreward), "the affirmation of the world of signs without fault, without truth, without origin, offered to an active interpretation," is a return to the mediacy of language and the contingency of "being." We can only conclude from this that our origins are not an absolute beginning but simply a moving and relative place within something much larger--the historical process which is itself within (again if the scientists are to be believed) the geological process. The translator of JD's book also wrote, "all conclusions are genuinely provisional and therefore inconclusive...all origins are unoriginal." (p. xvi.). If I am not mistaken this corresponds with quite a large body of work, all already written down in "phonetic language" and that is aggressively and insistently non-logocentric. I refer to the Old Testement and to all the secularized versions of the philosophy(ies?) contained therein. (See Susan Handleman's 'The Slayers of Moses.'). So which is it going to be? Words about reality, or Words about words? Did we name things, or did "reality" organize itself in our minds as language, so that, in the Beginning, in the Middle and in the End there was, is and will be the Word? No reality at all? No Flesh? Hmmm? Can we do without the one or the other, the Greek or the Jewish, or do both "orientations" inform and constrast each other productively? As always, a writer can more or less fail in describing the reality he senses. The question always raised and which itself is fully uninhabited by a multiplicity of absent origins (trails which lead off into infinity), is "What 'is' the scene? or What 'is' going on? What 'is' happening? or Any plot 'going on' here?" The question of what I should do personally depends upon these other questions being at least provisionally, answered. We should not forget that we want to know (Nietschze's observation that the Will to Truth turns out to be a form of the Will to Power--the drive to know being a drive to appropriate and conquer), in order to become. Becoming appears to be what JD was calling "the absence of presence." (p.xviii, Of Grammatology). If I understand Derrida correctly--though perhaps not thoroughly-- the appearance of a thing or sign is not full presence or immediateness. It is but a 'moment,' a flash picture, a sign of something almost entirely absent, reserved and outside of the 'now' of the atomic clock whose absolute authority we can not hope to contest. "Present but unaccounted for, Sir!" We could nearly call this a commonplace, for many people gravely repeat, "Everything comes to pass, not to stay." Which possibly explains hedonism and decadence (though I wasn't trying to explain those). We try to go where no (one) has gone before: to the top of a mountain on Mars; to the top of the Social Pyramid (where very few have gone before); to out-do and out-put each other in every possible way--boxing, racing, spelling, publishing, markmanship, grooming and fashion design, advertising, weapons fashion design, for example, the star wars-like remote controlled Predator reconnaissance aircraft. This excess of competition and drive is the push of our civilization itself and it is this that we seem to be trying to alter by our equally zealous criticisms and analyses. Is there anything that can be done about this 'accelleration'? Is it bad? Who would be authorized to put the brakes on this rampant progress, and where, how, why? Is this not ALSO a National Security issue, not to say only? Again...everything becomes...emerges...and not always without a struggle. Nothing ever 'is' for all time, but simply for the time being. We need to understand change itself, not just the many different rates of change; we need to attempt to comprehend how much is changing, how fast, and into what? And that, I'm sure, is a hefty task, but one which we're all compelled to take on. Michael McGee's question of the "Dead End" of humanity (Michael's 9/28 post), amounts to what Mark Huglen came right out and asked: "What do we want now?" In one of the last posts Jeffrey Walker suggested that scientific method itself is not the enemy "logocentrism." "A theory is 'scientific' only if it is open to falsification: science operates in a realm of contingent, revisable belief." But Jeffrey goes on to elaborate our concern that science is often co-opted by corrupt motives--and rhetoric has certainly been accused of this. Perhaps what we're really "complaining" about is just how easily and vastly pure science and pure rhetoric turn to or into the proprietary and "feed" the military/industrial complex of existing Authority thus becoming impure. The question is, is this will to conquor ingrained in language and in our very dna? So instead of incessantly and rather violently "tracking down a truth that is hidden but may be found," (p. xix, Of Grammatology), knowledge is the "field of freeplay...a field of infinite substitutions in the closure of a finite ensemble." It will be through this "freeplay" and infinite substitution that we will purify logocentrism, or ourselves of logocentrism, and rediscover, according to the Jacques Derrida of the 1960's, the true and open relationships between sign (word, sound, etc.), the signified (reality), and signification (the meaning--which he says is simply 'more text'). Nietzsche and Derrida were committed to freeing philosophical discourse of "the ethnocentrism of scientific reason" and returning it to the formal, rhetorical and figurative language that it had been before being banished by the scientific establishment and its prejudices against the humanities or the non-sciences. By now it is obvious that the theme of this post is the Metaphore, which I take to be the one and only Master Trope. Perhaps before we can significantly deal with Michael's "Dead End" we will have to decide if our tool (language) is contaminated to the point where it is no longer servicable, and whether or not there are any other means at our disposal to do the same things. If we believe that we speak/write exactly what we mean, AND it turns out we both say less and more than what we think, then these sub-texts and sur-texts are there invisible but present, ready for any voice that might come along (in other words, dialectic is enhanced). In addition to all this "text" we hold in reserve somewhere, we pepper the conversation with images which say much more than mere words (while also not saying enough). Our figures of thought have the advantage (and now disadvantage) of speed. They "cut to the chase," as the saying goes. They make, "a long story short." They focus straight on the action, and waste no time. Image seems to have much more to do with the deed, action. But consider: if there are words and deeds and words and images, we may become confused and link images with deeds and declare words as passive as opposed to active. The question then would (dangerously) become, Is symbolic action passive? A new image or vision amounts to (no reduction here), a symbolic representation of a new set of meanings and deeds laid out before us in a future of possibilities. Dead End? For some things, yes. They're over. We have to use our knoggin again, I'm afraid. Back to the drawing board; back to the war room. Back to our think tanks and mosh pits. Back to our desktop computers. ("Kind of refreshing, all this openness and cold air. I'm liking it"). IMAGE: Close-up of mouth uttering these words. Pulling back we see that the man is blind-folded. Pulling further back we can see that his hands are tied behind his back and he's just finishing a Bensen and Hedges Menthol Ultralight One Hundreds cigarette. Here's what I'm confused about. Is Western Science the only method? Is there an American Indian methodology, perhaps hieroglyphic--like the Egyptian mythodology? Mark Huglen has correctly perceived what was needed for contrast to the Western ways of knowing and dominating (owning, controlling). Likewise Jeffrey Walker and Mark have begun cautiously talking about the Buddhist way or method. The irreducibility of the Indian or the Western mythodologies (like that of JD and KB), is an illustration of our Danish Physicist Werner Heisenberg's Principle of Indeterminancy: there are different perspectives on the same events, and no one by itself offers the full picture or "truth". This principle alone should do much to cure any short sighted or limited view of anything. What is the difference between reason and deconstruction? If we mean by reason (only) analysis then is deconstruction simply analysis without a view to synthesis? Jacques Derrida must have been holding his sythesis in reserve (back in the 1980's It wasn't obvious to me at all that he was showing us an alternative to the "Western"), either that or he was (is) as miffed about the West's future as most people are and did not have an alternative to the West's megalomaniac wish to conquor all. Was JD making baby steps, or were they rather those of the harlequin/intriguer doing a Lindy Hop with Fate? Might I further wager/speculate that Jacques Derrida and Kenneth Burke, in very different ways, were asking us to dance? The unity of the powerful ethnocentrism called logocentrism is in question (Bob Ashley has rightly called the unity of Postmodernism in question as well). Is everyone equally ethnocentric or logocentric? We've always had our bards, entertainers, musicians. Are they logocentric? Is Christianity less logocentric than modern science and scholarship? Does Jewish thought perfectly escape the logocentric abyss? It seems to me there are already, and always have been, alternatives to "logocentrism," (Derrida's Truth in Painting), and further, logocentrism seems to be less of a monster than it was "in the beginning." To continue with my political/militaristic metaphore or theme: A unity can be overthrown (I'm thinking of unity in the loose, Aristotelian sense where a substance is considered a unity), but a disunity cannot be so overthrown simply because only a part would in fact be overthrown and disunity would "reign". And, if it IS a question of overthrowing some unity, some identifiable monster, because of its monstrosity, is such an overthrow more political than artistic, more scientific than poetic, more militaristic than democratic (that is, more a matter of force than persuasion)? JD's affirmation of metaphore and signs without origin, his affirmation of the innocense of becoming, sounds to me like a curtain call, a SIREN, it sounds like, "Let it be [overthrown}." or "Let nature take its course." Let me throw out a few more risky metaphores without worrying whether they are wholly true or not. The West is unravelling...it has been for a long time. Jacques Derrida is a catalyst of change, a champion of a certain surrealist Dominatrix of reason and nihilism. Things are not what they seem. Further, everything seems "up for grabs." Will something birth from all this disunity, rot, discord, pandemonium? Will not dis-unity eventually cast out a new unity...sooner or later? Not the nickle-ante, ho-hum reality 'toward a better life,' Father Knows Best style (I don't mean here to bash a fellow Minneapolitan--I just wish to seriously address Michael McGee's "Dead End"), but something new, exciting, worth living for? Lovers of Rhetoric and the arts still hold a grudge against "Science" and its long standing inquisition against DIFFERENCE. We seem to want to distance ourselves from scientism and scientific method. But thought requires some sort of method, some kind of procedures or protocols. Do all procedures and methods get commandeered by powers that be just as if they were military secrets until "someone" declassifies them? I think Jacques Derrida posed the very alluring question in Dissemination: At what point is a work of literary criticism either equally or more artistic than the work it is contemplating? Criticism can certainly be art, just as art is in one way or another a comment or criticism about something in the world. So is Derrida attempting to produce a procedure or game that CANNOT be commandeered and used for questionable ends? His protocols and procedures are presumably non-scientific; he does not dispense with method altogether, rather he dispenses words, seperate analyses and distinct and different methods, dispensing them as from a Pharmacy (or more accurately, he dispenses tinctures and balms and other substances as from (analogy here) a "club" in Amsterdam). Texts are to be used, abused, tried, inhabited, explored, conflated, expanded, turned inside-out, and occasionally sown together with other texts, melted down and transformed into HYPERTEXT. (Is hypertext/hyperimage logocentric? Someone say, Good Question). David Langston responding to Mark Huglen's reference to James Chesebro's conflation of Jacques Derrida's and Kenneth Burke's texts (whew!) brings up something central to Dramatism. Let me quote: "I don't recognize either Burke or Derrida in the preceding description. (Chesebro's) The missing ingredient is "action." The notion that negativity is devoid of "materialiality" (whatever that might mean) seems far from obvious, and the suggestion that Derrida denies any relation between language and "reality" (which, I trust, does not reduce to "materiality") seems similarly well wide of the mark." (September 29th post) What is emerging from all this? Is anything "adding up"? Perhaps the only answer is "We shall see?" I've been thinking about this missing ingredient. There is more to it than the commonplace "theory leads to practice". In deliberation we have to make something out of all our theories, impressions, fantasies, ideas, whims. We try to see beyond them, that something which is coming, as in be-coming (I did not say beyond as in outside language). Synthesis is this form of pattern recognition--this form of seeing 'the larger picture.' To me anyway, this synthesis is little different from Vision (not to turn everything into mysticism again), in as much as a vision is a synthesis, a complex symbol of a new being/becoming with its new set of actions and meanings, its purposes, its future. Since it is already scientifically assumed that organisms fight for their survival, that human beings in particular have been highly adaptable, and even overtly exploitative of the natural resources in their environments, we are certain to imagine our way out of the dilemma of the "Dead End." What other choice is there? Is this what we mean by "logocentrism"--The West's maudlin Scientist/Priest/President/General quadrivium which in combination rules the planet by force and turncoat expertise? Is it part of our scene that we are trapped by our institutions, slaves of our machines, victims of history, at the mercy of a language that has no relation to "reality," or isn't it also part of the scene that we are at least half responsible for our predicament since we haven't fully responded to history and have so far failed to act in harmony with "the invisible mass?" Choice Digression: Does anyone find it funny or suspicious that the word mass as used by physicists and chemists might actually be the same mass spoken and administered in the Catholic Church? The mass is the substance, the kernal, the incantation, the essence and the appearance, the invisible but present. The Word become Bread. The Atom that we Smashed. (But even in this mixed metaphore something is missing: Action...or Energy). Here's where I thought the discussion got particularly breath-taking, especially after Michael McGee's response and switcheroo. Mark Huglen wrote on September 28th: "Both KB & JD see the world as socially constructed, filled w/ symbolic fantasies, rhetorical fictions, visions, narratives, and that are reflective, deflective, and ideological. But, ok, and like playing a game of poker we see the reality/bluff of the situation; so what's the next step? Do we raise it a nickle and try to keep playing? And what game are we playing--towards a better life? Or what game is playing us?" Two focused questions pop in my mind. Are we or can we be responsible to history? and Can we be agents of history if we don't know what the scene is? I would respond to Mark personally and question whether we fully see the reality/bluff of the situation. Do we see enough to change it? Mark I think correctly pointed out that this is a matter of attitude: "In considering the two views of Burke's Logology and Derrida's Logocentrism, my personal feeling is that Burke enters the particular enclave with more of an attitude of compassionate critical analysis, whereas I get the feeling that Derrida's (attitude) becomes a 'dead end street'." If we're prey to fortunes...to the monopolies, the media empires, the military/industrial/business complex concretized by politicians in office (or in the office of offices), as well as to the other maladies I listed a moment ago, does this mean the Drama is ended? Does it end in decay, disillusion, weariness, death itself? Nihilism? As the conversation never truly ends (but merely peters out now and then), so the drama of history isn't likely to end, therefore decadence and excess, or conservatism and weariness (lack), are merely episodes, bound to pass and to return. The Game Mark Huglen points to, the game that is playing us, the situation which we try to read as completely and accurately as possible (so we can "play back"), is not prison protocol. We often make quite a point of how thoroughly historicized and molded we are by history...and therefore only relevant to that small window of time, and after that we become curiosities, cold shells, conches or clam in an aquarium. "But for the time Being???" This question keeps ringing in my ears, keeps me looking over my shoulder. If we were to take a census I wonder if we would come up with a concensus: What is the Situation...October 2000?. Everyone take a stab at it. Let's experiment a little. I mean for fun, not for profit (that I take to be the major difference between scientist and artist). Here's my wind-up: Mytho-centric Semiosis as opposed to Logocentric Semiosis. Metaphor is the single and only master trope (I have no idea if that can or needs to be "defended"). With metaphor we say something is 'like' something else, not 'is' some specific thing. Instead of command what something is (and will continue to be), we compare two or more things and have a discussion--we don't just immediately label and dispense--or simply swallow what we're told or what has been written. Imagination is at work in the metaphore--fabricating/forging that new being/becoming and its 'deed', its 'spirit'. Via metaphor, the symbolic, Imagination (not to forget to mention a little muscle) we can go the next step beyond the mere Dramatization of the Human Dilemma, and 'work' our way out of it. This would have to be a natural and logical, mythological next step, somehow already "writing on the wall" but only now becoming faintly legible. Must our Drama change or is it already and always changing? Michael was worried (or not) about Repetition, "the Dead End". The question amounts to (mounts, that is, doesn't come down to), "Has everything been done? Is there anything else worth doing now that we have reached the end of the line of human possibilities? Why not up the ante $1000.00 and bet on the whim, the dream, the vision, or even on some good old fashioned common sense? Or have all these been done seen and crapped out? I see a magnificent, though rudimentary megalopolis and empire just sitting there waiting to be taken over. There are traces of Solomon's Temple to be found here. Just as Logocentrism bulldozed all other centrisms with its scientific reason and authority, so too will it bulldoze itself, conquoring itself by examing and dispensing with that in logocentrism which was in error. It will, and is already, deconstructing itself. Logocentrism is giving way to the collective subjectivities of mythocentrism. I'm probably like most people. I already have a problem with the word 'mythocentrism'. The word disguises an important difference between it and logocentrism. There is no central myth; at most (that's funny) there is a plurality of myths. This might be getting a little reductive but it looks like Logocentrism is to monotheism as mythocentrism is to polytheism. Instead of one word...there are a multiplicity of voices and as many words and systems and realities. We are piecing our world back together after its piecemeal destruction by King Logocentric, Center and Voice of all that shall stand. Eccentrism--decentered, multi-focused, plural culture and its 'true' melting pot-like transformations, borrowings, adoptings, abandonings...etc. This word is a good choice because it fits well (I didn't say perfectly or to the same degree), both KB and JD. The political ramifications of acentric, eccentric principles, thoughts and acts, of course, are not hard to imagine. If there is no center (Derrida's critique of Structuralism), there is no form or structure. That's the general line of the argument. Is the trick then to re-center (by becoming eccentric, acentric) and thus both re-form and re-function? Or did Derrida "prove" that all centers are provisional and not really centers at all, but at most fictions? My apologies for sustaining the essay for so long. To me it still seems to be trying to complete itself, to round itself off at an appropriate place. The protocol of infinite substitions does need to be curtailed at some point. We couldn't just keep dispensing with terminologies, ideas, dreams, phobias, wishes, obsessions ad infinitum. Becoming acentric or eccentric is to go in the opposite direction--away from the center, the origin or beginning of a circumference; it is to push toward the outer limits (margins, extremes, etc.) precisely in order to gain new perspectives and visions of the great and small human dramas. There is certainly not a single, central drama, the same for each of us. But there is after all something in Drama that is the same for us all. That we must live, that we must act, that we must die. And there is also this other difference I've been wondering about, that between make-believe and the real thing. The Drama of Death vs the real thing. Life as ethos as opposed to life as play or entertainment. I assume imagination is not devoid of ethics (another centrist term, whose ethics? whats ethics?). Is there only one Reason, one Rational and Moral order? How many cultures are there and how do they think differently? Rationality seems to me to be the product of imagination--the super-rational creative and perhaps even bumbling genius of the species has fabricated one method after another and each in its turn has been tragically termed REASON, CENTRAL AUTHORITY...but we of course know better and see these passing away as everything else does. How might music and magic fit in here? I wanted to include these periferal topics in my essay 'Echelons of Thought' in order to help complete its form. If a curse is magic then so too is a blessing (not to sneak christian science into the narrative, Camille). The raindance then is the blessing of rain; a war dance the blessing of victory; deconstruction the blessing of re-construction, and war itself the blessing of peace and vice versa since Peace is the blessing of new wars and new victories. Music is perfectly adapted to the dramatization of ideas, especially the resolution of dissonance and disharmony. No synthetic act can probably be accomplished without music, nor without vision and the other arts. Earlier I suggested Derrida and Burke were asking us to get out on the dance floor. They are also asking us to travel, get involved in politics, read good books...and talk to each other. Michael McGee wrote in that fateful September 28th post, "KB is not Postmodern: but poststructural, late-modern, liberal, and he was a weapons manufacturer in the continuing war against scientism." I've mentioned Heisenberg, I've mentioned enlistment, I've mentioned weapons fashion design and the atomic clock. Ultimately we must affect a merger of Science and Culture performing the same conflation which we'll do with our authors. I take the word Drama to mean that which cannot be broken down any further. The focus of Dramatism is not on the Present. The present moment is not even an atom in Burke's theory. The bare present moment is too reductive. Burke's reduction stops just shy of the point beyond which human meaning would no longer make sense or be the subject of knowledge. Let's call the unity to which Burke reduced language study a singularity as they do in modern physics courses. Dramatism is a distinguishable phenomenon and a theory with a calculus of motives, that is, a technique for decyphering and interpreting texts as well as actions. With Dramatism KB allows us to consider the whole ensemble of life...neglecting no part. I wonder if Jacques Derrida is less politial than Kenneth Burke. He emphasizes the innocense of becoming and the violence of definition. He almost preaches a joyful destruction--that of the play of a cosmic child in a vast, universal play pen. The passionate destruction and recreation of forms. The work of revolution at an abstract distance. Deconstruction may in fact be "the diplomacy of revolution," (the actual diplomatic struggle itself), whereas Logology may be more like "the representation of the diplomacy of revolution." The diplomacy of diplomacy. We shall see. Thanks for your concerted and sustained attention, and as always...fill me in. Leslie Bruder Minneapolis Minnesota From VM Wed Oct 04 19:58:19 2000 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 19:58:19 -0700 From: "Jerry Ross" Subject: kb and jd Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 100 I've been following (or at least as much as a busy comp teacher can manage!) the Burke and Derrida discussion with some interest. For me, it's been quite timely, as our little philosophy reading group is now looking at JD's "Pharmakon." Tonight as I browsed through Disseminations, my eye (strangely enough!) was attracted by the phrase "The semen is already swarming." Needless to say, I read on. (roughly pgs. 302-3) What struck me in this little passage (which, granted, I read out of context, but there's something appealing about reading Derrida non-sequentially) was the number of Burkeian analogies/concepts imbedded in just these two pages. Reminded me of a KB anecdote I heard somewhere: when asked what he thought of JD and deconstruction, he waved his hand and said "We were doing that stuff in the Thirties." Here's what I've noticed: 1. JD's method of literary analysis looks suspiciously like indexing. Derrida reads texts closely, looking for patterns in the weave. He groups terms together in "signifying chains" much like KB's "what goes with what, what vs. what, and what becomes what." Both are unafraid to add their own thread to the weave (or even to fray a few threads in the process). 2. Differance and the principle of the negative both premise an essential division of one from the other (Yes says No to itself in KB, thereby begetting Something; JD posits "the blow" or the "cut"-differance is a sledgehammer which opens things up). Both differance and the negative ironically result in multiplicity-the Scramble of the Human Barnyard and Dissemination. 3. As a distinctively organic metaphor, dissemination in these passages is described as a seed or germ. It is also closely connected to terms: "Germ is but another word for term." Dissemination for JD describes the process whereby terms are multiplied into signifying chains, into socially reified systems and institutions or orders. Sounds a lot like entelechy to me. I'm tired. That's all I have for now. But it seems that, even in a quick and dirty reading, KB and JD can dance. Jerry From VM Wed Oct 04 21:10:33 2000 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 21:10:33 -0700 From: "Jerry Ross" Subject: Re: kb and jd Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 101 I was just lying in bed, having a smoke and watching the mp3s whirl, musing some more over kb and jd, when i realized I had Burke's poem wrong, and in that mistake lies an important amplification of the general idea I had re: el negativo and differance. The poem *actually* reads "In the beginning, there was universal Nothing, then Nothing said No to itself, and thereby begat Something, which called itself Yes." I had it bass-ackwards! My mistake reveals, I suppose, the essentially positivist error--putting something before nothing, imagining a pre-existent, originating something. Of course, both the negative and differance are logically prior to Something--they are the Nothing that says No to itself, the primal insemination which is dissemination. Ain't mistakes fun? Jerry ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerry Ross" To: Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 7:58 PM Subject: kb and jd > I've been following (or at least as much as a busy comp teacher can manage!) > the Burke and Derrida discussion with some interest. For me, it's been > quite timely, as our little philosophy reading group is now looking at JD's > "Pharmakon." Tonight as I browsed through Disseminations, my eye (strangely > enough!) was attracted by the phrase "The semen is already swarming." > Needless to say, I read on. (roughly pgs. 302-3) > > What struck me in this little passage (which, granted, I read out of > context, but there's something appealing about reading Derrida > non-sequentially) was the number of Burkeian analogies/concepts imbedded in > just these two pages. Reminded me of a KB anecdote I heard somewhere: when > asked what he thought of JD and deconstruction, he waved his hand and said > "We were doing that stuff in the Thirties." > > Here's what I've noticed: > > 1. JD's method of literary analysis looks suspiciously like indexing. > Derrida reads texts closely, looking for patterns in the weave. He groups > terms together in "signifying chains" much like KB's "what goes with what, > what vs. what, and what becomes what." Both are unafraid to add their own > thread to the weave (or even to fray a few threads in the process). > 2. Differance and the principle of the negative both premise an essential > division of one from the other (Yes says No to itself in KB, thereby > begetting Something; JD posits "the blow" or the "cut"-differance is a > sledgehammer which opens things up). Both differance and the negative > ironically result in multiplicity-the Scramble of the Human Barnyard and > Dissemination. > 3. As a distinctively organic metaphor, dissemination in these passages is > described as a seed or germ. It is also closely connected to terms: "Germ > is but another word for term." Dissemination for JD describes the process > whereby terms are multiplied into signifying chains, into socially reified > systems and institutions or orders. Sounds a lot like entelechy to me. > > I'm tired. That's all I have for now. But it seems that, even in a quick > and dirty reading, KB and JD can dance. > > Jerry > > > From VM Thu Oct 05 07:24:46 2000 Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 07:24:46 -0500 From: "David Blakesley" Subject: RE: Christian Scientist Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 102 Camille, I wouldn't characterize Burke's use of Christian Science as "doctrinal," but your colleague is right. Michael Feehan has a long and very good essay on Burke and Mary Baker Eddy (the founder of Christian Science) forthcoming in the Henderson/Williams volume, _Unending Conversations_ (Jan. 2001). Dave -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Camille K. Lewis Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 9:45 AM To: 'Burke-L (E-mail)' Subject: Christian Scientist Yesterday, a colleague made a casual reference that KB infused his writing with Christian Science "doctrine." Anybody have any clues to this? Camille K. Lewis Doctoral Candidate Communication and Culture Indiana University Bloomington From VM Thu Oct 05 08:51:35 2000 Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 08:51:35 -0500 From: Jeffrey Walker Subject: Re: kb and jd Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 103 Jerry Ross wrote (among other things): > ... a KB anecdote I heard somewhere: when > asked what he thought of JD and deconstruction, he waved his hand and said > "We were doing that stuff in the Thirties." To which we can add J. Hillis Miller's remark (I forget where! can someone remind me?) that, "if you've read Burke, you don't need Derrida so much anymore." (I am surely misquoting, but it's words to that effect.) Not that one can just replace Derrida with Burke (or vice versa), but that, as Jerry says, they can dance together. Actually, I'd like some help not only with locating the Hillis Miller quote, but also the source of that Burke anecdote. -- Jeffrey Walker English / Emory University / Atlanta, GA 30322 office: N313 Callaway / telephone: 404-727-5274 http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jwalke3 From VM Thu Oct 05 09:14:36 2000 Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 09:14:36 -0500 From: Jeffrey Walker Subject: Re: kb and jd Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 104 Jerry Ross wrote: > ... The poem *actually* reads "In the beginning, there was universal Nothing, > then Nothing said No to itself, and thereby begat Something, which called > itself Yes." ... Has anybody connected this with Gorgias's (in-)famous "On the Nonexistent" (actually, the extant paraphrases thereof)? I mean not just a quick reference to Gorgias's oft-cited 3 theses in that piece (nothing exists; if something existed, it would be unknowable; if knowable, incommunicable by means of language [because words are a different order of things than things]), but a close analysis of the (rather torturous) argument re "nothing exists," and the relation between "nothing" and "being." (As I fuzzily recall, it goes something like: if nothing did not exist, then being could not exist either, as being is the negation of nothing; but if being did not exist, nothing would exist; hence nothing exists; and if nothing exists, it follows that being does not exist, etc. ... but the complete *paraphrase* of this argument runs for about a page.) Surely it has been done ... if so, once again I'd like reminders. If not ... somebody should. Thence (while you're mentioning it) to Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy," and Gorgias's wellknown statement (in the "Encomium of Helen") that discourse (logos) acts like a drug (pharmakon) upon the psyche, with sometimes beneficial & sometimes fatal results. -- Jeffrey Walker English / Emory University / Atlanta, GA 30322 office: N313 Callaway / telephone: 404-727-5274 http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jwalke3 From VM Thu Oct 05 10:18:17 2000 Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 10:18:17 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: KB and JD, Logo to Loco Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 105 To Jeffrey, I say: I think you'll find Burke's statement to the effect that "We were doing that stuff in the '30's," that "stuff" being Derridean Post-Structuralism or Post-Modernist criticism, in Crusius's Kenneth Burke and the Conversation After Philosophy (SIU Press, 1999). It's in the chapter in which Tim deals with CS, I do believe. He got it from Burke in a conversation at the farm. The book is upstairs and I don't feel like going after the page number right now. But take a look there. To Mark, I say: In his intro to Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought, Brock does, indeed, posit a development in Burke's linguistic philosophy from "critical realism" to "conceptualism" to "symbolic coherence," "symbolic coherence" not being a "realistic" approach to the philosophy of language. Let's assume Brock is correct in his analysis. Does that mean that a "user" of Burke's ideas, even a slavish Burkean acolyte like myself, has to go with what Burke ends up doing or espousing at the climax of his thought and career? Why can't I say, hey, I like what Burke is doing in P&C. I think Burke's emphasis there on "recalcitrance" is right on. I can relate to his anecdote about the guy who calls himself a "bird," flaps his arms, and jumps off a cliff, never to employ such language again. I can support and use most of the constructs Burke offers in RR, but I think I'll go with the earlier Burke when it comes to "realism," or at least realism of a kind, and "symbolic coherence." That earlier emphasis makes a bit more sense to me. Can't I do that? More than one interpreter of Burke, including Crusius, has said that the focal Burke book is P&C. I'm not sure I'd go that far. But I may privilege it in respect to certain facets of Burke's thought. The other thing I'd say to Mark, by way of reiteration, is that, unlike perhaps Wess, Rueckert, and maybe even Brock, I prefer to emphasize continuities in Burke's philosophical development, not departures. I regard "On Human Behavior Considered 'Dramatistically,'" the QJS essays on the negative, and RR as natural culminations of Burke's earlier thinking, points of arrival that fulfill previous trajectories of speculation, not radical, or quasi-radical, dislocations or veerings off into unforetold regions of theory and conjecture. The hortatory negative, the motive of perfection, the terms for order, the theological paradigm for symbol-using in general, logological emphasis on language as a motive in itself--we can see it all coming, if we but look, in so much of what Burke had to say in both his early and middle periods. I've posted in detail on such connections before. I'll not bore you now with repetitive argumentation. Have a good one everybody. Ed From VM Thu Oct 05 10:53:54 2000 Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 10:53:54 -0500 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: The Lurking Swarm Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 106 Hate to just eat and run. I guess I had better leave the conversation that never ends to the inch-worms and their marvelous vision of...well?...a conversation that doesn't go anywhere. "Leading when I should have been following." Upon finishing my cigerette I was relieved to hear, instead of the counterpoint of gunfire, the rustling of paper. There had been a last minute reprieve. I don't know who to thank for springing me. They confiscated the printing press (my Hewlitt Packard 486). Good Riddance! That stuff can get you killed. I'll pick up that book on argumentation this afternoon (addressee unknown). But seriously! It doesn't look like we're going to have that debate, Michael, Mark. There are too many reasons why not to jump into the spotlight, least of which our other duties which keep us hopping. Poor Jack! It looks like he was obsolete before he was translated into English. Sorry for swarming all over. Like most things I buy, I didn't read the package and disclaimer: no posts over 200 lines; don't address the entire group; and don't talk about KB itself (?). Hope to get back to you after that closer reading of Burke. (whoever you are) lb From VM Fri Oct 06 02:33:09 2000 Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 02:33:09 -0500 From: "Huglen, Mark" Subject: The Lurking Swarm? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 107 And then the parlor seemed to quiet down . . . where to go, what to do now . . . the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty looms . . . does this drama need resolution? I'd like to sit back and think for a while . . . sustain the feeling . . . Leslie talks of music, I can't help but think of the progression of the notes of a chord that Burke talks about in CS: you know, when you play the note "middle c" on the piano, and continue up the scale d, e, f, g, a, b, . . . and hold it . . . play the "b" soft . . . play the "b" again a little louder so it pierces . . . Something inside of us wants to press that last note, the higher "c," to complete the progression of the musical form. The drama? Awaiting the "cult of the kill?" "A New Birth?" I think Ed is right that as we move through the development in Burke's linguistic philosophy from "critical realism" to "conceptualism" to "symbolic coherence," we can think of them in a complex way (as opposed to reducing the Burkean corpora to one area), where we may study the different phases as separate but also as a whole, use the different phases separately and/or together according to our needs, and perhaps even live the phases differently depending upon the situation. I agree with Ed in his assessment and suggestion that Brock, and I believe the late Kenneth Burke as well, would not see the developmental phases as anything fixed and/or linear. To move this forward, I ask another question among the others already on the table: Do we need to hear the "clash" of the symbols (two hands clapping) in terms of a heated debate and argument to bring us to that next note to complete the form (as opposed to "one hand clapping" as Jeffrey alludes to-perhaps we ought transform that statement into "one hand directing . . . in a quite fluid and magnificent way)? Sitting back, at least for a while . . . need to see what others have to say . . . Mark Huglen From VM Fri Oct 06 04:27:21 2000 Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 04:27:21 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 108 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_001D_01C02F4D.B7973060 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I don't know if "debate" is the next step, or a search for the note to complete the mathematical expectation of a melody, or some other alternative way to think of the course of a conversation. But I do have something to say about the What of what JD "does" to KB and vice versa. JD needs KB more than KB needs JD. I say this as a trained rhetorician, a member of an organization and an e-list devoted to discussion of KB's works, and a theorist whose every thought has at some level been informed by what KB had to say about the world. So surprise, surprise, I believe that JD needs KB more than KB needs JD. JD's answer to logocentrism is simply to expose it. He leaves to others the heavy responsibility both of analysis and of "treatment" (Action). That's why, IMO, his work has been more influential in America than in France, among non-philosophers than among philosophers. He is easily appropriable by marxissants looking for a way to restate Marxism after the failure of communism, of at least the clinical experiment the USSR once was. They have the analysis, JD has the "symptom," and now all they need is a way to incorporate constructions of some sort into The System. I'm thinking from an unfair and unusually negative angle about Laclau and Mouffe here. A better angle would include the marxissants and everyone else in the post-war condition: How can we "translate" the complex worlds of discourse human beings have created into material realities that feed the hungry, clothe the cold, house the homeless, and include the margins? HOW? KB doesn't have some check-list method or system. But he does have a WORD that JD and most of his devotees lack, the word "rhetoric" and the perspective toward language/action it suggests. "Discourse" is entirely too general a term. It "fixes" the linguistic creations of humanity into apparently frozen things that can be studied historically. The term is a way of sucking the Action out of social/cultural constructions by pretending that the constructing has stopped at the moment the critic/theorist picks up her pen to write a note about it. KB's "rhetoric," on the other hand, would be snuffed like a candle if it were ever stopped long enough, held still long enough, to study social/cultural constructions deconstructively. Rhetoric makes you think about and study PROCESS even as it is proceeding. BUT KB needs JD, too. KB's "rhetoric" is not enough Isocratic. It moves along looking for perspective and leaving methods-of-the-moment along its trail like articles of clothing dropped as you run to the swimming hole for a hot day's skinny dip. It's so interested in the swim that it forgets to check for water pollution or even water level. Where in KB are the cold, hungry, homeless outcasts of the myths we live within and by? Where is the Isocratic acknowledgment that "rhetoric" is always and inescapably POLITICAL, that it takes positions, that it performs itself and makes translations as it goes along? You cannot simply celebrate logocentrism, gleefully announcing that you know why it happened and with what consequence ("We were doing that in the thirties.") KB in the thirties was doing what the postmarxists are doing today, surrendering to the Marxist analysis and subscribing to the marxissant programs for Action. Like the old advertisement for Greyhound busses, "Leave the Driving to Us," jump into KB's world and leave the politics to somebody else. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph. D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, Iowa 52241 319-338-1796 (FAX) 319-338-8214 (Voice) mailto:michael@mcgees.net ------=_NextPart_000_001D_01C02F4D.B7973060 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAx MDA2MDkyNzIwWjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQU0DI4Q339pwQtvdKsk1pRPX3BW38wMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEBfLID78noXhGKTkXO+JY04PTTZvAW7nd2A0p/dvxtoLC1+tIDR QIK2QVd4REEIMOh6d1mquFKTvHfoQfQPKQL7AAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_001D_01C02F4D.B7973060-- From VM Fri Oct 06 09:46:11 2000 Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 09:46:11 -0400 (EDT) From: David Langston Subject: Re: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 109 This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info. ------=_NextPart_000_001D_01C02F4D.B7973060 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=iso-8859-1 Content-ID: On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Michael Calvin McGee wrote: > JD's answer to logocentrism is simply to expose it. He leaves to others > the heavy responsibility both of analysis and of "treatment" (Action). I tend to agree, although I have been told that Derrida's recent work on friendship takes a more interesting tack. It would be interesting to know if friendship has "action" entailed in its operations. But Michael McGee's comments about KB, JD and the "marxissants" brings up several other observations, particularly with regard to Chesebro's article which Mark Huglen quoted recently (I thought approvingly) and which I finally found and found time to read. (Since Edward Appel has reported that Chesebro's position has already been heavily criticized at some conference, I will limit my reactions -- at this point -- to a couple of political points.) At the beginning of his essay, Chesebro highlights biographical details of both KB and JD, but to my way of accounting for intellectual biography he omits some crucial details. In KB's case, Chesebro does not mention Burke's association with the Bohemian world of Greenwich Village during a time of enormous intellectual and political ferment. With tactful indirection reminiscent of the McCarthy days, Chesebro skirts Burke's association with left-wing political movements and groups. He emphasizes the "unity" which Burke's theory of symbols envisions, and he nowhere cites the direct assault on essentialist theories of meaning which those theories entail. ...an inadequate account, Mr. Chesebro's. With respect to JD, Chesebro nowhere mentions that Derrida was born to Jewish parents, and except for naming Derrida's birthplace, he makes nothing of the fact that Derrida grew up in Algeria and has occupied a double position of social marginality in French intellectual life. So, to adumbrate several long paragraphs, with regard to biography AND with regard to methods of rhetorical analysis, I am more inclined to see more commonalities between Burke and Derrida than Mr. Chesebro does. I will pass over the distressing inadequacies of his characterizations of both Burke and Derrida. By the same token I see both of them profoundly caught up in the cultural politics of their times. Which brings us to Mr. McGee's complaint about the politics of Burke and Derrida. As I indicated above, I tend to see Derrida as less politically engaged because he doesn't have the benefit of a category called "Action." But I am mystified by McGee's question, "Where is the Isocratic acknowledgment that "rhetoric" is always and inescapably POLITICAL?" Well, we could start with "Hitler's Battle" as an obvious case, but I would extend it to the implicit politics in his analysis of Augustine in _Rhetoric of Religion_ and his critique of Emerson's idealistic optimism in LSA. I would be interested in why those essays do not meet Mr. McGee's standard for political engagement. Because Burke insists that signs position us inevitably on one side or another in what sign can mean, his analyses will always carry inevitable political implications. David Langston ------=_NextPart_000_001D_01C02F4D.B7973060-- From VM Fri Oct 06 10:34:57 2000 Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2000 10:34:57 -0700 From: Dan Smith Subject: Re: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 110 Michael Calvin McGee writes: [. . .] >JD's answer to logocentrism is simply to expose it. He leaves to others >the heavy responsibility both of analysis and of "treatment" (Action). Perhaps Dr. McGee and I have different understandings of action, but, as I see it, there are multiple vectors of political intervention as well as modes of action. And to suggest that Derrida's project is simply one of exposure is incorrect in my opinion. But even if it is, McGee seems to suggest that exposure is outside the realm of action and thereby politically ineffectual. I respectfully disagree with that as well. Was not the "effectivity" of Marxist discourse based in an elaborate *exposure* of the logics and effects of capital and relations of production? An exposure of the "falsity" of bourgeois ideology? Do not many modes of critical analysis function through their implicit or explicit claims to expose something not readily discernible? Don't rhetorical critics do just that all the time? Derrida's work does not exhibit the historical sensibilities of a Marx or a Foucault b/c his focus is (or was anyway) the metaphysics of presence, which, for Derrida is not transhistorical but has predominated for over two millenia. Nevertheless, works like Spectres of Marx, The Post Card, Limited Inc, and others, show that Derrida is very aware of how this metaphysics operates and is transformed in different historical contexts. Indeed, in Limited Inc, in an effort to counter uniformed deployments and criticisms of his "there is nothing outside the text," Derrida writes: "What I call 'text' implies all the structures of the so-called 'real', economic, historical, socio-institutional, in short: all possible referents" (148). Anyone who read what "writing" means to Derrida would not have needed that clarification. The "play" of signifiers is not chaotic or random, it occurs in very real, concrete historical circumstances that affect the everyday lives of people. Undecidability does not mean that nothing means anything, or anything can mean anything. Readings of Derrida's texts readily shows that he is aware of this. He's no Marx or Foucault, but nor is he blind to the forces of history. Anyone who suggests otherwise--like those who want claim that Derrida's philosophy sees language as "untethered"--has not taken the time to read his work carefully. But maybe I've misunderstood Dr. McGee. If I have, I hope he'll clarify be elaborating a bit on what he means by "exposure" and "action." Cheers, Dan Smith PS-My apologies for not working Burke into this post somehow, but I hope this discussion of Derrida will promote even more productive discussion about them vis-a-vis each other. From VM Fri Oct 06 11:42:47 2000 Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 11:42:47 -0400 From: "Scott McLemee" Subject: Re: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 111 Kudos to Dan Smith for a posting that shows a real grasp of what Derrida does and doesn't do. I wish he had written the paper on Derrida and Burke in that anthology a few years back. (It would have spared me a certain amount of gnashing of the teeth). Are there any *serious* publications out there on Burke and deconstruction, by critics who have actually made some sustained engagement with JD's work -- at very least, with "White Mythology," "Signature Event Context," and "Limited, Inc"? Without that, the discussion seems fated to keep coming to the not-even-half-truisms (e.g., "Derrida believes we need a new theory of communication that isn't logocentric," or "deconstruction takes texts aparts but Burke builds from them," or whatever). From VM Fri Oct 06 16:35:04 2000 Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 16:35:04 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 112 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0051_01C02FB3.60CEF040 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ouch and Whoa! I intended to provoke, and I know all about the underlying thin-skinned-ness of JD defenders/promoters who tire of charges that a French metaphysician is less into politics than he should be. I have read JD pretty thoroughly, indeed I can claim to have studied some of his writing. I have glanced at the magazine articles you refer to as well. I think I know where he's coming from, and where he's coming from, he badly needs the meaning of the word "action" as rhetoricians Isocrates forward would use that term. No, writing a book about theory is not political action. Yes, writing a book about political theory is a form of political action within the group of theorists the book was targeted to reach in the first place. This is not hard to grasp. If you engage in politics, you are seeking power, specifically in the multiple constructions we inherit, the power of the state. You want it all (revolution), or you want parts of it (legislation), or both, and you intend to use it to do good. Discourse produced to acquire, maintain, and apply power is Political Action. Anything else is entertainment, education, metaphysics, conversations such as this one. It is not Action *within the purview of the term rhetoric*. If you are not actively and presently seeking to put bread on the table, get milk for the babies, house the homeless, bring the marginalized around the fire, you are not engaging in Action *within the purview of the term rhetoric*." My claim, and my purpose, has never been to trash JD. In fact, if you followed the thread, my original claim was that he ought to be included in conversation, brought to the table. And what he should be given is a hearty meal of KB-style "rhetoric." But not a meal of KB-style "rhetoric" that dismisses JD out of hand because he's "a Frenchie," or because "We were doing that in the thirties," or because JD's too hard to understand to take the trouble to study. KB needs JD's more sophisticated understanding of logocentrism. KB's placeholder for logocentrism was "Myth," and let's face it folks, he never got very specific about "Myths." He derived several methodologies to deal with specific, incarnate "myths," but he really didn't write about logocentrism. When he discovered it late in life -- when the method-of-the-moment became "logology" -- he *celebrated* it, and drew us a chart of *Order*, as if we were going to bow down to this feudal concept! (Every time I see that Chart I confess it crosses my mind as to where the plastique charges should be placed to bring a pyramid down.) Deconstruct deconstruction by introducing the *more specific* concept "rhetoric," with at least a Burkina flavor, and tossing that metaphysical place-holder term "Discourse" out the window. Dispose of that dying word "Myth," and focus the KB Orientation on the presence and effects and consequences of Logocentrism. michael ------=_NextPart_000_0051_01C02FB3.60CEF040 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAx MDA2MjEzNTAzWjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUIbg52FuS2nzXe//VQzU2TabnbtIwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEAoe1INCTTrgjAcAaIn9Lz7xmQi4mAbCkauzbaQundZxfrjWzAa kygtn7ZFew1IbLtqGSF8V/vkBRTp70eIdfpSAAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_0051_01C02FB3.60CEF040-- From VM Fri Oct 06 16:37:05 2000 Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 16:37:05 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: For David Langston Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 113 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0058_01C02FB3.A90FA480 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Could you please re-send your post, David? My browser won't let me open it. michael ------=_NextPart_000_0058_01C02FB3.A90FA480 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAx MDA2MjEzNzA0WjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUcC/8yacHA+ERK9gagRjzqbGWChswMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEC6CQr56pTjXim6F+FWYAYejqXe+qosLnKfLGVIsgSICctt7DRD PnpsdpUeaM31zz3dsJMX9SBhlH7rC3Dbzz30AAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_0058_01C02FB3.A90FA480-- From VM Fri Oct 06 18:38:23 2000 Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2000 18:38:23 -0700 From: Dan Smith Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 114 At 04:35 PM 10/6/00 -0500, Dr. McGee wrote: >Ouch and Whoa! > >I intended to provoke, and I know all about the underlying >thin-skinned-ness of JD defenders/promoters who tire of charges that a >French metaphysician is less into politics than he should be. Thin-skinned? I don't that's what motivated my response, but okay. As for how much someone *should* be into politics, and what exactly constitutes "politics," I'd appreciate if you'd explain how you make those determinations. I have read >JD pretty thoroughly, indeed I can claim to have studied some of his >writing. I have glanced at the magazine articles you refer to as well. Everything I referred to is a book, not magazine articles. It seems we may not have read the same things. Just so we're on the same page here, could you tell what you have read and what about it marks its lack of political engagement? >I think I know where he's coming from, and where he's coming from, he badly >needs the meaning of the word "action" as rhetoricians Isocrates forward >would use that term. I searched desperately for an essay of yours on Isocrates that I'd downloaded from your web site a few years back, in the hopes of getting a better sense of what you mean by action, but to no avail. Could I trouble you to articulate it? Moreover, is this conception of action a necessary condition for being a rhetorician. I ask b/c the "would" in your statement above seems to imply a should. >No, writing a book about theory is not political action. Inasmuch as you've stated that you're "influenced" by Burke--as some of your published work states as well--I'd think that you'd be of the opinion that all writing is political and rhetorical. Am I wrong? What if a book on theory prompts a scholar to alter his or her pedagogy in manner that makes it more overtly political, doesn't that count as political action? Indeed, I remember reading theoretical pieces in a theory seminar that changed my whole view of rhetoric, culture, and politics. In fact they were written by these guys named McKerrow and McGee (hey that's you!). Yes, writing a >book about political theory is a form of political action within the group >of theorists the book was targeted to reach in the first place. This is >not hard to grasp. Nor is hard to grasp how that target group may use that theory to teach and/or do politics in new ways. >If you engage in politics, you are seeking power, specifically in the >multiple constructions we inherit, the power of the state. Well, here's the problem (or at least part of it). You see the power to alter, to change, to transform as having its locus in the state. I don't agree with that at all. This is not to say that seeking political change through capital "P" political channels is wrong, however. You want it >all (revolution), or you want parts of it (legislation), or both, and you >intend to use it to do good. Discourse produced to acquire, maintain, and >apply power is Political Action. Anything else is entertainment, >education, metaphysics, conversations such as this one. Being the Nietzschean/Foucauldian/Deleuzean that I am, I have to disagree. Under your definition, most of the discourse produced by the mass media doesn't count as political action. A dubious position, in my opinion. It is not Action >*within the purview of the term rhetoric*. If you are not actively and >presently seeking to put bread on the table, get milk for the babies, >house the homeless, bring the marginalized around the fire, you are not >engaging in Action *within the purview of the term rhetoric*." How is rhetoric defined here? And how did it achieve the status of being able to determine is what is and is not political action? I guess this brings us back to the Isocrates question. What about discourses that critique/problematize/transform the discourses and discursive practices that contribute to the social problems you mention, even though during such critical discourse one doesn't mention any social problems? Sorry, but that's all I have time for right now. Cheers, Dan From VM Sat Oct 07 10:21:08 2000 Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2000 10:21:08 -0400 From: "Scott McLemee" Subject: Re: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 115 Michael Calvin McGee writes: >I intended to provoke, and I know all about the underlying >thin-skinned-ness of JD defenders/promoters who tire of charges that a >French metaphysician is less into politics than he should be. Well, I don't know much about Derrida's flunkies (not being inclined to keep up with his work any more, much less what you folks in the universities do with or about it). But some passionately anti-JD friends in Paris insist quite the opposite: that he's far too political in the worst sense, a water-carrier for the Socialist Party, pretty much. In any case, the notion that Derrida is some kind of depoliticized navel-gazer is risible. The essays and interviews about apartheid, racism, the EU, drug abuse, the Gulf War, and the funding of philosophy as part of the high-school curriculum -- whatever you think of them, these aren't exactly the writings of an unpolitical man. Nor are they in a seperate bin from his deconstructive work. From VM Sat Oct 07 10:56:01 2000 Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2000 10:56:01 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 116 Dan asked these questions of Michael: As for how much someone *should* be into politics, and what exactly constitutes "politics," I'd appreciate if you'd explain how you make those determinations. I would underscore the second of Dan's two questions in particular. In your Roman toga-clad presentation with Bruce Gronbeck at NCA in Chicago in 1997, you made a claim to the effect that all "scientific" endeavor was political in nature. I questioned you about Einstein's theoretical efforts in bringing to life the specific and general theories of relativity. What expressly "political" was going on there--in Einstein's celebrated head? Your reply, as I recall, had to do with what kind of applications Einstein's formulations were put to, and what kind of government funding the type of work Einstein was doing generally receives or does not receive. Neither of these responses, in my opinion, directly addressed what Einstein was doing in his theoretical work at that time and place in history. It seemed to me then, and it still seems to me now, that you offer and support an awfully broad definition of "political." We've been round and round on this point before on Burke-L, so maybe I'm beating a dead horse. It seems to me, though, that unless one equates the "political" with anything that has social, or even hierarchal (even perfectionistic?) dimensions--equates the word "political" with the word "action" in the Burkean sense?--your conception of the political is too broad. As an aside, I will report that I have recalled the name of the Harvard political scientist I referred to, who, in an article in the New Republic, called Postmodernist philosophers and thinkers "arrogant" and "dismissive" in the large. He is Peter Berkowitz, whose 1995 book on Nietzsche and ethics sought to "rescue" the German iconoclast from the Postmoderns. Berkowitz will need lots of luck in that project. Ed From VM Sun Oct 08 19:01:35 2000 Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2000 19:01:35 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 117 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_00D4_01C0315A.2D3F1360 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Actually, Scott, they are in a separate bin from his deconstructive work. They came lately, as a result of "charges" that deconstruction, as a theory/method of interpreting texts and the world-as-text, ignored problems of power. And they do not present new alternatives, which one would hope to be the result of methodical interpretation. They are instead the tired responses of (French) socialism. Yes, JD has a politics and is capable of writing about particulars. Yes, he has a good if metaphysical theory of interpretation. Are the two connected in more than a patch-work fashion? I think maybe, but I believe there are many who doubt. But this misses the point. I'm all wrong, Scott. I screwed up royally. I said something about JD that wasn't true. I deserve to be risibled. Now what does that have to do with the main question of the thread? Do you or don't you think that we may profit in bringing JD and KB into conversations about logocentrism/logology TOGETHER, finding/framing issues in much different ways than they might be found/framed by "going it alone" through either writer's mind? Once we get that one thought out, we might ask similar questions about KB and Baudrillard, KB and Lyotard, KB and Eco. The dialogue will then have been far more meaningful, far more useful to me, anyway, than contrasting very specific readings of KB passages and highly generalized "articles of faith" supposedly shared by "postmodernists." michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Scott McLemee Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 9:21 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Re: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Michael Calvin McGee writes: >I intended to provoke, and I know all about the underlying >thin-skinned-ness of JD defenders/promoters who tire of charges that a >French metaphysician is less into politics than he should be. Well, I don't know much about Derrida's flunkies (not being inclined to keep up with his work any more, much less what you folks in the universities do with or about it). But some passionately anti-JD friends in Paris insist quite the opposite: that he's far too political in the worst sense, a water-carrier for the Socialist Party, pretty much. In any case, the notion that Derrida is some kind of depoliticized navel-gazer is risible. The essays and interviews about apartheid, racism, the EU, drug abuse, the Gulf War, and the funding of philosophy as part of the high-school curriculum -- whatever you think of them, these aren't exactly the writings of an unpolitical man. Nor are they in a seperate bin from his deconstructive work. ------=_NextPart_000_00D4_01C0315A.2D3F1360 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAx MDA5MDAwMTM0WjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUqjyP49ol8OfMGgXi2gprZqrouDEwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABEAC0fuc2pMxZRtWIGEWVjGWtnIh2SWYox1h0xe4zl+95LtoNjwo WJaCOV21RVEXQuBGDjjG5CD/cirZIqEGOMLcAAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_00D4_01C0315A.2D3F1360-- From VM Sun Oct 08 19:46:48 2000 Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2000 19:46:48 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 118 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_00E3_01C03160.7DFC92E0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I do believe that everything is political, that power is the central feature of human social life, the central tenet of human cultural systems. I never have been good at responding to "gotcha" questions such as yours about Einstein's theory of relativity, Ed. I gave you a lame answer. Sorry 'bout that. And if you believe that your ability to name one or a hundred APPARENT exceptions to my claim is a good reason to read/listen no further, then it's time to hit the delete button. KB was a Realist. I call it a new kind of "Materialism," but I'm a Realist, too. My main points on this question are these: 1. Rhetoric has always been about power, usually about how those who have power ought to use symbols to cloak it, make it more comfortable. As appropriated by revolutionaries, rhetoric has been about how to expose as "oppressive" the terms and resources of "establishment" symbols. These generalizations apply, I think, whether we are talking about absolute monarchy (see Machiavelli's *The Prince*, addressed to Lorenzo DeMedici from prison in an effort to get out there from) or about the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. 2. Power has always been about control of people who are ready and willing to be violent, those who hold swords or M-16's. Mao Tse Tung and Mahatma Gandhi proved that masses of people can trump this power if they are willing to be careless with their bodies. These two fountains of power can and usually are kept apart by the derived, parasitic, secondary power of rhetoric. 3. In between these extreme, earth-shaking possibilities lie the realities of everyday life, where people are "conditioned" to "proper" life/behavior within the social and cultural institutions that constitute their environment. People spend most of their lives figuring out this vast ("logocentric") network, maneuvering within it to become a "success" or seeking to subvert it to be "free." BUT 4. All this APPARENT political action is a frivolous waste of time if efforts are not aimed at acquiring, maintaining, and applying the power of the State and the military/corporate hegemony that supports it. This gets more and more complicated as there are fewer and fewer States in the world: "Globalization" means, to me, "Americanization," and the concept "State" is beginning to dissolve entirely into what the U. S. wants and has the Will to command. Yes, there are other nations, and yes, these nations are full of People with bodies to put in front of American bullets (e.g. Somalia). But the first question that crossed my mind when Yeltsin came into power, during Tienanmen Square, and lately when the general strike was declared in Serbia, was "What is the Army doing?" Just as the first question that will cross the minds of people in all nations of the globe will be, should be, "What will the U.S. military be Willing to do?" I hope you find this answer more satisfying than the answer you got at the Toga party in Chicago. But as I wrote in an earlier response to Scott, all this in my mind misses the central question of this thread: Do you or don't you think that we may profit in bringing JD and KB into conversations about logocentrism/logology TOGETHER, finding/framing issues in much different ways than they might be found or framed by "going it alone" through either writer's mind? michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Edward C. Appel Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 5:56 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Dan asked these questions of Michael: As for how much someone *should* be into politics, and what exactly constitutes "politics," I'd appreciate if you'd explain how you make those determinations. I would underscore the second of Dan's two questions in particular. In your Roman toga-clad presentation with Bruce Gronbeck at NCA in Chicago in 1997, you made a claim to the effect that all "scientific" endeavor was political in nature. I questioned you about Einstein's theoretical efforts in bringing to life the specific and general theories of relativity. What expressly "political" was going on there--in Einstein's celebrated head? Your reply, as I recall, had to do with what kind of applications Einstein's formulations were put to, and what kind of government funding the type of work Einstein was doing generally receives or does not receive. Neither of these responses, in my opinion, directly addressed what Einstein was doing in his theoretical work at that time and place in history. It seemed to me then, and it still seems to me now, that you offer and support an awfully broad definition of "political." We've been round and round on this point before on Burke-L, so maybe I'm beating a dead horse. It seems to me, though, that unless one equates the "political" with anything that has social, or even hierarchal (even perfectionistic?) dimensions--equates the word "political" with the word "action" in the Burkean sense?--your conception of the political is too broad. As an aside, I will report that I have recalled the name of the Harvard political scientist I referred to, who, in an article in the New Republic, called Postmodernist philosophers and thinkers "arrogant" and "dismissive" in the large. He is Peter Berkowitz, whose 1995 book on Nietzsche and ethics sought to "rescue" the German iconoclast from the Postmoderns. Berkowitz will need lots of luck in that project. 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It is, indeed, a much better and more ponderable answer than the one you offered in Chicago at NCA. The equations, concatenated via Burkean constructs, might go something like this: "Rhetoric is about power," you say. Well, language is about rhetoric, ethics, perfectionism, and hierarchal evaluations and suasions, therefore inevitably about power and the political/cultural/social rules, written and unwritten, that undergird, constrain, and shape rhetorical blandishment. Harking back to my previous post, then, you do seem to be conflating "politics" and "symbolic action" generally, as inevitably taking place within a social/political environment that will relate addressor and addressee in complementary or symmetrical ways within the understood norms of their historically embedded society. I'll reflect on your estimable post further. I applaud the clarity and force of your thought--as articulated THIS TIME. As anyone on the list who knows my e-mail address--the two or three of you who might care--can see, I'm operating at present through a different server and, as it turns out, a different computer. My Mac pwerbook is currently out of kilter. I am using a PC for the first time. When I purchased this novel laptop, and apprised the salesperson that I knew nothing about how to use such an arcane instrument of social/political power, he said to me: "I don't mean to insult you, but you might get a hold of Windows for Dummies.'" I assured him I wasn't insulted at all. When I was at dinner at the Olive Garden on Friday night, and showed those dining with me the instruction manual I had just bought next door at Border's--the Windows 98 Cheat Sheet--one of them hit the nail on the head with her tart reply: "Oh, you found Windows for Dummies too advanced a text for the time being." Precisely. I'll do what I can to keep up with the ongoing conversation as I wade through the murky waters of this elementarylevel -primer. Ed From VM Mon Oct 09 07:35:52 2000 Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 07:35:52 -0400 From: "Scott McLemee" Subject: Re: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 120 Michael says: >Now what does that have to do with the main question of the thread? Do >you or don't you think that we may profit in bringing JD and KB into >conversations about logocentrism/logology TOGETHER, finding/framing issues >in much different ways than they might be found/framed by "going it alone" >through either writer's mind? Two part answer: (1) Yes, obviously they can compliment and extend one another "on the ground" insofar as either adds tools for ideology-critique to the bricoleur's tool-kit --particularly insofar as they each, in different but compatible ways, make us more alert not simply to the ideology subjected to critique, but our history visa-vis those tools. Of course, Derrideans don't like it when you suggest deconstruction is a variant of ideology critique, much less a tool. (2) I think you read Burke *differently* after much time spent with Derrida, insofar as you become aware of how KB's texts operate in a deconstructive way: positing and cancelling-while-preserving systematic thought, erasing-and-retracing. The discussion of "substance" at the start of GM is about as proto-Derridean as can be. >Once we get that one thought out, we might ask similar questions about KB >and Baudrillard, KB and Lyotard, KB and Eco. The dialogue will then have >been far more meaningful, far more useful to me, anyway, than contrasting >very specific readings of KB passages and highly generalized "articles of >faith" supposedly shared by "postmodernists." Whoa, deja vu! I said almost exactly the same thing in a note to the list -- word for word, nearly -- about two weeks ago. The appeal of mass execution is understandable, at least to the executioner, but it tends to sacrifice justice to efficiency. Paul de Man was supposed to be working on an essay about Burke when he died. This would have been interesting to have in any case. But it's to be regretted also because it might have driven some of these European thinkers to address KB themselves..... Scott McLemee From VM Mon Oct 09 11:53:59 2000 Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 11:53:59 -0400 (EDT) From: David Langston Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 121 This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info. ------=_NextPart_000_00D4_01C0315A.2D3F1360 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=iso-8859-1 Content-ID: On Sun, 8 Oct 2000, Michael Calvin McGee wrote: > Now what does that have to do with the main question of the thread? Do > you or don't you think that we may profit in bringing JD and KB into > conversations about logocentrism/logology TOGETHER, finding/framing issues > in much different ways than they might be found/framed by "going it alone" > through either writer's mind? It may be extraneous at this point in the discussion to give a detailed exposition where Derrida's analysis runs into a dead-end. The most interesting part for me is the comparison between Derrida and Burke, and I would like to try out the idea that the difference lies in the methods of reading centered in Burke's notion of "terministic catharsis." It seems to me that Burke and Derrida are similar -- although far from identical -- in the approach to reading a text until we read the point where Burke finds a moment of terministic catharsis: ("which is another word for 'rebirth,' transcendence, transubstantiation, or simply for 'transformation' in the sense of the technically developmental, as when a major term is found to somehow to have moved on, and thus to have in effect changed its nature either by adding new meanings to its old nature, or by yielding place to some other term that henceforth takes over its function wholly or in part." -- "What are the signs of what?" LSA 367) My contention is that Burke summarizes here his version of Derrida's notion of the "logic of the supplement." The difference is that Burke emphasizes the positive and necessary transformation which is produced by terministic catharsis; Derrida, on the other hand, sees "supplemantarity" as an unwelcome contamination of an earlier position (which is always inadequate in itself and which requires the supplement -- which participates inevitably in logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence -- to achieve an adequate articulation). The implication, for me, is that Burke is working in a strain of pragmatic thought about the function of signs and Derrida is working in a Cartesian strain of thought about the function of signs. They are finally very different, but their methods of construing texts have striking and illuminating similarities. So, that is how I would start answering Michael McGee's question on what profit is there in comparing Burke's and Derrida's methods of reading. David Langston ------=_NextPart_000_00D4_01C0315A.2D3F1360-- From VM Mon Oct 09 12:34:07 2000 Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 12:34:07 -0500 (CDT) From: "Jennifer R. Mercieca" Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 122 Hello I'm interested in a specific part of this thread, mainly the equation of "political" with "power." I know that many, many theorists of the political also make this same association, but others such as Ben Barber, John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, F.R. Ankersmit, and Walter Lippmann (seemingly) equate "political" with "action." Action does entail the _power_ to act, but I was wondering if this difference complicates the discussion between KB and JD? jen _______________________________________________________________________________ "Your question is: why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: Why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence. . .The essence of our life consists, afterall, in the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves." ...Michel Foucault ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| | Jennifer R. Mercieca | | Speech Communication | | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign| | 244 Lincoln Hall Urbana, IL. 61801 | | mercieca@uiuc.edu | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| From VM Mon Oct 09 21:00:59 2000 Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2000 21:00:59 -0700 From: Dan Smith Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 123 David Langston wrote: [. . .] >My contention is that Burke summarizes here his version of Derrida's >notion of the "logic of the supplement." The difference is that Burke >emphasizes the positive and necessary transformation which is produced by >terministic catharsis; Derrida, on the other hand, sees "supplemantarity" >as an unwelcome contamination of an earlier position (which is always >inadequate in itself and which requires the supplement -- which >participates inevitably in logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence -- >to achieve an adequate articulation). My understanding of the supplement in Derrida's thought is a bit different. The supplement, like many of Derrida's (non)concepts (e.g., trace, differance), is a term used to discuss fundamental "conditions of possibility." More specifically, vis-a-vis language, the supplement is that which makes linguistic sense, meaning, and intelligibility possible. I'll refrain from going into details, but I don't think it's accurate to say that Derrida sees supplementarity as an unwelcome contamination. It may be considered as such by those whose understanding of language is predicated on its "presence," inasmuch as supplementarity is, to put it crudely, the absence that is always (non)present in language. At any rate, I don't see an immediate connection between supplementarity and "terministic catharsis." However, that doesn't mean a connection isn't there. Or, I could be mistaken about "supplementarity." Cheers, Dan From VM Tue Oct 10 07:49:36 2000 Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 07:49:36 -0400 (EDT) From: David Langston Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 124 On Mon, 9 Oct 2000, Dan Smith wrote: > My understanding of the supplement in Derrida's thought is a bit > different. The supplement, like many of Derrida's (non)concepts > (e.g., trace, differance), is a term used to discuss fundamental > "conditions of possibility." More specifically, vis-a-vis language, > the supplement is that which makes linguistic sense, meaning, > and intelligibility possible. ...or I could be mistaken about the logic of the supplement. I will have to refresh my understanding of it with some re-reading. The section on Rousseau in _Grammatology_ from page 141 to the end is a place I draw on for some of my understanding of what the logic of the supplement is. The notion of the impossibility of a self-closing center (for structuralism) in "Structure, Sign, and Play" is another locus for my understanding. If you have other texts you think are important, I would gladly take a look at them. One other thought: we may not be disagreeing. The supplement can be a condition of intelligibility and also a "contamination" in Derrida. His expositions often depend on this notion of unavoidable "scandal" for something to emerge into meaning, into time, and into history (part of his baggage of French-fried Cartesianism which he is always struggling against, in my view). I subscribe to the idea (which is not original with me) that Derrida is proposing a method of reading, not a stand-alone philosophy, which is always parasitic on texts. In that view, supplementarity is the reading which contaminates and establishes meaning. But even as he reads, Derrida locates points in a text where evasions, circumlocutions, and the substitution of new terms -- which are supplements -- redirect the text toward a different goal -- and that operation looks to me very much like what Kenneth Burke is describing with his notion of "terministic catharsis." But we will see... David Langston From VM Tue Oct 10 10:11:18 2000 Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 10:11:18 -0700 From: Dan Smith Subject: RE: Lurking/Swarming Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 125 At 07:49 AM 10/10/00 -0400, David Langston wrote: >One other thought: we may not be disagreeing. The supplement can be a >condition of intelligibility and also a "contamination" in Derrida. His >expositions often depend on this notion of unavoidable "scandal" for >something to emerge into meaning, into time, and into history (part of his >baggage of French-fried Cartesianism which he is always struggling >against, in my view). Maybe I misread your phrase "unwelcome contamination," which I took to be a suggestion that supplementarity is something *Derrida* seeks to critique and/or avoid. I have to say that I that I don't understand the Cartesianism you ascribe to Derrida. Could you elaborate? Perhaps it will help me understand the connection (and difference) you're drawing between Burke and Derrida. It seems to me that Derrida's critique of Husserl applies just as well to Descartes. >I subscribe to the idea (which is not original with me) that Derrida is >proposing a method of reading, not a stand-alone philosophy, which is >always parasitic on texts. In that view, supplementarity is the reading >which contaminates and establishes meaning. We might be saying the same thing, but as I understand Derrida his point is that there is no such thing as a stand-alone philosophy; that all philosophy is a form of reading; and that all philosophy is subject to and dependent upon the dynamics of "writing," and thus differance/supplementarity. This is b/c writing, as Derrida uses the term (like dramatism for Burke), is part of the fabric of human existence: "[I]f the texts that interest us mean something, it is the engagement and the appertunance that encompass *existence and writing* in the same tissue, the same text. The *same* is here called supplement, another name for differance" (Of Gram., 150, emphasis added). Differance/supplementarity in this formulation designate an inescapable dimension of the social-signification nexus. Now, the reading of a text by a subject--which is what I take you to mean--can be one way in which the dynamics of supplementarity are enacted. However, I think Derrida is saying something more subtle than that. I suggest he is positing the *paradoxical* "logic" that makes the dynamism of signification possible; that this dynamism is not dependent upon the intentions of reading subjects; and that this dynamism makes "reading" (transformative or otherwise) possible. Having said that, I find it quite insightful and provocative when you write: But even as he reads, Derrida >locates points in a text where evasions, circumlocutions, and the >substitution of new terms -- which are supplements -- redirect the text >toward a different goal -- and that operation looks to me very much like >what Kenneth Burke is describing with his notion of "terministic >catharsis." I find this interesting inasmuch as supplementarity might be described as "transformation's" condition of possibility. Moreover, one might say that learning to "read" the "writing" dynamics of a discourse or the operations of term might function to provide insight how to transform that term through discursive interventions. I think things might get even more interesting if we make another connection between supplementarity, transformation, and Burke's "paradox of substance." This makes sense because Burke's notion of substance not only directly explores the problematic of identity-difference (and transformation) fundamental to Derridian thought, but is also a connection to a thinker both Derrida and Burke engage: Hegel. I say this b/c Burke's taking up of the Spinozian notion of substance is thoroughly Hegelian. More specifically, a reading of Hegel's work on the history of philosophy reveals that his (mis)understanding of Spinoza's concept of substance is virtually identitical to the one Burke articulates in GM and then deploys in RM. Hegel's, and thus Burke's, understanding of substance introduces a concept of negativity alien to Spinozian thought, contrary to the famous Spinozian dictum "all determination is negation," which Burke translates into "every positive is a negative" (GM, 25). To put things another way, perhaps one of the most productive ways to compare Derrida and Burke toward the end of bringing them into productive conversation is to examine how each thinker deals with the "problem" of the negative, of negativity and its relation to identity. Ultimately, the problematic of negativity is the problematic of difference. This, in my opinion, is where simultaneously the greatest distance and the most profound proximity of Burkean and Derridian thought lies; and thus where one might make them talk to each other productively. Cheers, Dan From VM Tue Oct 10 13:25:19 2000 Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 13:25:19 EDT From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Logology and Logocentrism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 126 Way back in ancient times--a few days ago--some subscribers took exception to my making generalizations about "Postmodern" philosophy of language. They thought it unprofitable to compare and contrast Burke with other than specific Postmodern theorists, their work presumably so variegated and individualized. Scholars in journals of communication are offering such generalizations again and again, it seems to me, in intersubjective validation of what I was doing in my four-part rant on Burke as "something akin" to, but also in significant ways somewhat different from, Postmodern philosophers of language in the large. In the mail yesterday came the September issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication, edited, I might add, by Jim Chesebro, about whom I've had a few things to say in recent posts. In September's CSMC, Margaret E. Duffy has an article entitled, "There's No Two-Way Symmetric About it: A Postmodern Examination of Public Relations Textbooks." Here are some of the most salient things Duffy has to say about Postmodernism "in general" in her essay introduction: "Postmodern thought . . . ," Duffy says, "is a new form of cultural logic, it breaks with the past, challenges existing social forms, questions bureaucratic/managerial authority, and DENIES THAT WORDS ACCURATELY REPRESENT REALITY," a point I made much of in my previous series of screeds. It "seeks to excavate the hidden interests and power relations in organizational discourse." With a nod to more specific attribution, Duffy goes on: "Baudrillard argued that the signs and symbols created by media . . . create their own reality. They do not represent objects, but become the reality in which people reside." In respect to deconstruction, which she of course ties most directly to Derrida, she says: "It is through discourse [that] we understand the world but with the knowledge of the instability of discourse, meaning, and language. It is mistrustful of grand narratives or claims to absolute knowledge and truth [part of my general take also] and is mindful of the political and power aspects embedded in language. Bradshaw explains: 'Deconstruction largely relies on a recognition of the oppositions inherent in all texts, identification of the ways in which one term in the opposition or dichotomy is presented as hierarchically superior and then a movement to reverse the opposition.'" "Dennehy and Boje," Duffy continues, "offer suggestions for deconstruction including finding bipolar terms, reinterpreting an account from another point of view, illuminating what is unsaid, and finding alternative voices unrepresented in the account. Deconstruction can help readers see texts with new eyes, skeptical of surface meanings, resistant to taken-for-granted assumptions, and conscious of ideologies and power relations concealed in texts." Duffy asserts that her method will, in addition, "reveal contradictions within the [PR] texts" she examines and the "totalizing metanarrative of harmony and success" they celebrate in upwards of "175 colleges and universities." A Sunday School class at our church spent several months on the book Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies, by Anderson and Moore. I sat in on this series of lessons and taught the chapter on "Deconstructive Criticism: The Gospel of the Mark." There was an X through "Mark" in the chapter title that I can't duplicate in this post. Other chapters dealt with narrative criticism, reader-response criticism, feminist criticism, and social criticism. Interpretation of the Gospel of Mark is especially suited for examination via some of the emphases in deconstructive criticism. I offer here the handout I used in my presentation, which plainly conflates some of Burke with some of Derrida. Deconstruction and the Instability of Language The strategy of turning a text against itself has become the hallmark of deconstructive literary criticism. Look for the excluded, the marginal, the blind spots, the blanks, the repressed, the subordinated, the covered up, the difficulties, the hidden fragmentations, the contradictory, the ironic. Derrida's readings of philosophical texts often begin by identifying the fundamental conceptual oppositions they rely on. Next: Subject these oppositions to an internal critique that destabilizes them. Echoes of instability in language: (1) Results of a cluster/agon analysis. What can be shown to go with what, and/or against what, often undermines the "official position" a text is trying to proclaim and promote. (Cluster/agon analysis: Finding the "what goes with what," etc., via predication, synonymy, analogy, paralellism, contrast, conflict, opposition.) (2) The multiple meanings of words even when viewed and heard in their original context. See an unabridged dictionary. (Cf., Kenneth Burke: rhetoric as the strategic use of ambiguity for persuasive purposes.) (3) Reading a text in a cultural and conceptual situation far removed from the one in which the text was written: Different meanings, thought forms, and events. Different questions and problems being answered, addressed, and considered, at least in substantial part. (4) A view of language not as representation, interlocking with some invariant content out there in the world somethere, but rather as verbal action in the service of human purposes and interests, thus not anchored so firmly in, or tied directly to, concrete objects, physical beings, or tactile entities. Concrete nouns, for instance, cannot give us a sure picture of anything. Maybe the above handout left a lot unsaid, speaking of the "unsaid," but I was not dealing with scholars here, or even with students in the academy, but rather with laypersons with an interest in the Bible and the faith. See 'ya. Ed From VM Wed Oct 18 14:47:58 2000 Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 14:47:58 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: FW: 62 works by and about Kenneth Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 127 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C03912.67AA9140 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The following "Spam" was posted to one of the lists Karla Tonella monitors. She is the "Webspinner" of the University of Iowa Department of Communication Studies Web site. I'm sure many people on the list knew about this information, but since it was new to me, I thought I'd share it. michael -----Original Message----- From: Karla Tonella [mailto:Karla-Tonella@uiowa.edu] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 12:11 PM To: Communication Studies grads Subject: 62 works by and about Kenneth Burke This was posted to the H-Ideas list --Karla specific URL http://www.mathesonbooks.com/burke.htm Matheson Publications of Kenneth Burke We are pleased to announce a new list of 62 works by and about Kenneth Burke. The list, primarily first editions with some inscribed, may be seen on our web site: http://www.mathesonbooks.com. I will be glad to send an e-mail copy or a paper copy on request. William & Nina Matheson Books, Inc. PO Box 9494 Washington, DC 20016 Voice: 301.718.7911 Fax: 301.718.7912 Email: books@mathesonbooks.com Website: http://www.mathesonbooks.com Member: ABAA, Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America IOBA, Independent Online Booksellers Association ------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C03912.67AA9140 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature; name="smime.p7s" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s" MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAoIIHiDCCAy4w ggKXoAMCAQICEQDSdi6NFAw9fbKoJV2v7g11MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAMF8xCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjE3MDUGA1UECxMuQ2xhc3MgMSBQdWJsaWMgUHJpbWFy eSBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0aW9uIEF1dGhvcml0eTAeFw05ODA1MTIwMDAwMDBaFw0wODA1MTIyMzU5NTla MIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0 d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNvcnAuIEJ5 IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJbmRpdmlk dWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN ADCBiQKBgQC7WkSKBBa7Vf0DeootlE8VeDa4DUqyb5xUv7zodyqdufBou5XZMUFweoFLuUgTVi3H COGEQqvAopKrRFyqQvCCDgLpL/vCO7u+yScKXbawNkIztW5UiE+HSr8Z2vkV6A+HthzjzMaajn9q JJLj/OBluqexfu/J2zdqyErICQbkmQIDAQABo3wwejARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCAQYwRwYDVR0g BEAwPjA8BgtghkgBhvhFAQcBATAtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwIBFh93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9z aXRvcnkvUlBBMA8GA1UdEwQIMAYBAf8CAQAwCwYDVR0PBAQDAgEGMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAgUAA4GB AIi4Nzvd2pQ3AK2qn+GBAXEekmptL/bxndPKZDjcG5gMB4ZbhRVqD7lJhaSV8Rd9Z7R/LSzdmkKe wz60jqrlCwbe8lYq+jPHvhnXU0zDvcjjF7WkSUJj7MKmFw9dWBpJPJBcVaNlIAD9GCDlX4KmsaiS xVhqwY0DPOvDzQWikK5uMIIEUjCCA7ugAwIBAgIQbzkISg0gkFyZzfCbm/mLmTANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQQFADCBzDEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZlcmlTaWduIFRydXN0 IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9yeS9SUEEgSW5jb3Jw LiBCeSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxSDBGBgNVBAMTP1ZlcmlTaWduIENsYXNzIDEgQ0EgSW5k aXZpZHVhbCBTdWJzY3JpYmVyLVBlcnNvbmEgTm90IFZhbGlkYXRlZDAeFw0wMDA5MjcwMDAwMDBa Fw0wMTA5MjcyMzU5NTlaMIIBGjEXMBUGA1UEChMOVmVyaVNpZ24sIEluYy4xHzAdBgNVBAsTFlZl cmlTaWduIFRydXN0IE5ldHdvcmsxRjBEBgNVBAsTPXd3dy52ZXJpc2lnbi5jb20vcmVwb3NpdG9y eS9SUEEgSW5jb3JwLiBieSBSZWYuLExJQUIuTFREKGMpOTgxHjAcBgNVBAsTFVBlcnNvbmEgTm90 IFZhbGlkYXRlZDE0MDIGA1UECxMrRGlnaXRhbCBJRCBDbGFzcyAxIC0gTWljcm9zb2Z0IEZ1bGwg U2VydmljZTEdMBsGA1UEAxQUTWljaGFlbCBDYWx2aW4gTWNHZWUxITAfBgkqhkiG9w0BCQEWEm1p Y2hhZWxAbWNnZWVzLm5ldDBcMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA0sAMEgCQQC+aDnVTdfJHHpWaLZMwz9g xq8G3DFOTQIL4zETl98PBNRGGb1nmnWbwA0CLj9pP+cSNDc2yK4EZQpbSWeszkArAgMBAAGjggEm MIIBIjAJBgNVHRMEAjAAMEQGA1UdIAQ9MDswOQYLYIZIAYb4RQEHAQgwKjAoBggrBgEFBQcCARYc aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JwYTARBglghkgBhvhCAQEEBAMCB4AwgYYGCmCGSAGG +EUBBgMEeBZ2ZDQ2NTJiZDYzZjIwNDcwMjkyOTg3NjNjOWQyZjI3NTA2OWM3MzU5YmVkMWIwNTlk YTc1YmM0YmM5NzAxNzQ3ZGE1ZDNmMjE0MWJlYWRiMmJkMmU4OTIxM2FmNjlmNWQ2MTE0ODllYTFi YTQ2ZmVmM2VhNDVlMjAzBgNVHR8ELDAqMCigJqAkhiJodHRwOi8vY3JsLnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9j bGFzczEuY3JsMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBAUAA4GBAHD06VIxswL1VKjvNeOH/AXDNzjD/5TC4L9/62yH gHH05NPWYw0w1WIn83bKRpaayvEXg8XX2bZ8j3DDXBK5+VChXDz/WH0G7a5BZp1xFyTyO+qyBcLu kQuNPaVSkJBzuawM1o2j2mkU1nHCzrX/3Fc9R6Eukypu+lhOd42GNYQ2MYIC0jCCAs4CAQEwgeEw gcwxFzAVBgNVBAoTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmMuMR8wHQYDVQQLExZWZXJpU2lnbiBUcnVzdCBOZXR3 b3JrMUYwRAYDVQQLEz13d3cudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tL3JlcG9zaXRvcnkvUlBBIEluY29ycC4gQnkg UmVmLixMSUFCLkxURChjKTk4MUgwRgYDVQQDEz9WZXJpU2lnbiBDbGFzcyAxIENBIEluZGl2aWR1 YWwgU3Vic2NyaWJlci1QZXJzb25hIE5vdCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQCEG85CEoNIJBcmc3wm5v5i5kwCQYF Kw4DAhoFAKCCAYcwGAYJKoZIhvcNAQkDMQsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAcBgkqhkiG9w0BCQUxDxcNMDAx MDE4MTk0NzU3WjAjBgkqhkiG9w0BCQQxFgQUouFSEZczYEgwvZ3QHMGcdh4wTQkwMwYJKoZIhvcN AQkPMSYwJDANBggqhkiG9w0DAgIBKDAHBgUrDgMCGjAKBggqhkiG9w0CBTCB8gYJKwYBBAGCNxAE MYHkMIHhMIHMMRcwFQYDVQQKEw5WZXJpU2lnbiwgSW5jLjEfMB0GA1UECxMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1 c3QgTmV0d29yazFGMEQGA1UECxM9d3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9yZXBvc2l0b3J5L1JQQSBJbmNv cnAuIEJ5IFJlZi4sTElBQi5MVEQoYyk5ODFIMEYGA1UEAxM/VmVyaVNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQSBJ bmRpdmlkdWFsIFN1YnNjcmliZXItUGVyc29uYSBOb3QgVmFsaWRhdGVkAhBvOQhKDSCQXJnN8Jub +YuZMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABECuultHI0qFcRHjLo3mhoYE9w04iwCMECdjMWZ/dgJZxAhjk9Gb a0ka/gnYHwSVjFrqWqQc0tb3DuDvauy/VzPXAAAAAAAA ------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C03912.67AA9140-- From VM Mon Oct 23 09:07:00 2000 Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 09:07:00 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: The Secondthe Bore/Gush "Debate" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 128 Somebody with clout in the field of communication ought to get on the case of the Presidential Debate Commission about the format of the second presidential debate this political season. No wonder Al Gore sounded as though he was on valium. Not only had he been roundly criticized for his hyperactive style of address in that first square off. He was constrained, also, I submit, by the nonverbal symbolism inherent in the act of sitting at table with the person he was communicating with. People sit down at a table to eat a meal together; have a civil discussion of some kind; participate in a panel or symposium in a collegial manner, even if their positions on the topic at hand may be divergent. People are not supposed to enter into sharp and heated conflict in such a context. I can understand W's desire take advantage of the constraints attached to such a venue. I think it unfair, though, in terms of the process and purpose of political debate of such consequence for our nation. The love fest that resulted was altogether predictable. One communication scholar with clout I have in mind is Kathleen Hall Jamieson. She sent me a complimentary copy of her most recent book, Everything You Think You Know about Politics . . . and Why You"re Wrong. She sent it to me, I'm sure, because she thinks I was definitely wrong in my criticism of her and Cappella at NCA in 1997, and in subsequent correspondence, for their study on Political Talk Radio, especially in respect to Rush Limbaugh. The book presents the results of an excellent set of studies. I'll write to her in fulsome praise and gratitude and make my suggestion as to what she should say to the powers that be at the commission. Other heavy-weight scholars of the presidency and communication who share my view ought to sound off on this matter, also. No comedy of the kind staged at Clemson should ever be foisted on the nation again. Ed From VM Mon Oct 23 09:05:57 2000 Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 09:05:57 -0500 From: Tony Palmeri Subject: Re: The Secondthe Bore/Gush "Debate" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 129 At 09:07 AM 10/23/00 +0000, Edward C. Appel wrote:
Somebody with clout in the field of communication ought to get on the
case of the Presidential Debate Commission about the format of the
second presidential debate this political season.  No wonder Al Gore
sounded as though he was on valium.  Not only had he been roundly
criticized for his hyperactive style of address in that first square
off.  He was constrained, also, I submit, by the nonverbal symbolism
inherent in the act of sitting at table with the person he was
communicating with.  People sit down at a table to eat a meal together;
have a civil discussion of some kind; participate in a panel or
symposium in a collegial manner, even if their positions on the topic at
hand may be divergent.  People are not supposed to enter into sharp and
heated conflict in such a context.  I can understand W's desire take
advantage of the constraints attached to such a venue.  I think it
unfair, though, in terms of the process and purpose of political debate
of such consequence for our nation.  The love fest that resulted was
altogether predictable.

And yet on programs like CNN's "Crossfire" and other programs, their are nightly sharp and heated conflicts in a similar format, no?   Perhaps the problem is that there really are not enough differences between the two major candidates, and I believe the solution would have been to include Nader and Buchanan.
I believe the exclusion of legitimate candidates is more worthy of our time in approaching the debate commission than the format. 

-Tony


Tony Palmeri, Chair                            
Department of Communication            (920) 424-4422 (office)
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh        (920) 235-1116 (home)
Oshkosh, WI 54901                           (920) 424-1279 (FAX)
Palmeri@uwosh.edu
                                
Commentary: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/Comment.htm From VM Mon Oct 23 10:16:52 2000 Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 10:16:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Lester C Olson Subject: Re: The Secondthe Bore/Gush "Debate" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 130 Tony, Because I do not download attachments (to avoid potential problems with virus and other such concerns), I would appreciate it were you to re-mail your post in regular e-mail format. I'd like to read your thoughts on this matter. Lester Olson From VM Mon Oct 23 10:30:31 2000 Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 10:30:31 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: The Second Bore/Gush "Debate" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 131 Thanks to Tony for his reply and Lester for his interest in the topic. I'm interested in what you all think about the nonverbals of a round-table or at-table discussion format as the venue for a presidential debate. I made a typo in my subject heading, of course: one "the" too many. I meant the title to appear as above. The spelling of the participants' names was not a mistake. It was a joke. Obviously, not a funny joke. Ed From VM Tue Oct 24 11:23:04 2000 Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 11:23:04 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 132 For the past several months, many political pundits and assorted talking heads have expressed bewilderment at the strength of George W.'s candidacy at a time of such prosperity and peace in the U. S. of A. Shouldn't the USAmerican electorate be going ga-ga over the chance to keep in presidential power the party, and one of the two assumed architects, responsible for that blessed state of affairs? No one that I have heard has put her or his finger on the most obvious and fundamental reason for the likely return to a Republican administration: We're in a conservative/Republican cycle of political dominance, and no out-of-favor party in U. S. history has ever won the presidency for more than two terms in a row. As I see it, there have been, in our history, three fully matured cycles of dominance, roughly 50 to 60 years in length, in respect to political ideology and party power. We are now in the midst of the fourth such cycle. Here's the run-down: (1) Eighteen hundred to the Civil War: The Democratic Party, called the Republican Party until the Age of Jackson, is in control. The Whigs hold presidential office for only two terms. Democracy expands. Optimism about the ability of the common man (literally: women don't yet have the vote) to govern himself holds sway. Reform movements are "in the air." Utopian communities like Brook Farm and New Harmony (remember?) proliferate. Romantic literature is de rigueur, as per Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Poe, and Hawthorne Jefferson's agrarian vision of America more or less rules. (2) The Civil War to the Great Depression: Conservative, Republican, business interests have a field day. "Robber Barons" become the USAmerican royalty, as the just-concluded PBS series on the Rockefellers depicted. Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, does win the popular presidential vote in three straight elections (1884, 1888, 1892), but loses in the electoral college by a substantial margin of 65 votes in 1888. Nascent labor unions are crushed by, for instance, the minions of Andrew Carnegie at Homestead in the early 1890's. Realistic literature comes to the fore in the writings of, first, the likes of Harte and Bierce, later and more fully in the works of Crane, London, Dreiser, Anderson, Hemingway, Faulkner, and O'Neill. (3) The Great Depression to, let us say, the election of President Reagan (the demarcation between the cycles is not quite as precise here): Democrats claim the presidency for twenty consecuative years. "Conservatism" becomes almost a dirty word in the USAmerican lexicon. Welfare capitalism, or social democracy, reaches its zenith by the time of Lyndon Johnson. Successful Republican presidential candidates take on something of the coloration of New Deal democracy, like Dwight Eisenhower and even Richard Nixon. An Eastern "liberal" wing of the Republican Party not only exists, but even largely controls, party operations during the first two thirds of this era. Reform movements, often disruptively militant, expand the franchise and challenge the ethos of business in the '50's and 60's. Proletarian literature makes its debut with authors like Steinbeck and odets. Liberal Mainline Protestant chruches have a heyday, in attendance and with such preachers as FosdicK, Sockman, Peale, Hamilton, and Buttrick very much in the public eye. (4) The election of President Reagan . . . (to be continued): "Liberalism" is now the dirty word in the political scene. It has become virtually an epithet. "Big government" is under continual assault. Part, but significantly not nearly all, of New Deal/Great Society welfarism is crumbling. Free trade is now a mantra. Marginal tax rates have preciptously declined with even Democratic concurrence. A new "gilded age" transpires with "new tech" gazillionaires emerging daily. In 1994, Republicans take control of both the House and Senate for the first time in more than sixty years. In 1996, a Democratic president wins a second term, but one who is decidedly a "New Democrat," dedicated to free trade and supportive of welfare reform. A Fundamentalist religious revival has transfomred USAmerican politics, as well as religion. Mainline churches experience decline. "Government schools" come under constant attack. Privatization and deregulation of a plethora of industries takes place. Commercial radio becomes saturated with right-wing talk shows. The bottom-line quest for more and more and more money still even to the renaming of civic ballparks, stadiums, and arenas after commercial enterprises. It seems inevitable, therefore, that sooner than later the Republican Party will control all three branches of government simultaneously. That denouement is likely to occur in 2001, twenty years or so into the present conservative cycle. I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I am, however. The "entelechial dimension of symbols," much noted by Burke (LASA), is very much on a roll, as it has been throughout USAmerican history. We as a society and polity swing way to the Left, then to the Right, then to the Left again, and now, once more, to the Right, with the myopic half-vision of reality such "allness," "polarization," and "indiscrimination" bring. Will the "sheer brute materials of the world as it is" bring the United States, finally, to its senses? Will it arrest this headlong plunge into profligate waste of our natural resources, fanatical worship at the shrine of the "cult of new needs," and eventual ecological disaster? I believe things will have to get very bad before we come to our senses. P. S. In respect to these 50-60 years cycles, the out-of-favor ideology starts its comeback a couple of decades before it once again reaches dominance, as in the case of the Progressive Movement of 1900-1915 and the Silent Majority insurgence and Evangelical Revival of the late 1960's and 1970's. Ed From VM Thu Oct 26 00:05:22 2000 Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 00:05:22 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 133 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_002E_01C03EE0.6E2838A0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset offers support for Ed's thesis in his famous "theory of the generations," which has some support in modern psychological theory about the "natural" rebellion of children against parents, especially male children. Ortega argued that there are "rhythms" in history established by tensions between "stable" generations that pretty much do as they are told and affirm the lessons of whatever is defined as "traditional" in their particular cultures. They are opposed by "vital" generations who credit their own life-experiences over and above the traditions of the past. Some days I find this line of thinking convincing. I always find it interesting. What I'm seeing in the polls today, however, where I'm given a chance to read the questions, check actual responses, and perhaps even to see a respondent on video tape answering poll questions, seems to me a consequence of the fragmentation of American culture. Multi-cultural(ism) is not (just) a collective phenomenon. It is also built into the particular psyche. Potential voters today are convinced by arguments in favor of the 2nd amendment (for example), by arguments calling for a re-building of public education's infrastructure, by arguments for a "cleaner" government in Washington at the highest levels, and by arguments for local control over more and more problems (anti-federalism). Both candidates offer SOME gratification. Neither candidate comes close to gratifying ALL of what the voter wants. For the first time in a long time, Americans have been treated to an issue-oriented campaign, and are being forced to set priorities on what will in time become fundamental values. This is not a problem/set-of-issues that will go away or be settled with the election of either Gore or Bush. michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Edward C. Appel Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 6:23 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene For the past several months, many political pundits and assorted talking heads have expressed bewilderment at the strength of George W.'s candidacy at a time of such prosperity and peace in the U. S. of A. Shouldn't the USAmerican electorate be going ga-ga over the chance to keep in presidential power the party, and one of the two assumed architects, responsible for that blessed state of affairs? No one that I have heard has put her or his finger on the most obvious and fundamental reason for the likely return to a Republican administration: We're in a conservative/Republican cycle of political dominance, and no out-of-favor party in U. S. history has ever won the presidency for more than two terms in a row. As I see it, there have been, in our history, three fully matured cycles of dominance, roughly 50 to 60 years in length, in respect to political ideology and party power. We are now in the midst of the fourth such cycle. Here's the run-down: (1) Eighteen hundred to the Civil War: The Democratic Party, called the Republican Party until the Age of Jackson, is in control. The Whigs hold presidential office for only two terms. Democracy expands. Optimism about the ability of the common man (literally: women don't yet have the vote) to govern himself holds sway. Reform movements are "in the air." Utopian communities like Brook Farm and New Harmony (remember?) proliferate. Romantic literature is de rigueur, as per Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Poe, and Hawthorne Jefferson's agrarian vision of America more or less rules. (2) The Civil War to the Great Depression: Conservative, Republican, business interests have a field day. "Robber Barons" become the USAmerican royalty, as the just-concluded PBS series on the Rockefellers depicted. Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, does win the popular presidential vote in three straight elections (1884, 1888, 1892), but loses in the electoral college by a substantial margin of 65 votes in 1888. Nascent labor unions are crushed by, for instance, the minions of Andrew Carnegie at Homestead in the early 1890's. Realistic literature comes to the fore in the writings of, first, the likes of Harte and Bierce, later and more fully in the works of Crane, London, Dreiser, Anderson, Hemingway, Faulkner, and O'Neill. (3) The Great Depression to, let us say, the election of President Reagan (the demarcation between the cycles is not quite as precise here): Democrats claim the presidency for twenty consecuative years. "Conservatism" becomes almost a dirty word in the USAmerican lexicon. Welfare capitalism, or social democracy, reaches its zenith by the time of Lyndon Johnson. Successful Republican presidential candidates take on something of the coloration of New Deal democracy, like Dwight Eisenhower and even Richard Nixon. An Eastern "liberal" wing of the Republican Party not only exists, but even largely controls, party operations during the first two thirds of this era. Reform movements, often disruptively militant, expand the franchise and challenge the ethos of business in the '50's and 60's. Proletarian literature makes its debut with authors like Steinbeck and odets. Liberal Mainline Protestant chruches have a heyday, in attendance and with such preachers as FosdicK, Sockman, Peale, Hamilton, and Buttrick very much in the public eye. (4) The election of President Reagan . . . (to be continued): "Liberalism" is now the dirty word in the political scene. It has become virtually an epithet. "Big government" is under continual assault. Part, but significantly not nearly all, of New Deal/Great Society welfarism is crumbling. Free trade is now a mantra. Marginal tax rates have preciptously declined with even Democratic concurrence. A new "gilded age" transpires with "new tech" gazillionaires emerging daily. In 1994, Republicans take control of both the House and Senate for the first time in more than sixty years. In 1996, a Democratic president wins a second term, but one who is decidedly a "New Democrat," dedicated to free trade and supportive of welfare reform. A Fundamentalist religious revival has transfomred USAmerican politics, as well as religion. Mainline churches experience decline. "Government schools" come under constant attack. Privatization and deregulation of a plethora of industries takes place. Commercial radio becomes saturated with right-wing talk shows. The bottom-line quest for more and more and more money still even to the renaming of civic ballparks, stadiums, and arenas after commercial enterprises. It seems inevitable, therefore, that sooner than later the Republican Party will control all three branches of government simultaneously. That denouement is likely to occur in 2001, twenty years or so into the present conservative cycle. I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I am, however. The "entelechial dimension of symbols," much noted by Burke (LASA), is very much on a roll, as it has been throughout USAmerican history. We as a society and polity swing way to the Left, then to the Right, then to the Left again, and now, once more, to the Right, with the myopic half-vision of reality such "allness," "polarization," and "indiscrimination" bring. Will the "sheer brute materials of the world as it is" bring the United States, finally, to its senses? Will it arrest this headlong plunge into profligate waste of our natural resources, fanatical worship at the shrine of the "cult of new needs," and eventual ecological disaster? I believe things will have to get very bad before we come to our senses. P. S. In respect to these 50-60 years cycles, the out-of-favor ideology starts its comeback a couple of decades before it once again reaches dominance, as in the case of the Progressive Movement of 1900-1915 and the Silent Majority insurgence and Evangelical Revival of the late 1960's and 1970's. 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Appel" Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 134 Thanks to Michael for his added insights from Ortega. As for the notion that this is an "issue-oriented campaign" we're experiencing, I'd say, yes, up to a point. In a broad-brush sense, major and important themes are being articulated, even though Gore, especially in my view, is not sharpening and exploiting the constrasts between his program and that of Bush as he should be. (Hence Clinton's backhanded criticism of Gore for this fuzziness in Clinton's upstate New York speech over the weekend.) In a recent piece in the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley put his finger on a major shortcoming in the debate, which is probably endemic to the "I'm all right and you're all wrong" "barnyard" quality of campaign rhetoric in a democracy. There's no acknowledgment on either side of "trade-offs." To get government more heavily involved in health care, for instance, some options we'd personally like to have open to us may have to go by the wayside. To get government out of healthcare as much as possible, it's going to be perhaps excessively expensive for persons on a limited income. No one wants to confess to a downside in their particular approach, and then argue for an "on balance" advantage for their proposals. It has to be a black-and-white construction of the situation, with a connotatively invidious and usually distorted portrayal of the opponent's point of view in terms of "most extreme examples" and "worst-case scenarios." At the same panel in which Jamieson and Cappella made presentations at NCA in 1997, I believe, Roderick Hart argued for what I said in the question-and-answer was a way-too-idealistic proposal for campaign rhetoric, one in which candidates listen to each other and do not distort what the other candidate has to say. Hart's reply was, "I'm a college professor, and my job is to press for the ideal." Wearing rose-colored glasses while he's at it, I presume. The application of all this to the present season of campaigning is, true, we may be having a more substantive debate in terms of overall themes, but "logomachy," the "insult," and the "lie" (RM) still very much prevail and obfuscate the issues, and probably always will. Nothing like "Persuasion dialogue" or the "ideal conversation" that was the motif of Herb Simons' excellent seminar at the Iowa Conference obtains, or ever will obtain, with presidential power on the line. I might add one more detail to my previous post on the subject above: Successful two-term presidential candidates in out-of-favor parties often win their first term with the help of a third-party candidate that cuts into the vote total of his opponent. Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose run in 1912 and Ross Perot's Reform Party effort in 1992 are extraordinary examples. Ed From VM Thu Oct 26 12:56:47 2000 Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 12:56:47 -0400 From: "David Tietge" Subject: Re: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 135 Having discussed this issue at some length with my students, I was reminded of the professor who asked both Gore and Bush in the last debate what they intended to do to get young people more involved in the political scene, citing as he did the problem of ideological disillusionment. There was no satisfactory answer; both candiadtes just vaguely gestured in the direction of "giving a voice back to the people" and other such vacuous posturing. It occurred to me that this may be one reason for the pejorative use of the word "rhetoric" as merely a series of lies intended to persuade for less than honorable reasons. My students, for example, indicated that they couldn't "trust" either of the candidates because, in their short lives, they have already seen how politicians tend to "promise" one thing and do another, using "mere rhetoric" to achieve a selfish end. Political analysts following the debate used phrases like "once you strip away the rhetoric" and "beyond the rhetoric" to get to the supposed "tangible" core of a message. This superficial understanding of rhetoric, it seems to me, is one of the fundamental reasons for youthful (and perhaps not so youthful) disillusionment in the American democratic process: there seems to be an erroneous assumption that there is something "real" and "down to earth" that is independent of the language used to perceive it. Perhaps a little Burkiean training in the art of understanding the interrelationship between language, ideology, and "reality" would help both candidates and voters alike see the dynamic process we engage in when we adopt our own orientations for larger public enterprises. It might also explain why we are hopelessly trapped in the bipartisan polar extremes that Ed describes. David Tietge Long Island University, Brooklyn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Edward C. Appel" To: Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 7:36 AM Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene > Thanks to Michael for his added insights from Ortega. As for the notion > that this is an "issue-oriented campaign" we're experiencing, I'd say, > yes, up to a point. In a broad-brush sense, major and important themes > are being articulated, even though Gore, especially in my view, is not > sharpening and exploiting the constrasts between his program and that of > Bush as he should be. (Hence Clinton's backhanded criticism of Gore for > this fuzziness in Clinton's upstate New York speech over the weekend.) > In a recent piece in the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley put his finger > on a major shortcoming in the debate, which is probably endemic to the > "I'm all right and you're all wrong" "barnyard" quality of campaign > rhetoric in a democracy. There's no acknowledgment on either side of > "trade-offs." To get government more heavily involved in health care, > for instance, some options we'd personally like to have open to us may > have to go by the wayside. To get government out of healthcare as much > as possible, it's going to be perhaps excessively expensive for persons > on a limited income. No one wants to confess to a downside in their > particular approach, and then argue for an "on balance" advantage for > their proposals. It has to be a black-and-white construction of the > situation, with a connotatively invidious and usually distorted > portrayal of the opponent's point of view in terms of "most extreme > examples" and "worst-case scenarios." > > At the same panel in which Jamieson and Cappella made presentations at > NCA in 1997, I believe, Roderick Hart argued for what I said in the > question-and-answer was a way-too-idealistic proposal for campaign > rhetoric, one in which candidates listen to each other and do not > distort what the other candidate has to say. Hart's reply was, "I'm a > college professor, and my job is to press for the ideal." Wearing > rose-colored glasses while he's at it, I presume. > > The application of all this to the present season of campaigning is, > true, we may be having a more substantive debate in terms of overall > themes, but "logomachy," the "insult," and the "lie" (RM) still very > much prevail and obfuscate the issues, and probably always will. > Nothing like "Persuasion dialogue" or the "ideal conversation" that was > the motif of Herb Simons' excellent seminar at the Iowa Conference > obtains, or ever will obtain, with presidential power on the line. > > I might add one more detail to my previous post on the subject above: > Successful two-term presidential candidates in out-of-favor parties > often win their first term with the help of a third-party candidate that > cuts into the vote total of his opponent. Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose > run in 1912 and Ross Perot's Reform Party effort in 1992 are > extraordinary examples. > > > > Ed From VM Thu Oct 26 17:58:59 2000 Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 17:58:59 PDT From: "Jim Moore" Subject: Re: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 136 David Tietge wrote (emphatic MAJUSCULES are Jim Moore's): [. . .] I was reminded of the professor who asked both Gore and Bush in the last debate what they intended to do to get young people more involved in the political scene [. . .] There was no satisfactory answer; both candiadtes just vaguely gestured in the direction of "giving a voice back to the people" and other such VACUOUS POSTURING. [. . .] Jim responds: I agree wholeheartedly that such posturing is vacuous in that I don't think either candidate has a real will to bring about a greater democracy; however, I think David has contradicted himself in a quite glaring way--a way that suggests that he himself acknowledges that there are times when one needs to "strip away rhetoric" in the (often worthily) ugly pejorative meaning of the "R" word--nonetheless, below he grimly tows the social constructionist line . . . David Tietge continues: Political analysts following the debate used phrases like "once you strip away the rhetoric" and "beyond the rhetoric" to get to the supposed "tangible" core of a message. This superficial understanding of rhetoric, it seems to me, is one of the fundamental reasons for youthful (and perhaps not so youthful) disillusionment in the American democratic process: there seems to be an ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION THAT THERE IS SOMETHING "REAL" AND "DOWN TO EARTH" THAT IS INDEPENDENT OF THE LANGUAGE USED TO PERCEIVE IT. Jim continues: It is clear that David's accusation of VACUOUS POSTURING demonstrates that deep down he himself recognizes that the ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION that he laments is not always so erroneous. It is no less naive to assert that there is NO "down to earth" reality than it is to assert that it is perfectably assailable via language. David, of course, knows this; nonetheless, for whatever reason, he is not inclined to articulate a less polarized stance. Jim _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. From VM Thu Oct 26 20:26:09 2000 Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 20:26:09 -0500 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 137 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_00B5_01C03F8A.F8FF6DE0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David's reluctance "to articulate a less polarized stance," which I share as I watch two Republicans vie with one another as the only two with a chance to acquire the power of Presidency, may be explained best by a friend who wrote the following to me privately. The last Democrat he voted for above the rank of Mayor, BTW, was Jimmy Carter in 1976: "I despair with you about the current political scene. It is just amazing what Bush gets away with and if called upon to produce avoids by glib comments about "I will unit" and " you are be aggressive", etc. We may well elect one of the most ignorant and stupid people in the Presidency since we put an Ohio gov in office in 1920. Ugh!!" Sometimes rhetoric conceals one's true position. But it always reveals the quality of one's mind, even with the cosmetic help of speech writers to conceal that truth. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph. D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, Iowa 52241 319-338-1796 (FAX) 319-338-8214 (Voice) mailto:michael@mcgees.net -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Jim Moore Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 7:59 PM To: tietgedavid@home.com Cc: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Re: Political Act in a Conservative Scene David Tietge wrote (emphatic MAJUSCULES are Jim Moore's): [. . .] I was reminded of the professor who asked both Gore and Bush in the last debate what they intended to do to get young people more involved in the political scene [. . .] There was no satisfactory answer; both candiadtes just vaguely gestured in the direction of "giving a voice back to the people" and other such VACUOUS POSTURING. [. . .] Jim responds: I agree wholeheartedly that such posturing is vacuous in that I don't think either candidate has a real will to bring about a greater democracy; however, I think David has contradicted himself in a quite glaring way--a way that suggests that he himself acknowledges that there are times when one needs to "strip away rhetoric" in the (often worthily) ugly pejorative meaning of the "R" word--nonetheless, below he grimly tows the social constructionist line . . . David Tietge continues: Political analysts following the debate used phrases like "once you strip away the rhetoric" and "beyond the rhetoric" to get to the supposed "tangible" core of a message. This superficial understanding of rhetoric, it seems to me, is one of the fundamental reasons for youthful (and perhaps not so youthful) disillusionment in the American democratic process: there seems to be an ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION THAT THERE IS SOMETHING "REAL" AND "DOWN TO EARTH" THAT IS INDEPENDENT OF THE LANGUAGE USED TO PERCEIVE IT. Jim continues: It is clear that David's accusation of VACUOUS POSTURING demonstrates that deep down he himself recognizes that the ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION that he laments is not always so erroneous. It is no less naive to assert that there is NO "down to earth" reality than it is to assert that it is perfectably assailable via language. David, of course, knows this; nonetheless, for whatever reason, he is not inclined to articulate a less polarized stance. Jim _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. 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Appel" Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 138 Michael writes: Sometimes rhetoric conceals one's true position. But it always reveals the quality of one's mind, even with the cosmetic help of speech writers to conceal that truth. Michael puts his finger on another disappointing, but (sigh) expectedly inevitable, feature of the current presidential "debate": its studied silence and deflection in respect to embarrassing and potentially vote-draining issues. With our symbolic action, we call attention to things that are moral problems for us, yes, but we also deflect attention away from things that present problems for our "success" or self-projection. A rhetoric of silence, of course, surrounds W.'s slogan about "leaving no child behind" educationally, and addressing the problem of "failing schools." All this is code for vouchers, use of public funds to support private schools. But since no one can openly discuss and debate the question of what "a child left behind" and "a failing school" really mean, much less a Democratic presidential candidate reliant on voting support from USAmerican minority groups, W. gets away with his deceptive image as a candidate anxious to become our next "education president." We can't discuss this question on kb, so politicians in a democratic polity are certainly not going to be able to discuss it out there in the "real world." The rhetoric of silence triumphs once again. I do wonder how many more decades--centuries?-- and sets of test results it will take to break down the wall of silence, to "face the music and dance." Maybe forever. The rhetoric of silence and deflection largely triumphs on the question of abortion rights. W. wants to avoid it like the Aids virus. Whatever his personal views, he has to officially maintain a pro-life posture to satisfy his core Evangelical Christian and antiabortion Catholic support. Yet he knows it's a wedge issue that can cost him votes among fiscally conservative, but socially more moderate, Republican and independent women. Gore, though, will not press Bush hard on abortion and potential Supreme Court appointments because it's something of a hot potato (do I have it spelled right?) for him, too. Pro-life, working-class, Catholic Democrats can be alienated by such rhetoric, something Gore surely feels he cannot afford to do in a close election. Result: This important issue gets shunted to the sidelines, if not totally ignored, in the presidential dialogue. The rhetoric of silence and deflection on the environment was a salient feature of this campaign season until the just-released UN study forced it front and center. Gore was the "environmental Vice-President." He even wrote a book on the topic. However, there's Michigan now to consider, both a key battleground state and one that economically rests foursquare on the internal combustion engine. What should a politically ambitious environmentalist do? Speak often and urgently on the question and throw the election to an oil man who wants to dispoliate wilderness preserves in Alaska to make us "less dependent on foreign oil"? Silence about the implications concerning "party rule" plague this presidential campaign. Electing George Bush as president means not only putting an apparently amiable, unabrasive guy in the Oval Office and on our TV screens. It doesn't even just mean a Republican Cabinet and conservative Supreme Court nominations, not that even those inevitabilities are getting their rightful play. It means, in addition, cooperation on legislation with the likes of Dick Armey, Tom Delay, and Trent Lott. Coach Hastert is light years better, in my view, than Newt Gingrich, but he's still a conservative Republican. Why does the traditional presidential mantra about "the best man" go unchallenged? Maybe this sad, lamentable rhetoric of silence and deflection go with a democratic system of government that is nonparliamentary, two-party, and winner-take-all in each state election. It appears to severely abridge the prospects for a "full dialectic" in presidential discourse. Winston Churchill called democracy "the worst system of government, except for all the others." I agree with his full statement. In our self-glorification, we tend to emphasize only the phrase "except for all the others." Remember the first half of Churchill's utterance. Ed From VM Fri Oct 27 13:08:21 2000 Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 13:08:21 -0400 (EDT) From: David Langston Subject: Re: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 139 On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, Edward C. Appel wrote: > Maybe this sad, lamentable rhetoric of silence and deflection go with a > democratic system of government that is nonparliamentary, two-party, and > winner-take-all in each state election. Reading Edward Appel's meditations makes me wonder if someone has done a set of studies from a Burkean perspective of "comparative political rhetoric." Based on comparisons to German, Italian, and other voting systems, political scientists have argued that a two-party system is almost inevitable in the "first past the post" electoral system which structures British and U.S. elections. Consequently, it is argued, candidates and parties move toward the center to garner votes, and they tend to borrow ideas from each other to win elections. The major parties look alike, and splinter or third parties introduce new ideas (which the major parties adopt when it gives them an electoral advantage). I'm wondering if parliamentary systems which proportional voting and with a wide range of political parties might have a different rhetorical style less dependent on "silence and deflection" -- or, one guesses, noticably different strategies of silence and deflections -- than those which mark political rhetoric here. Furthermore, if our alternatives are a splintered electoral landscape in which consensus is nearly impossible (Italy) versus a rhetoric of silence and deflection, I'm not so sure that our current conditions is either sad or lamentable. Churchill seems apt here as well. David Langston P.S....and did Gore mean he opposes the internal combusion *engine* or he oppose feeding them with non-renewable, polluting fossil fuel in them? Unless he meant it as synechdoche, it seems simple-minded to oppose the engine when alternative fuels and alternative designs are available. From VM Fri Oct 27 13:10:16 2000 Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 13:10:16 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 140 David writes: Furthermore, if our alternatives are a splintered electoral landscape in which consensus is nearly impossible (Italy) versus a rhetoric of silence and deflection, I'm not so sure that our current conditions is either sad or lamentable. Churchill seems apt here as well. David makes a good point with which I do not ultimately disagree. Again, it's a matter of trade-offs, weighing the upside against the downside, and coming up with an "on balance" judgment as to which kind of democracy is the better. I'm just saying that our national presidential debate is significantly and harmfully truncated by our nonparliamentary, two-party, winner-take-all approach to self-governance. Our system gains in stability where Italy's gains in full-spectrum consideration of the issues at hand. And, of course, we do have access to relatively more open and wide-ranging discussion of the issues in print and electronic media. The flaws of silence and deflection I pointed to may not be fatal for our nation and world--MAY not be fatal--but they still carry with them, I charge, importantly "sad and lamentable" consequences. Ed From VM Fri Oct 27 16:09:10 2000 Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 16:09:10 -0600 (MDT) From: Turpin Paul Subject: Re: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 141 On the topic of two party vs. multi-party electoral systems, Anthony Downs's _An Economic Theory of Democracy_ (1957) has an interesting treatment. In brief, he argues that in two party systems, the parties do indeed try to capture the middle, as David Langston noted. They do so by keeping their ideological statements ambiguous so as to leave themselves the most leeway in setting fairly specific policy once they are elected. In multi-party parliamentary systems, on the other hand, parties sharpen their ideological differences in order to distinguish themselves from competing parties. Their campaign ideology is typically unambiguous, but once in office the policy-making tends to be broad and even ambiguous because of the necessity of compromise in parliaments. (The necessity for compromise, btw, was a source of Hitler's contempt for parliamentary democracy that Burke examines so well in "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'.") The difference between the two- and multi-party systems appears to come down to a kind of hidden agenda for the former and an impracticable (because compromised) agenda for the latter. I recommend the Downs book; his overall project is to interpret political activity as economic activity, in the sense of self-maximizing behavior. He attempts to apply the central premises of neoclassical economics to understanding political behavior (preferences, the principle of utility, etc.), but it's not at all a mathematization of the subject. Instead, he talks about persuasion quite a bit, though never under the rubric of rhetoric, where he considers the problems of information costs for voters-- an idea taken up by Samuel Popkin in _The Reasoning Voter_. Ultimately, I think that his effort at thinking politics through in a "purely" economic way does not succeed, or rather, that he bails himself out with a rhetorical move that oughtn't be allowed by the rules he set for himself (but that's another paper to write). Paul Turpin +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ Visiting Instructor, Dept. of Communication University of Colorado, Boulder web: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~turpin/Home.html From VM Sun Oct 29 15:49:11 2000 Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 15:49:11 -0500 From: "David Blakesley" Subject: Source for a Line about WCW Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 142 I'm hoping that someone might be able to help me find the source of a KB line that goes something like this and was written, I believe, with reference to William Carlos Williams: "There is only the eye, and the object upon which the eye alights." I haven't been able to find it in the Williams essay in LASA, and I don't have access to these works by Burke: "William Carlos Williams, The Method of." The Dial 82 (February 1927): 94-98. "William Carlos Williams: A Critical Appreciation." _William Carlos Williams_. Ed. Charles Angoff. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974. 15-19. "Heaven's First Law." Rev. of William Carlos Williams, Sour Grapes). The Dial 72 (February 1922): 197-200. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks, Dave From VM Sun Oct 29 15:01:32 2000 Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 15:01:32 -0600 From: James Comas Subject: Re: Source for a Line about WCW Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 143 On 10/29/00 2:49 PM, David Blakesley at blakesle@purdue.edu posted the following: > I'm hoping that someone might be able to help me find the source of a KB > line that goes something like this and was written, I believe, with > reference to William Carlos Williams: > > "There is only the eye, and the object upon which the eye alights." > > I haven't been able to find it in the Williams essay in LASA, and I don't > have access to these works by Burke: > > "William Carlos Williams, The Method of." The Dial 82 (February 1927): > 94-98. > "William Carlos Williams: A Critical Appreciation." _William Carlos > Williams_. Ed. Charles Angoff. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson > University Press, 1974. 15-19. > "Heaven's First Law." Rev. of William Carlos Williams, Sour Grapes). The > Dial 72 (February 1922): 197-200. David, The statement is from "Heaven's First Law" (197). Here's the full sentence: "There is the eye, and there is the thing upon which that eye alights; while the relationship existing between the two is the poem." Best, Jim -- J. Comas Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia comasj@missouri.edu | http://web.missouri.edu/~engjnc/ -------------------------------------------------------- From VM Mon Oct 30 10:52:28 2000 Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 10:52:28 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 144 Thanks to Paul for his response. By way of summarizing Downs' book, what Paul says about the overall reasons for relative vagueness in two-party campaign rhetoric as contrasted with ideologically sharpened discourse in multi-party systems, then the very reverse in each case in repect to communication within the legeslative process, sounds plausible. I have two questions for Paul, though: (1) Do your demurrers about Downs' use of the neoclassical economic model negate your appreciation of the generality stated above? Or does your criticism relate to other facets of Downs' case? (2) Downs' approach sounds like that of 17th-Century Scotish economic and political theory. Do you relate An Economic Theory of Democracy to that body of thought, by way of historical causation and antecedent? Ed From VM Mon Oct 30 11:02:41 2000 Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 11:02:41 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 145 In my previous post, I meant, of course, 18th-Century Scottish economic and poltical theory, not 17th-Century. In the 17th-Century, Scotsmen were too busy inventing golf. Ed From VM Wed Nov 01 10:32:54 2000 Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 10:32:54 -0700 (MST) From: Turpin Paul Subject: Re: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 146 Ed wrote: (1) Do your demurrers about Downs' use of the neoclassical economic model negate your appreciation of the generality stated above? Or does your criticism relate to other facets of Downs' case? (2) Downs' approach sounds like that of 17th-Century Scotish economic and political theory. Do you relate An Economic Theory of Democracy to that body of thought, by way of historical causation and antecedent? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let me take Ed's questions about Downs in reverse order (apologies for the length of this post; political economy is my dissertation topic): _An Economic Theory of Democracy_ is related to 18th century political economy, a.k.a. classical political economy, by way of its being an antecedent to the neoclassical revolution of the late 1800s (e.g., Jevons, Marshall, et al.). Three things distinguished neoclassical from classical political economy: (1) the incorporation of utilitarian philosophy of an especially Benthamite flavor; (2) the application of calculus to economic analysis "at the margins"--i.e., the marginal calculus, which is the basis for supply and demand curves and other mathematizations of what we now call microeconomics; and (3) the sense, developed over the preceding 100 years since Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, that economics ought to be treated as a science entirely separate from political considerations. This was when "political" was dropped from the term and "economics" became the new name of the science. Regarding the first point, Burke's remarks on Bentham, as in "Terministic Screens," are relevant here. Bentham's desire to purge language of moral valuations led to a neutering of economic understandings of human desire. Because individual taste is so variable from person to person, according to neoclassical thinking, the best we can say is that people _have_ tastes without being able to specify in advance what they are. This where the idea of preferences comes from: a preference acts as a place-holder for an as-yet-unspecified taste. The neoclassical applications of Bentham's utilitarian philosophy rationalized the system of preferences by claiming that an individual's preferences were rationally ordered and changed *very* slowly if at all. The principle of utility then comes to stand for the principle that people engage in rational, self-interested behavior in trying to satisfy their preferences. The thesis of "Terministic Screens," as well as of most of Burke's work, is that any such attempt to exclusively scientize language is hopelessly doomed from the outset. This leads me to the first question Ed posed, regarding my assessment of Downs's general argument about two- and multi-party differences between seeking power (campaign mode) and holding power (legislative mode). I think Downs's insight is accurate, insofar as I find it intellectually appealing from principle and historically plausible as explanation. What I object to, though, is the pretence that the whole process is a kind of value-free, purely rational activity; this is where I think rhetoric has the advantage in terms of being able to see both rational argument and the emotional and ethical valences of value-commitments as well. My objection has two edges: The first is that the neoclassical language of preferences and the elevation of utility do not dispense with moral valuation, but rather *condense it* into themselves while denying it elsewhere, so that there is a kind of moral righteousness apparent in their assertion as scientific-philosophic truths. This is the moral righteousness available to those claiming to be genuinely *disinterested*, especially when arguing against people they claim are *self-interested* (yes, ironies abound here). Deirdre McCloskey, whose work on the rhetoric of economics was focused on the disciplinary discourse of economists, has recently been working on critiques of the de-valuation of morality in economics along similar lines. The second objection, more specific to Downs, is that the language of preferences and utility as mobilized in social argument similarly resorts to rhetorical appeal to salvage its projects. So in part, I am favorably inclined towards Downs's thesis because I think he arrived at it rhetorically, rather than through a pure calculation of rational self-interest as he claimed. As I mentioned in my previous message, Downs talks a fair amount about persuasion, but he has no theoretical framework with which to relate persuasion to the pursuit of rational self-interest in a way that would help explain how self-interest could be enlarged or how preference-ordering could be affected. Even just Burke's ideas about identification and division could help elaborate an understanding of how people become sociable and alter what they conceive to be in their interest--e.g., in making common cause with others--but neoclassical principles overemphasize the atomism of individual identity in their insistence on the uniqueness of personal taste. I do not reject neoclassical economics out of hand; for some purposes it is a useful and powerful tool. I do object, though, to its overall characterization of human nature, which I think could be productively reconstructed with rhetorical principles. But then, it wouldn't be neoclassical any more, would it ? So, yes, I think Downs's basic insight about two- vs. multi-party campaign and governing strategies is a good one. If there is an ethical problem with the strategic ambiguity of campaigns in the two-party system, I think it lies as much or more with the extreme diversity of the audience as with the moral intentions of the candidates--i.e., if Downs is right, then parties & candidates faced with large differences of opinion in their audience have to appeal to the largest cross-section of voters (audience) as possible, and ambiguity is their only hope for glossing differences to assemble a large enough favorable audience to win an election. We may have the irony that a presidential campaign that looks like a choice between vanilla and french vanilla actually conceals an electorate that is so divided that only the blandest and most innocuous of choices can muster a majority. That's a weakness of majoritarian democracy. [On a related note, James Arnt Aune (_Rhetoric & Marxism_) has a new book that should be out in a few weeks: _Selling the Free Market: The Rhetoric of Economic Correctness_. He has a chapter on Richard Posner, a leading proponent of neoclassical principles on the Federal bench in Chicago, which expands on the reason/rhetoric disjunction.] Paul Turpin +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ Visiting Instructor, Dept. of Communication University of Colorado, Boulder web: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~turpin/Home.html From VM Wed Nov 01 20:15:27 2000 Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 20:15:27 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Political Act in a Conservative Scene Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 147 I thank Paul for his learned, sterling answers to my two questions. I especially like the last paragraph, the one before the related note. It is a gem-like summary of the points he made. Ed From VM Mon Nov 13 10:57:01 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 10:57:01 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Free Speech for All Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 148 There are so many things one could say about this presidential election mess. One issue that at least tangentially relates to kb is the question of free speeech. Of central importance in a democratic polity is whether each voter's voice is heard at election time, especially in respect to choice of the chief execuative. I keep hearing these cavalier and dismissive comments by Bush apologists that "it happens all the time," the discarding of tens of thousands of ballots in a given county one election after another. That's a scandal whether it happens in Cook County or Palm Beach County. I agree with National Review-style conservatives that the government should not, in effect, coerce citizens into going to the polls. "Getting out the vote" is the job of party workers. When citizens go to the polls, however, or choose to cast their ballot absentee, the voting process ought to be user friendly. Butterfly ballots are known to be at least 3 percent defective, in contrast, say, to electronic scanning machines (1 percent). Why are they still being used? I would rather forego my right to a secret ballot and seek help from polling officials to make sure I mark my ballot or pull the handle correctly, as I cast my vote. Gauging as accurately as possible the will of the citizens who go to the trouble to cast their ballots is a sacred duty in a nation that calls itself democratic. Of course, we really know now we're not a democratic nation. We are, as Bill Buckley and Rush Limbaugh types have been asserting for years, a "republic," not a "democracy." Each state is a democracy, but the nation is not a democracy. Democracy means one man or woman/one vote. My vote cast in Pennsylvania amounts to a fraction less than 1 full vote, whereas a vote cast in Wyoming counts for a fraction of a vote larger than 1. The population of Wyoming is, I believe, less than that of the rather rural southeastern Pennsylvania county I live in, Lancaster County. Yet Wyoming gets 3 votes in the Electoral College, whereas PA gets only 23, making the voter/electoral impact ratio slanted very much in the favor of Wyoming and other small states. The upshot is, we may have a president the next four years who has garnered fewer votes than his opponent. The chances of our finally becoming a democracy in the near future are next to zero. The Republican/small state alliance would crush such an amendment proposal in its tracks. One more item, unrelated to the above. I read in Herb Simon's current and trenchant article in QJS about the discussion list CRTNET. I've heard vague rumors about it before. How does one get on it? Up to now, I've pestered, irritated, and abused only subscribers to Burke-L/kb. I perhaps would like to foment discontent elsewhere, also. Any perverse Burkophile out there who would like to give me a hand, I'd be much obliged. I've tried CRTNET.COM, but the site I got on to didn't look right to me. What about it? Ed From VM Mon Nov 13 10:52:49 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 10:52:49 -0500 (EST) From: "Seth L. Kahn" Subject: Re: Free Speech for All Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 149 Ed: Go to www.natcom.org (the NCA website) for subscription info. --Seth Seth Kahn Syracuse University PhD Student in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric slkahneg@mailbox.syr.edu 109 Concord Pl. Syracuse, NY 13210 315-474-9679 (home) 315-443-1793 (office) ____________________________________________________________________ "Nothing could be plainer than the things that have been done, and there can be no mystery in what is yet to come." --Nomeansno, "Now" On Mon, 13 Nov 2000, Edward C. Appel wrote: > There are so many things one could say about this presidential election > mess. One issue that at least tangentially relates to kb is the > question of free speeech. Of central importance in a democratic polity > is whether each voter's voice is heard at election time, especially in > respect to choice of the chief execuative. I keep hearing these > cavalier and dismissive comments by Bush apologists that "it happens all > the time," the discarding of tens of thousands of ballots in a given > county one election after another. That's a scandal whether it happens > in Cook County or Palm Beach County. > > I agree with National Review-style conservatives that the government > should not, in effect, coerce citizens into going to the polls. > "Getting out the vote" is the job of party workers. When citizens go to > the polls, however, or choose to cast their ballot absentee, the voting > process ought to be user friendly. Butterfly ballots are known to be at > least 3 percent defective, in contrast, say, to electronic scanning > machines (1 percent). Why are they still being used? I would rather > forego my right to a secret ballot and seek help from polling officials > to make sure I mark my ballot or pull the handle correctly, as I cast my > vote. Gauging as accurately as possible the will of the citizens who go > to the trouble to cast their ballots is a sacred duty in a nation that > calls itself democratic. > > Of course, we really know now we're not a democratic nation. We are, as > Bill Buckley and Rush Limbaugh types have been asserting for years, a > "republic," not a "democracy." Each state is a democracy, but the > nation is not a democracy. Democracy means one man or woman/one vote. > My vote cast in Pennsylvania amounts to a fraction less than 1 full > vote, whereas a vote cast in Wyoming counts for a fraction of a vote > larger than 1. The population of Wyoming is, I believe, less than that > of the rather rural southeastern Pennsylvania county I live in, > Lancaster County. Yet Wyoming gets 3 votes in the Electoral College, > whereas PA gets only 23, making the voter/electoral impact ratio slanted > very much in the favor of Wyoming and other small states. The upshot > is, we may have a president the next four years who has garnered fewer > votes than his opponent. The chances of our finally becoming a > democracy in the near future are next to zero. The Republican/small > state alliance would crush such an amendment proposal in its tracks. > > One more item, unrelated to the above. I read in Herb Simon's current > and trenchant article in QJS about the discussion list CRTNET. I've > heard vague rumors about it before. How does one get on it? Up to now, > I've pestered, irritated, and abused only subscribers to Burke-L/kb. I > perhaps would like to foment discontent elsewhere, also. Any perverse > Burkophile out there who would like to give me a hand, I'd be much > obliged. I've tried CRTNET.COM, but the site I got on to didn't look > right to me. What about it? > > > > Ed > From VM Mon Nov 13 11:45:26 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 11:45:26 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Free Speech for All Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 150 I thank Seth for the info and will follow his instructions. Ed From VM Mon Nov 13 12:00:55 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 12:00:55 -0500 From: Keith Gibson Subject: Re: Free Speech for All Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 151 An interesting commentary, but I respectfully submit that the electoral college is a little more complicated than the "Republican/ small state alliance" you describe. It gives the small states a little more heft, to be sure, but it does so for what I think are some very good reasons. There have always been metropolitan pockets in this country, surrounded by much-less-populated agricultural areas. And it would be very easy, the Founders recognized, for the urban centers to impose their will on the rural folks in national elections. It is also easy to see that cities do not have the same interests as farming communities. Thus, in order to give the smaller, rural states an easier chance of having their voices heard in national elections, the electoral college was established. This clearly does not give the small states overwhelming power, but it gives Gore and Bush a slightly larger reason to campaign in (and hopefully listen to the ideas of) the people in West Virginia and Iowa. The electoral college is indeed a road block to "pure democracy," but inasmuch as we want small states to be noticed by the White House, I think it's an important one. Keith Gibson Penn State University At 10:57 AM 11/13/00 +0000, Edward C. Appel wrote: >There are so many things one could say about this presidential election >mess. One issue that at least tangentially relates to kb is the >question of free speeech. Of central importance in a democratic polity >is whether each voter's voice is heard at election time, especially in >respect to choice of the chief execuative. I keep hearing these >cavalier and dismissive comments by Bush apologists that "it happens all >the time," the discarding of tens of thousands of ballots in a given >county one election after another. That's a scandal whether it happens >in Cook County or Palm Beach County. > >I agree with National Review-style conservatives that the government >should not, in effect, coerce citizens into going to the polls. >"Getting out the vote" is the job of party workers. When citizens go to >the polls, however, or choose to cast their ballot absentee, the voting >process ought to be user friendly. Butterfly ballots are known to be at >least 3 percent defective, in contrast, say, to electronic scanning >machines (1 percent). Why are they still being used? I would rather >forego my right to a secret ballot and seek help from polling officials >to make sure I mark my ballot or pull the handle correctly, as I cast my >vote. Gauging as accurately as possible the will of the citizens who go >to the trouble to cast their ballots is a sacred duty in a nation that >calls itself democratic. > >Of course, we really know now we're not a democratic nation. We are, as >Bill Buckley and Rush Limbaugh types have been asserting for years, a >"republic," not a "democracy." Each state is a democracy, but the >nation is not a democracy. Democracy means one man or woman/one vote. >My vote cast in Pennsylvania amounts to a fraction less than 1 full >vote, whereas a vote cast in Wyoming counts for a fraction of a vote >larger than 1. The population of Wyoming is, I believe, less than that >of the rather rural southeastern Pennsylvania county I live in, >Lancaster County. Yet Wyoming gets 3 votes in the Electoral College, >whereas PA gets only 23, making the voter/electoral impact ratio slanted >very much in the favor of Wyoming and other small states. The upshot >is, we may have a president the next four years who has garnered fewer >votes than his opponent. The chances of our finally becoming a >democracy in the near future are next to zero. The Republican/small >state alliance would crush such an amendment proposal in its tracks. > >One more item, unrelated to the above. I read in Herb Simon's current >and trenchant article in QJS about the discussion list CRTNET. I've >heard vague rumors about it before. How does one get on it? Up to now, >I've pestered, irritated, and abused only subscribers to Burke-L/kb. I >perhaps would like to foment discontent elsewhere, also. Any perverse >Burkophile out there who would like to give me a hand, I'd be much >obliged. I've tried CRTNET.COM, but the site I got on to didn't look >right to me. What about it? > > > >Ed > From VM Mon Nov 13 13:54:12 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 13:54:12 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Free Speech for All Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 152 I don't really disagree with anything Keith said. He makes a good case for retention of the Electoral College as it now exists. I acknowledge, also, that I was probably guilty of "allness," "indiscrimination," "polarization," "entelechial" sins in the way I phrased the argument in my post. To say our nation is not a "pure" democracy, nor even a "pure" representative democracy, is probably a better way of putting it than to say our nation is "not a democracy." The Electoral College as now constituted does, however, abridge democracy on the national level, indeed, abridge it some might say severely. We will in all likelihood, present numbers being more or less sustained in Florida, have a president who came in second nationally, measured by the stated preferences of "the people." The virtues, and I grant that there are some, in allowing thinly populated states with a markedly different economic orientation a slight edge in the Electoral College should not be summarily disregarded. Those particular values must be weighed, though, against the manifest prospect of handing the presidency to a national "loser" an average of once every ten elections.or so. That question needs to be debated, even though the debate will be academic. Too many states benefit from the current system. A truly glaring error in my first post was this one: I said "free speech for all' is "tangentially" related to the purposes of the kb list. Rather, it is DIRECTLY related to the purposes of the kb list. Ed From VM Mon Nov 13 16:10:43 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 16:10:43 -0500 From: "Camille K. Lewis" Subject: Pious or Impious Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 153 I sense a piety in this frustration with the current election. A piety towards so-called "direct democracy." A piety towards voting as being a means of "free speech." Is this what our patron saint would have us think and do? Would he have us mourn the futility of our academic discussion as merely "academic" and complain about the electoral college as elitist but too entrenched to be overturned? I think he would want us to exercise radical and impious creativity. He would want us to laugh critically. How about a go at a comedic response? For one, rather than worry that the system has frustrated the so-called "voice of the people," let's think about that "voice." A CNN commentator this weekend pointed out that approximately 30% of the voters last Tuesday believe that Al Gore could do a better job as president and approximately 30% believe that W. would do a better job, 35% see absolutely *NO* difference between the two! So 66% of "the people" would be happy with either dude. The statistical split between the "people" may not be a question of "irregular" or "illegal" voting practices, but simply a paltry candidate selection. If the "voice" is to be heard, let's get some more variety. Among my colleagues last week, I heard the word "MESS" quite frequently. Our country was a mess, Florida was a mess, the media was a mess, the two campaigns were a mess - more pious responses. "What's wrong with mess?" Burke might ask. Since when is neatness in government a virtue? Then among the pundits I culled yesterday - everyone from the likes of Sam Donaldson to Andy Rooney - the cry was, "Our country's not a mess. It's doing just fine. We're doing just fine. Everything's great." Another pious response that admires the sacred character of the American system and our government. Ours could endure this little blimp in America's heart monitor. We'll just plod recalcitrantly along, acting conservatively, not changing a thing. Sigh. . . . What would Burke have us do here? What would be the allopathic cure? For another, perhaps the entire election process is a sham. I've read democratic theorists who say we should trash the entire presidential election system, and choose our president by lot. Yes, you read that correctly - every few years or so, one of us in this country of at least 100 million voters would get the infamous letter that we have been called - not to jury duty - but to presidential duty. That would certainly abolish the glamour implicit in the position, the corruption necessary to get elected, and the bureaucratic nonsense indispensable with any voting process. The possible rage that you're feeling toward my last suggestion indicates the piety we feel toward the office of president. If, however, you're giggling at the prospect, KB would be pleased. Through the impious imagining of the possibilities for change, maybe we can actually find a solution. Camille K. Lewis Doctoral Candidate Communication and Culture Indiana University Bloomington From VM Mon Nov 13 16:39:21 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 16:39:21 -0600 From: "Shaw, Patrick" Subject: RE: Pious or Impious Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 154 Instead of taking an allopathic cure, perhaps we should consider a homeopathic one. The (non)results of the presidential election are perhaps the final symptom -- the last dish in a multi-course meal that has gone on for way too many servings now -- of a political system so sick that it now stands poised to purge itself, effecting a kind of catharsis no pundit or politico had anticipated. If, however, we're committed to an allopathic cure, Morning Edition commentator Peter Loge's suggestion last week of a tag-team co-presidency has some virtue: "When a tense situation with foreign leaders calls for friendliness and folksy charm, Bush can sit at the table. When the negotiations turn to details, like specific pronunciations and names of countries, Gore could rush in and tag Bush, who ducks out of the room." As attractive as this allopathic cure may be, I think I'd rather experience the purge. > ---------- > From: Camille K. Lewis[SMTP:cklewis@alumni.indiana.edu] > Reply To: cklewis@alumni.indiana.edu > Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 3:10 PM > To: kb@purdue.edu > Subject: Pious or Impious > > I sense a piety in this frustration with the current election. A piety > towards so-called "direct democracy." A piety towards voting as being a > means of "free speech." Is this what our patron saint would have us think > and do? Would he have us mourn the futility of our academic discussion as > merely "academic" and complain about the electoral college as elitist but > too entrenched to be overturned? > > I think he would want us to exercise radical and impious creativity. He > would want us to laugh critically. How about a go at a comedic response? > > For one, rather than worry that the system has frustrated the so-called > "voice of the people," let's think about that "voice." A CNN commentator > this weekend pointed out that approximately 30% of the voters last Tuesday > believe that Al Gore could do a better job as president and approximately > 30% believe that W. would do a better job, 35% see absolutely *NO* > difference between the two! So 66% of "the people" would be happy with > either dude. The statistical split between the "people" may not be a > question of "irregular" or "illegal" voting practices, but simply a paltry > candidate selection. If the "voice" is to be heard, let's get some more > variety. > > Among my colleagues last week, I heard the word "MESS" quite frequently. > Our country was a mess, Florida was a mess, the media was a mess, the two > campaigns were a mess - more pious responses. "What's wrong with mess?" > Burke might ask. Since when is neatness in government a virtue? > > Then among the pundits I culled yesterday - everyone from the likes of Sam > Donaldson to Andy Rooney - the cry was, "Our country's not a mess. It's > doing just fine. We're doing just fine. Everything's great." Another > pious response that admires the sacred character of the American system > and > our government. Ours could endure this little blimp in America's heart > monitor. We'll just plod recalcitrantly along, acting conservatively, not > changing a thing. Sigh. . . . What would Burke have us do here? What > would > be the allopathic cure? > > For another, perhaps the entire election process is a sham. I've read > democratic theorists who say we should trash the entire presidential > election system, and choose our president by lot. Yes, you read that > correctly - every few years or so, one of us in this country of at least > 100 > million voters would get the infamous letter that we have been called - > not > to jury duty - but to presidential duty. That would certainly abolish the > glamour implicit in the position, the corruption necessary to get elected, > and the bureaucratic nonsense indispensable with any voting process. > > The possible rage that you're feeling toward my last suggestion indicates > the piety we feel toward the office of president. If, however, you're > giggling at the prospect, KB would be pleased. Through the impious > imagining of the possibilities for change, maybe we can actually find a > solution. > > Camille K. Lewis > Doctoral Candidate > Communication and Culture > Indiana University > Bloomington > From VM Mon Nov 13 17:53:25 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 17:53:25 -0500 From: "Camille K. Lewis" Subject: RE: Pious or Impious Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 155 While homeopathic cures have a untainted, quaint appeal, it's not what Burke recommends! I've just finished barreling through all of Burke's criticism for my dissertation, and he clearly sides with allopathic social cures. In "Philosophy of Literary Form," he states: "The poet is, indeed, a 'medicine man.' . . . As 'medicine man,' he deals with 'poisons.' . . . transforming poisons into medicines by attenuation of the dose. The poet, in his pious or tragic role, would immunize us by stylistically infecting us with the disease. As we move towards the impious response, on the other hand, we get an 'allopathic' strategy of cure. We get the recourse to 'antidote.' The medical analogy may be justified by authority, as it has been employed in similar contexts by both a critic and a poet." (65) I would be better, to Burke, to cure with dissimilar (the technical definition of allopathy) than with the similar (the technical definition of homeopathy). Now, we can debate whether or not Burke is correct, naturally, but he would rather that we be impious and allopathic than pious and homeopathic. As for the co-presidency, did you see Saturday Night Live's spoof on this idea? That the White House could be the "Odd Couple" of presidencies. A giggle for certain, but is it a critical giggle? Camille -----Original Message----- From: Shaw, Patrick [mailto:shawp@lindsey.edu] Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 5:39 PM To: kb@purdue.edu; 'cklewis@alumni.indiana.edu' Subject: RE: Pious or Impious Instead of taking an allopathic cure, perhaps we should consider a homeopathic one. The (non)results of the presidential election are perhaps the final symptom -- the last dish in a multi-course meal that has gone on for way too many servings now -- of a political system so sick that it now stands poised to purge itself, effecting a kind of catharsis no pundit or politico had anticipated. If, however, we're committed to an allopathic cure, Morning Edition commentator Peter Loge's suggestion last week of a tag-team co-presidency has some virtue: "When a tense situation with foreign leaders calls for friendliness and folksy charm, Bush can sit at the table. When the negotiations turn to details, like specific pronunciations and names of countries, Gore could rush in and tag Bush, who ducks out of the room." As attractive as this allopathic cure may be, I think I'd rather experience the purge. > ---------- > From: Camille K. Lewis[SMTP:cklewis@alumni.indiana.edu] > Reply To: cklewis@alumni.indiana.edu > Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 3:10 PM > To: kb@purdue.edu > Subject: Pious or Impious > > I sense a piety in this frustration with the current election. A piety > towards so-called "direct democracy." A piety towards voting as being a > means of "free speech." Is this what our patron saint would have us think > and do? Would he have us mourn the futility of our academic discussion as > merely "academic" and complain about the electoral college as elitist but > too entrenched to be overturned? > > I think he would want us to exercise radical and impious creativity. He > would want us to laugh critically. How about a go at a comedic response? > > For one, rather than worry that the system has frustrated the so-called > "voice of the people," let's think about that "voice." A CNN commentator > this weekend pointed out that approximately 30% of the voters last Tuesday > believe that Al Gore could do a better job as president and approximately > 30% believe that W. would do a better job, 35% see absolutely *NO* > difference between the two! So 66% of "the people" would be happy with > either dude. The statistical split between the "people" may not be a > question of "irregular" or "illegal" voting practices, but simply a paltry > candidate selection. If the "voice" is to be heard, let's get some more > variety. > > Among my colleagues last week, I heard the word "MESS" quite frequently. > Our country was a mess, Florida was a mess, the media was a mess, the two > campaigns were a mess - more pious responses. "What's wrong with mess?" > Burke might ask. Since when is neatness in government a virtue? > > Then among the pundits I culled yesterday - everyone from the likes of Sam > Donaldson to Andy Rooney - the cry was, "Our country's not a mess. It's > doing just fine. We're doing just fine. Everything's great." Another > pious response that admires the sacred character of the American system > and > our government. Ours could endure this little blimp in America's heart > monitor. We'll just plod recalcitrantly along, acting conservatively, not > changing a thing. Sigh. . . . What would Burke have us do here? What > would > be the allopathic cure? > > For another, perhaps the entire election process is a sham. I've read > democratic theorists who say we should trash the entire presidential > election system, and choose our president by lot. Yes, you read that > correctly - every few years or so, one of us in this country of at least > 100 > million voters would get the infamous letter that we have been called - > not > to jury duty - but to presidential duty. That would certainly abolish the > glamour implicit in the position, the corruption necessary to get elected, > and the bureaucratic nonsense indispensable with any voting process. > > The possible rage that you're feeling toward my last suggestion indicates > the piety we feel toward the office of president. If, however, you're > giggling at the prospect, KB would be pleased. Through the impious > imagining of the possibilities for change, maybe we can actually find a > solution. > > Camille K. Lewis > Doctoral Candidate > Communication and Culture > Indiana University > Bloomington > From VM Mon Nov 13 20:02:11 2000 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 20:02:11 +0000 From: "Edward C. Appel" Subject: Pious or Impious Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 156 Camille makes some really good Burkean points in her rejoinder to my perhaps somewhat fevered rant. Among them is this one: "What's wrong with mess?" Burke might ask. Since when is neatness in government a virtue? OK, well put. Note what Burke says in his encomium to "democracy" as opposed to "fascism" in his "Program" essay in CS": "Democracy" should--will--cultivate "inefficiency." The "aesthetic," the attitdude that undergirds democracy, is "anti-practical." "Democracy" is "organized distruct, 'protest made easy,' a babble of discordant voices, a colossal getting in one's own way--democracy, now endangered by the apostles of hope who would attack it for its 'inefficiency,' whereas inefficiency is the one thing it has in its favor" (p. 114). Continuing, Burke says: "The democrat, the negativist, the man who thinks of powers as something to be 'fought,' has no hope in perfection--as the 'opposition,' his [sic] nearest approach to a doctrine is the DOCTRINE OF INTERFERENCE [my emphasis]. (There is no absolute truth, he says, but there is the cancellation of errors . . . . And to recapitulate: the aesthetic would seek to discourage the most stimulating values of the practical, would seek--by wit, by fancy, by anathema, by versatiltiy--to throw into confusion the code which underlies commercial enterprise, industrial competition, the 'heroism' [read: tragedy] of economic warfare; would seek to endanger the basic props of industry." Hence the dramatistic appropriateness of the "impieties" of "perspective by incongruity" that were amply illustrated in Camille's proposals for change in our electoral system, summed up nicely in general terms when she said: "Through the impious imaginings of the possibilities for change, maybe we can actually find a solution." However, as a Burkophile with an intellectual commitment to a comic critique, but who is constitutionally, even neurochemically, tragic frame by birth, I gravitate part way toward Simons' demurrers about "warranted outrage" and the tragic realities inherent in "the sheer brute materials of the world as it is." Conjure up droll scenarios about the beneficent nonsense our current impass presents us with, if you will. Remember though: With even a one or two vote majority in the Senate, Bush could conceivably appoint three, maybe even four, Scalia/Thomas-type justices to the Supreme court who could turn environmental law and federal/state checks and balances on their head for a quarter of a century or more. Let's then smile and chuckle not as "the woods burn," but rather as the polar ice caps continue to melt and weather patterns grow ever more violent--without the most powerful nation on earth doing a blessed thing about it. Enjoy the Bush Presidency. Ed From VM Wed Nov 22 14:29:29 2000 Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 14:29:29 -0800 From: Richard Coe Subject: Fwd: query re: Burke letter father Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 157 > >Hi, > >Sorry to bother everyone. Unfortunately, I've forgotten where I can find >the letter Burke wrote to his father about dropping out of Columbia to >educate himself in Greenwich Village. Either the original or a secondary >source that quotes from the letter (as Jack S. cites his letters on this >matter to his mother and Malcolm Cowley) will serve my purposes. If >anyone has a reference, I'd appreciate it. Thanks, >Rick > >(Prof.) Richard M. Coe >English Department >Simon Fraser University >Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 >CANADA >(604) 291-4316 >(FAX: 291-5737 (Prof.) Richard M. Coe English Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 CANADA (604) 291-4316 (FAX: 291-5737 From VM Wed Nov 22 18:07:42 2000 Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 18:07:42 -0500 From: "David Blakesley" Subject: RE: query re: Burke letter father Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 158 Rick, Here's an excerpt from KB's letter to Cowley about his decision. The opening ellipsis is KB's. The letter goes on for another 500 words or so, but speaks mainly of Flaubert. Hope this helps. Dave --------------------- [Weehawken, New Jersey January 6, 1918 [PS] Dear M, . . . I hope you come to New York soon, for I am quitting Columbia. A long story, and one which I can best tell with interruptions from you. But the essential fact is that I am going in a new direction. Suddenly becoming horrified at the realization of what college can do to a man of promise, I went to my father and told him I wanted to quit. He suggested that I get advice. I turned to Wilkinson as the only capable man I know. His answer is a solution that wouldn't go in a book: at my age he met the same problem as I am meeting, and he never regretted having done as I want to do. Damn! Huh? I shall get a room in New York and begin my existence as a Flaubert. Flaubert is to be my Talmud, my Homer, my Bacon, my terrible [ten?]. [Page 56, Jay, Paul, ed. The Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1981. New York: Viking Penguin, 1988; Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.] -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Richard Coe Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 5:29 PM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Fwd: query re: Burke letter father > >Hi, > >Sorry to bother everyone. Unfortunately, I've forgotten where I can find >the letter Burke wrote to his father about dropping out of Columbia to >educate himself in Greenwich Village. Either the original or a secondary >source that quotes from the letter (as Jack S. cites his letters on this >matter to his mother and Malcolm Cowley) will serve my purposes. If >anyone has a reference, I'd appreciate it. Thanks, >Rick > >(Prof.) Richard M. Coe >English Department >Simon Fraser University >Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 >CANADA >(604) 291-4316 >(FAX: 291-5737 (Prof.) Richard M. Coe English Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 CANADA (604) 291-4316 (FAX: 291-5737 From VM Mon Nov 27 11:02:37 2000 Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 11:02:37 -0400 From: Jack Selzer Subject: Re: Fwd: query re: Burke letter father Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 159 >>Hi, >> >>Sorry to bother everyone. Unfortunately, I've forgotten where I >>can find the letter Burke wrote to his father about dropping out of >>Columbia to educate himself in Greenwich Village. Either the >>original or a secondary source that quotes from the letter (as Jack >>S. cites his letters on this matter to his mother and Malcolm >>Cowley) will serve my purposes. If anyone has a reference, I'd >>appreciate it. Thanks, >>Rick >> >>(Prof.) Richard M. Coe Rick, I've checked my notes and I don't believe that the letter was to his father but to his mom, January 7, 1918. I quote the letter extensively on p 61 of KENNETH BURKE IN GREENWICH VILLAGE, and the footnote gives a list of other places where KB talks about his decision to drop out of Columbia. There could be a later letter that you are remembering, but it doesn't ring a bell for me. Sorry. Jack Jack Selzer Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies Department of English Penn State University 116 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802 phone: 814-865-0251 or 863-3069; fax 814-863-7285 jls25@psu.edu (email) http://www.psu.edu/dept/english/Programs/rhetoric/faculty.html#core (department web page) http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/l/jls25/ (personal web page) From VM Mon Nov 27 11:30:09 2000 Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 11:30:09 -0800 From: Richard Coe Subject: Fwd: RE: query re: Burke letter father Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 160 Much thanks to Dave and Jack for their helpful responses about Burke's letters explaining about dropping out of Columbia. It looks we have letters to Burke's mother and Malcolm Cowley, as well as a story about what Burke communicated to his father, and I somehow transmuted that story into a third letter that doesn't exist. Jack quotes the two letters on pages 60-61 of _Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village_; Dave supplies the relevant part of the letter of Cowley below. Rick >From: "David Blakesley" >To: "Richard Coe" , >Subject: RE: query re: Burke letter father >Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 18:07:42 -0500 > >Rick, > >Here's an excerpt from KB's letter to Cowley about his decision. The opening >ellipsis is KB's. The letter goes on for another 500 words or so, but speaks >mainly of Flaubert. Hope this helps. > >Dave > >--------------------- > [Weehawken, > New Jersey > January 6, 1918 > [PS] >Dear M, > >. . . I hope you come to New York soon, for I am quitting Columbia. A long >story, and one which I can best tell with interruptions from you. But the >essential fact is that I am going in a new direction. Suddenly becoming >horrified at the realization of what college can do to a man of promise, I >went to my father and told him I wanted to quit. He suggested that I get >advice. I turned to Wilkinson as the only capable man I know. His answer is >a solution that wouldn't go in a book: at my age he met the same problem as >I am meeting, and he never regretted having done as I want to do. Damn! Huh? > >I shall get a room in New York and begin my existence as a Flaubert. >Flaubert is to be my Talmud, my Homer, my Bacon, my terrible [ten?]. > >[Page 56, Jay, Paul, ed. The Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Burke and >Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1981. New York: Viking Penguin, 1988; Berkeley: U of >California P, 1990.] > > > >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of >Richard Coe >Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 5:29 PM >To: kb@purdue.edu >Subject: Fwd: query re: Burke letter father > > > > > > >Hi, > > > >Sorry to bother everyone. Unfortunately, I've forgotten where I can find > >the letter Burke wrote to his father about dropping out of Columbia to > >educate himself in Greenwich Village. Either the original or a secondary > >source that quotes from the letter (as Jack S. cites his letters on this > >matter to his mother and Malcolm Cowley) will serve my purposes. If > >anyone has a reference, I'd appreciate it. Thanks, > >Rick > > > >(Prof.) Richard M. Coe > >English Department > >Simon Fraser University > >Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 > >CANADA > >(604) 291-4316 > >(FAX: 291-5737 > > >(Prof.) Richard M. Coe >English Department >Simon Fraser University >Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 >CANADA >(604) 291-4316 >(FAX: 291-5737 (Prof.) Richard M. Coe English Department Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 CANADA (604) 291-4316 (FAX: 291-5737 From VM Tue Nov 28 11:30:40 2000 Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 11:30:40 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: An All-Purpose, Fit-All-Finger Paradigm of Dramatic Action Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 161 It was Dan Smith, I believe, who, a couple of months ago, broached the subject of teaching composition, if not literary and rhetorical analysis, from a dramatistic perspective. I forget what the subject title was. I chimed in, I think, with an abreviated outline of what I want to rant about today. I've used this handout to teach literary analysis and composition, and as a foundation for expanding students' horrizons toward identification and appreciation of tragic and comic messages and styles, fictional and factual. It's rather lengthy, so you are invited, if you don't want to give it the effort, to delete now. The Specific Terms for Dramatic Action Modifying the General Terms: We will give our all-purpose statement of the features nof drama rooted in our use of the English language a title. We will state what those moments of drama are. We will suggest some probing questions each aspect or stage of the drama might recommend for our consideration, as we read and interpret, and write. We will put the general nouns in plain text and the specifically moral modifiers in italics (can't do that here, so I'll put the specifically moral modifiers in caps). Namely: The Explicit, or Implicit, Drama in Literature and Other Discourse (1) MORALLY DISORDERED, POLLUTED, or PROBLEMATIC Scene, Situation, or Context, Actual or Potential (the "when" and the "where" of the narrative or explanatory action; the constraining environment in which the action takes place, harmonized initially in an uneasy fashion by rules that MIGHT be broken, then, almost inevitably, disrupted by disobedience) What's gone wrong to start the drama, particularly, but not always, from the main character's, or author's, point of view? What rule has been broken? What threatens to go wrong? What dire warning is being sounded, nor what frightening risk ua being confronted? For later consideration: How has the moral disorder been compounded, often by efforts to set it right, hide it, or avoid blame for it? (2) GUILT-OBSESSED Actor Vs. a GUILTY Opponent (the "who"did it, does it, or will do it of the action; the beginning of conflict, the offended against the offender) Who places blame for what's gone wrong and on whom or what? Who or what is cited as the cause of what's gone wrong? As a result of the finger-pointing, who's in conflict with whom? Specifically: Who is the main character (or hero or protagonist or "good guy") and who is the opposing character (or villain or antagonist or "bad guy") Or appear to be, based on the blame-laying? (3) REPENTANT or REBELLIOUS, MORALLY CONSTRUCTIVE or PERVERSE, "STRAIGHT" or IRONIC Attitude (the "manner" in which the action is carried out; based on the openly displayed, or sometimes hidden or partly hidden, mind set that helps drive the dramatic action, often expressed in verbal and physical gestures) What stance does the author or character in question seem to be taking toward what you, or most persons you know, would regard as "goodness" or virtue? What kind of actions does the language of the narrative, the essay, or a character in the account seem to be preparing for? In what direction does this actor--writer or character--seem headed, based on her dialogic or descriptive cues? What level of commitment does the author or character exhibit toward the ends and purposes she seems to want to bring to pass? What is the "tone" of the narrative or discourse? Judging from the connotations or emotional charges of the words the writer, or character, selects to tell her story or make her case, what do you think is her true intent? (4) SELF-SACRIFICING, SELF-INTERFERING and/or VICTIMIZING or SCAPEGOATING Act (the "what" of the action; conflict continued, setting right the moral wrong that has been committed, or that serves as a potential danger) Who pays what, who suffers and how, to set things right? Who struggles, strains, strives, makes a perhaps painful effort? Specifically: Who punishes himself or herself? Punishment of oneself: mortification Punishment of someone else or by someone else: scapegoating How is this strategy of sacrifice being presented? As a prescription for life, or not? Is it proportionate, just, and useful? Does the punishment fit the "crime" or the degree of seriousness of the issue the narrative or essay deals with? Have you followed the trail of blame and punishment until you have found the chief actor, the chief benign actor, and his or her opponent, the chief malign actor? Have you found this main axis of conflict? Does the main axis of conflict, the who's- against-whom, remain the same throughout the story or discourse? Or does in change or shift at some crucial point, revealing a different antagonist or protagonist, and hence a different meaning? What value is ultimately debated, is ultimately in dispute, a protagonist (PRO: on behalf of; AGON: conflict or argument; IST: the person so doing) being the character who argues for, or acts on behalf of, the thesis, moral, or philosophic statement of the tale or polemic, usually up front and at the center of things at the climax? In sum, whose drama is this? (5) REDEMPTIVE Purposes and Means (the "why" and the "how" of the narrative or explanatory action; the good that comes out of the bad, the gain after the pain, and the preliminary steps, stages, and tools of action required to bring this glorious vision to pass) What debt has been fairly paid? (a redeemed sense of justice) What's been learned? (redeemed understanding) Who are back together, who are reconciled, or who experience at the end a new and bracing social solidarity after unjust enemies are vanquished? (redeemed relationships) Whose social image has been improved? (redeemed identity) What's been restored or made better? (redeemed conditions) What strategies of operation did the "hero," or "antihero," use to finesse his way around inevitable opponents, obstacles, and resistances strewn in his pathway to redemption and success? Gotta run. Might unpack this screed a bit more in a subsequent post. Only one or two persons on the list would be interested, I'm sure, but my e-mail address has changed. You can note it above. Have a good one. Ed From VM Tue Nov 28 15:20:08 2000 Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 15:20:08 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: Burke and Columbia Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 162 Rick, There are probably many places Burke discusses leaving Columbia. I recall a brief, but interesting discussion during the Iowa interviews. It should be around minute 0 23 (in Interview I). One specific complaint, I believe, was that Burke wanted to take medieval Latin, but they wouldn't let him take it before taking classical Latin (which he studied for 6 years in secondary school). Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Thu Nov 30 08:46:27 2000 Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 08:46:27 -0800 From: Greg Clark Subject: Burke and Columbia Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 163 In a conversation I had with Burke in 1989, he said that after giving Colombia a fair chance, he had told his father that he thought he could educate himself better, and that he could do that if his father would help him get set up in the Village. More or less systematically, he then proceeded to self-educate there. Greg Clark >kb-digest Wednesday, November 29 2000 Volume 01 : Number 032 > > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 15:20:08 -0500 >From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) >Subject: Burke and Columbia > >Rick, > >There are probably many places Burke discusses leaving Columbia. I recall a >brief, but interesting discussion during the Iowa interviews. It should be >around minute 0 23 (in Interview I). One specific complaint, I believe, was >that Burke wanted to take medieval Latin, but they wouldn't let him take it >before taking classical Latin (which he studied for 6 years in secondary >school). > >Clarke > >Dr. Clarke Rountree >Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts >Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program >342 Morton Hall >University of Alabama in Huntsville >Huntsville, AL 35899 >(256)-824-6646 >rountrj@email.uah.edu > >------------------------------ > >End of kb-digest V1 #32 >*********************** -- Gregory Clark Professor of English Box 26234 Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84604 Phone: (801) 378-3581--office (801) 377-6449--home Fax: (801) 378-8748 (801) 378-4720 From VM Mon Dec 04 13:16:11 2000 Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2000 13:16:11 -0500 From: "Camille K. Lewis" Subject: Art is naturally antinomian. Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 164 We've all been quiet for awhile. Maybe we're frantically working before the winter break. Maybe we're wrapped up in the fencing match between the Supremes (courts, that is). Nonetheless, I've got a question for all of you. I'm in the midst of digesting _Counter-Statement_, and I'm curious to hear your takes on KB's assertion that: "Art is naturally antinomian. Art's very accumulation (its discordant voices arising out of many systems) serves to undermine any one rigid scheme of living-and herein lies 'wickedness' enough." (viii) I won't poison the well by telling you all what I'm after. I'm just curious how others take this and other discussions about 'art' in _CS_. Thanks. Camille K. Lewis Doctoral Candidate Indiana University Communication and Culture From VM Tue Dec 05 14:35:16 2000 Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 14:35:16 -0000 From: "Sean Phelan" Subject: Rhetoric of Economics Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 165 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0028_01C05EC8.95E8B560 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable A few weeks back, somebody on the list mentioned a new book by James = Arnt Aune - Selling the Free market: The Rhetoric of Economics = Correctness. My own research is in a similar area; more specifically on = the influence of neo-liberal assumptions on the media's treatment of = political economy. Aside from the aforementioned - and McCloskey's = Rhetoric of Economics - I'm wondering if anyone out there might have any = more helpful references in this regard, especially any that draw on = Burke? Thanks, Sean Phelan Research Student School of Communications, Dublin City University, Ireland ------=_NextPart_000_0028_01C05EC8.95E8B560 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
A few weeks back, somebody = on the list=20 mentioned a new book by James Arnt Aune - Selling the Free market: = The=20 Rhetoric of Economics Correctness. My own research is = in a=20 similar area; more specifically on the influence of = neo-liberal assumptions=20 on the media's treatment of political economy. Aside from the=20 aforementioned - and McCloskey's Rhetoric of Economics - I'm = wondering if=20 anyone out there might have any more helpful references in this regard,=20 especially any that draw on Burke?
 
Thanks,
 
Sean Phelan
 
Research Student
School of = Communications,
Dublin City = University,
Ireland
 
 
 
 
 
 
------=_NextPart_000_0028_01C05EC8.95E8B560-- From VM Tue Dec 05 18:26:50 2000 Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 18:26:50 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Dramatistic Textbooks Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 166 I'll join the parade of supplicants that have just now shattered the deafening silence on kb. My query is as follows: Does anyone know of the existence of a general textbook on Burke's dramatism, or a textbook in English literature or one in communication that works out of the dramatistic frame? I don't mean a textbook that contains a chapter or two on Burke. I mean a thoroughly Burkean tome from beginning to end that serves not as a work that advances knowledge in a given field, like one that might be published by a university press. I am referring to a book that travels settled pathways into dramatism and serves as a required text in a college or graduate setting, suitable for introducing a student to Burke's thought for the very first time. (I don't regard Rueckert's Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations the kind of text I have in mind.) I am aware of roughly twenty-some books that explicate various facets of dramatism, or deal with Burke's life and ideas, or apply dramatistic principles to a narrow academic area of concern, or collect together various essays on or about Burke. I know of a dramatistic textbook that was once in the making. When I took a course in dramatism/dramaturgy from Urban Jungle Jim Chesebro twenty-one or so years ago at Temple U., such a volume was "in the works," or so I was told. Jim taped his lectures that semester, the tapes to serve as the basis and jumping-off point for the study. His lectures were superb, as always, but the book never materialized as far as I know. That's my query. I wish you great joy as you strain and struggle--mortifying yourself!--to bring this semester to a satisfactory close. Remember what the commandant of the prisoner-of-war camp, played by Sesu Hayakawa, said to William Holden et al. in Bridge on the River Quai BE HAPPLY IN YOUR WORK! Ed From VM Wed Dec 06 09:39:28 2000 Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 09:39:28 -0500 From: lindsays@purdue.edu Subject: Re: Dramatistic Textbooks Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 167 This may be close to what you are looking for (or maybe not). I have used my own work, Implicit Rhetoric: Kenneth Burke's Extension of Aristotle's Concept of Entelechy (University Press of America, 1998). Although entelechy is the organizing concept, the book is essentially an introduction to Burke for upper level undergraduates and grad students. Beginning with a discussion of logology, the book moves to the realm of rhetoric and distinguishes between Aristotle's explicit rhetoric and Burke's implicit rhetoric. Since dramatism, Burke's implicit rhetoric, is based upon his extension of Aristotle's entelechy, a chapter is devoted to demonstrating the terminological relationship. Beginning with late Burke and moving to early Burke, Burke's major concepts are tied together as entelechial terminology. Next, Burkean methodology is introduced. A chapter discusses the Pentad as entelechy. The next introduces Burke's Statistical Method from an entelechial standpoint. The final two chapters are applications of entelechial/dramatistic rhetorical theory and criticism. Stan A. Lindsay Department of English Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 lindsays@purdue.edu Quoting Edappel8@cs.com: > I'll join the parade of supplicants that have just now shattered the > deafening silence on kb. My query is as follows: Does anyone know of the > existence of a general textbook on Burke's dramatism, or a textbook in > English literature or one in communication that works out of the > dramatistic > frame? I don't mean a textbook that contains a chapter or two on Burke. I > > mean a thoroughly Burkean tome from beginning to end that serves not as a > work that advances knowledge in a given field, like one that might be > published by a university press. I am referring to a book that travels > settled pathways into dramatism and serves as a required text in a college > or > graduate setting, suitable for introducing a student to Burke's thought for > > the very first time. (I don't regard Rueckert's Kenneth Burke and the > Drama > of Human Relations the kind of text I have in mind.) > > I am aware of roughly twenty-some books that explicate various facets of > dramatism, or deal with Burke's life and ideas, or apply dramatistic > principles to a narrow academic area of concern, or collect together > various > essays on or about Burke. I know of a dramatistic textbook that was once > in > the making. When I took a course in dramatism/dramaturgy from Urban Jungle > > Jim Chesebro twenty-one or so years ago at Temple U., such a volume was "in > > the works," or so I was told. Jim taped his lectures that semester, the > tapes to serve as the basis and jumping-off point for the study. His > lectures were superb, as always, but the book never materialized as far as > I > know. > > That's my query. > > I wish you great joy as you strain and struggle-- mortifying yourself!--to > bring this semester to a satisfactory close. Remember what the commandant > of > the prisoner-of-war camp, played by Sesu Hayakawa, said to William Holden > et > al. in Bridge on the River Quai > > > BE HAPPLY IN YOUR WORK! > > > Ed > From VM Wed Dec 06 12:58:53 2000 Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 12:58:53 -0500 From: lindsays@purdue.edu Subject: Re: Rhetoric of Economics Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 168 It might not be exactly what you are looking for, but you will find several applications of Burke's concept of entelechy to the art of selling in my book: The Twenty-One Sales in a Sale (Oasis Press, 1998). Just check the index to find the applications. Stan A. Lindsay Department of English Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 lindsays@purdue.edu Quoting Sean Phelan : > A few weeks back, somebody on the list mentioned a new book by James > Arnt Aune - Selling the Free market: The Rhetoric of Economics > Correctness. My own research is in a similar area; more specifically on > the influence of neo-liberal assumptions on the media's treatment of > political economy. Aside from the aforementioned - and McCloskey's > Rhetoric of Economics - I'm wondering if anyone out there might have any > more helpful references in this regard, especially any that draw on > Burke? > > Thanks, > > Sean Phelan > > Research Student > School of Communications, > Dublin City University, > Ireland > > > > > > > From VM Wed Dec 06 17:37:01 2000 Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 17:37:01 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Dramatistic Textbooks Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 169 Thanks to Stan and others who have mailed me off list with some very interesting material on this topic. I will be looking into the works you've told me about. I believe Stan had an article on QJS about two years ago, right?, on the subject of Burke, Aristotle, and entelechy. Much obliged. Ed From VM Tue Dec 12 12:14:18 2000 Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 12:14:18 -0800 From: Greg Clark Subject: KB's 1989 CCCC paper Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 170 Does anyone have a copy of, or notes on, the paper KB read in Seattle at the 4C's in 1989? I need to return to that piece of his work. You can let me know on or off list. Thanks, Greg -- Gregory Clark Professor of English Box 26234 Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84604 Phone: (801) 378-3581--office (801) 377-6449--home Fax: (801) 378-8748 (801) 378-4720 From VM Wed Dec 13 17:33:26 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 17:33:26 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 171 In a long-winded rant last October, under the heading of "Political Act in a Conservative Scene," I intoned the following: "It seems inevitable, therefore, that sooner than later the Republican Party will control all three branches of government simultaneously. That denouement is likely to occur in 2001, twenty years or so into the present conservative cycle. I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I am, however. The "entelechial dimension of symbols," whereby one term is presumed to envelop all truth, much noted by Kenneth Burke, is very much on a roll, as it has been throughout USAmerican history." Now, you would think that, instead of trumpeting my powers as the Casandra of kb, I would hide my face in shame at the fraudulent and minuscule ways in which my forecast will technically come to pass next month. ("Technically," my eye. Thousands of appointments that slide under the radar will riddle the federal government with despoilers of the environment, laissez-faire capitalists, and gun-loving, privatizing reactionaries.) George W. Bush will become President of the United States, Republican officeholders in Florida and ward-heeler justices of the Supreme Court having stolen this election in concert over the last five weeks. The Senate will tilt Republican owing to the tie-breaking authority of Vice President Dick Cheney. And the House will still show a seven-vote or so majority for Delay and Armey, et al. I'll probably have more to say about this Supreme miscarriage later. A guy has to vent somewhere. Let's just say now that this brazen, shameless, blindly partisan power grab by the fanatical five in robes will go down, with Dred Scott, as one of the two most outrageous acts of the so-called "high" court. Ed From VM Wed Dec 13 19:16:15 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 19:16:15 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 172 In a long-winded rant last October, under the heading of "Political Act in a Conservative Scene," I intoned the following: "It seems inevitable, therefore, that sooner than later the Republican Party will control all three branches of government simultaneously. That denouement is likely to occur in 2001, twenty years or so into the present conservative cycle. I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I am, however. The "entelechial dimension of symbols," whereby one term is presumed to envelop all truth, much noted by Kenneth Burke, is very much on a roll, as it has been throughout USAmerican history." Now, you would think that, instead of trumpeting my powers as the Casandra of kb, I would hide my face in shame at the fraudulent and minuscule ways in which my forecast will technically come to pass next month. ("Technically," my eye. Thousands of appointments that slide under the radar will riddle the federal government with despoilers of the environment, laissez-faire capitalists, and gun-loving, privatizing reactionaries.) George W. Bush will become President of the United States, Republican officeholders in Florida and ward-heeler justices of the Supreme Court having stolen this election in concert over the last five weeks. The Senate will tilt Republican owing to the tie-breaking authority of Vice President Dick Cheney. And the House will still show a seven-vote or so majority for Delay and Armey, et al. I'll probably have more to say about this Supreme miscarriage later. A guy has to vent somewhere. Let's just say now that this brazen, shameless, blindly partisan power grab by the fanatical five in robes will go down, with Dred Scott, as one of the two most outrageous acts of the so-called "high" court. Ed From VM Wed Dec 13 22:39:23 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 22:39:23 -0600 From: clcos@siu.edu Subject: Ed's Second 2nd & butterfly-ballot-gate Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 173 Ed, Though you've double-punched, on KB your "vote" still counts. Chris--- From VM Wed Dec 13 20:53:34 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 20:53:34 -0800 From: "Hugh Ellis" Subject: RE: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 174 Thank you for your no doubt astute political analysis. However, I believe that the consolidation of Republican power in our system will inevitably lead to transformation and a new liberal transformation of terms. Listening to Gore's nobly phrased capitulation, it occurred to me that winning the popular vote gives him a kind of mandate of the "loyal" opposition that the new president, who really has no mandate at all, will continually have to reckon with. Perhaps the rhetoric of the battle will transform into dialectic action. Hugh Ellis -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Edappel8@cs.com Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 4:16 PM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication In a long-winded rant last October, under the heading of "Political Act in a Conservative Scene," I intoned the following: "It seems inevitable, therefore, that sooner than later the Republican Party will control all three branches of government simultaneously. That denouement is likely to occur in 2001, twenty years or so into the present conservative cycle. I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I am, however. The "entelechial dimension of symbols," whereby one term is presumed to envelop all truth, much noted by Kenneth Burke, is very much on a roll, as it has been throughout USAmerican history." Now, you would think that, instead of trumpeting my powers as the Casandra of kb, I would hide my face in shame at the fraudulent and minuscule ways in which my forecast will technically come to pass next month. ("Technically," my eye. Thousands of appointments that slide under the radar will riddle the federal government with despoilers of the environment, laissez-faire capitalists, and gun-loving, privatizing reactionaries.) George W. Bush will become President of the United States, Republican officeholders in Florida and ward-heeler justices of the Supreme Court having stolen this election in concert over the last five weeks. The Senate will tilt Republican owing to the tie-breaking authority of Vice President Dick Cheney. And the House will still show a seven-vote or so majority for Delay and Armey, et al. I'll probably have more to say about this Supreme miscarriage later. A guy has to vent somewhere. Let's just say now that this brazen, shameless, blindly partisan power grab by the fanatical five in robes will go down, with Dred Scott, as one of the two most outrageous acts of the so-called "high" court. Ed From VM Wed Dec 13 22:22:18 2000 Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 22:22:18 -0800 From: "Jim Moore" Subject: RE: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 175 Right before hearing of the supreme court ruling, when he thought his microphone was closed, I distinctly heard W. say, "Dang! Now that I'm a major leaguer, I'm gonna hafta learn to read!" Hearer of voices, Jim Moore >From: "Hugh Ellis" >To: , >Subject: RE: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication >Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 20:53:34 -0800 > >Thank you for your no doubt astute political analysis. However, I believe >that the consolidation of Republican power in our system will inevitably >lead to transformation and a new liberal transformation of terms. >Listening >to Gore's nobly phrased capitulation, it occurred to me that winning the >popular vote gives him a kind of mandate of the "loyal" opposition that the >new president, who really has no mandate at all, will continually have to >reckon with. Perhaps the rhetoric of the battle will transform into >dialectic action. > >Hugh Ellis > >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of >Edappel8@cs.com >Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 4:16 PM >To: kb@purdue.edu >Subject: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication > >In a long-winded rant last October, under the heading of "Political Act in >a >Conservative Scene," I intoned the following: > >"It seems inevitable, therefore, that sooner than later the Republican >Party >will control all three branches of government simultaneously. That >denouement is likely to occur in 2001, twenty years or so into the present >conservative cycle. I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I am, however. The >"entelechial dimension of symbols," whereby one term is presumed to envelop >all truth, much noted by Kenneth Burke, is very much on a roll, as it has >been throughout USAmerican history." > >Now, you would think that, instead of trumpeting my powers as the Casandra >of >kb, I would hide my face in shame at the fraudulent and minuscule ways in >which my forecast will technically come to pass next month. >("Technically," >my eye. Thousands of appointments that slide under the radar will riddle >the >federal government with despoilers of the environment, laissez-faire >capitalists, and gun-loving, privatizing reactionaries.) George W. Bush >will become President of the United States, Republican officeholders in >Florida and ward-heeler justices of the Supreme Court having stolen this >election in concert over the last five weeks. The Senate will tilt >Republican owing to the tie-breaking authority of Vice President Dick >Cheney. > And the House will still show a seven-vote or so majority for Delay and >Armey, et al. > >I'll probably have more to say about this Supreme miscarriage later. A guy >has to vent somewhere. Let's just say now that this brazen, shameless, >blindly partisan power grab by the fanatical five in robes will go down, >with >Dred Scott, as one of the two most outrageous acts of the so-called "high" >court. > > > >Ed > _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From VM Thu Dec 14 11:26:43 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 11:26:43 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 176 To Chris: If I "double-punched," my excuse is, we old folks are adroit only at bingo. To Hugh: You are an optimist. For ever at my back I hear Delay and Armey hurrying near. To Jim: Carl Bernstein, no real friend of Republicans, said last night on one of the gab channels that W. is not so stupid. Intelligence, I do believe, takes many forms, not all of them amenable to measurement via IQ's, SAT's, or Grad Record Exams. Maybe W. has a lot of what's been called "emotional intelligence." We'll get a better feel in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. The central point for me is, he's an illigitimate president in this era of universal suffrage, supposedly one-person/one-vote style, as per the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I resent the fact that my vote in Pennsylvania does not carry the weight in the Electoral College of another citizen's vote in Wyoming. Proportionately, I don't have a full vote, and he or she has more than one full vote. Not fair. Could lead to the election of a president without a majority or plurality of the popular vote. (The "could" is a big joke at this point.) The President of the United States is the supreme national office-holder and should be elected in a truly democratic polity by vote of all citizens of requisite age and standing--EQUALLY ENFRANCHISED. In our nation, small states would still have disproportionate representation in the Senate, were the Electoral College modified to reflect a more balanced democracy. "Winner take all" could still be the norm in each state in national elections, minimizing the effect of possible massive fraud in a few big cities in one populous state. The electoral college as currently constituted is an anachronism, a throwback to a Federalist periiod in our history when the "better classes" of folks were entrusted with selection of the nation's leaders. It is undemocratic, and will continually, periodically, frustrate the will of the people, as it has done this election cycle. Ed From VM Thu Dec 14 11:59:30 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 11:59:30 -0500 From: Keith Gibson Subject: Re: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 177 I understand the frustration that accompanies the conclusion of an election that lasted way too long, but Ed's cure is worse than the disease. I don't want to repeat too much of what I said earlier, but elimination of the electoral college would not at all lead to the equal enfranchisement you're looking for. The current system does indeed give a Wyoming vote a little more weight than a Pennsylvania vote, but the absence of the Electoral College would give a Wyoming vote no weight at all. I am hoping to avoid an either/or fallacy here, but I am not sure there is any middle ground. One person/one vote makes a nice slogan, but the set-up you suggest would cause politicians to wage their entire campaigns on the coasts of this country leaving millions of citizens in the Rockies and Great Plains (to use the politicial word-of-the-moment) disenfranchised. Again, I sympathize with (even if I don't share) your frustration at the outcome, but a disappointing loss should not lead us to abandon a system that actually facilitates the "will of the people." Keith Gibson At 11:26 AM 12/14/00 -0500, Edappel8@cs.com wrote: >To Chris: > >If I "double-punched," my excuse is, we old folks are adroit only at bingo. > >To Hugh: > >You are an optimist. For ever at my back I hear Delay and Armey hurrying >near. > >To Jim: >Carl Bernstein, no real friend of Republicans, said last night on one of the >gab channels that W. is not so stupid. Intelligence, I do believe, takes >many forms, not all of them amenable to measurement via IQ's, SAT's, or Grad >Record Exams. Maybe W. has a lot of what's been called "emotional >intelligence." We'll get a better feel in the days, weeks, months, and years >ahead. The central point for me is, he's an illigitimate president in this >era of universal suffrage, supposedly one-person/one-vote style, as per the >language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I resent the fact that my vote in >Pennsylvania does not carry the weight in the Electoral College of another >citizen's vote in Wyoming. Proportionately, I don't have a full vote, and he >or she has more than one full vote. Not fair. Could lead to the election of >a president without a majority or plurality of the popular vote. (The >"could" is a big joke at this point.) > >The President of the United States is the supreme national office-holder and >should be elected in a truly democratic polity by vote of all citizens of >requisite age and standing--EQUALLY ENFRANCHISED. In our nation, small >states would still have disproportionate representation in the Senate, were >the Electoral College modified to reflect a more balanced democracy. "Winner >take all" could still be the norm in each state in national elections, >minimizing the effect of possible massive fraud in a few big cities in one >populous state. The electoral college as currently constituted is an >anachronism, a throwback to a Federalist periiod in our history when the >"better classes" of folks were entrusted with selection of the nation's >leaders. It is undemocratic, and will continually, periodically, frustrate >the will of the people, as it has done this election cycle. > > > >Ed > From VM Thu Dec 14 12:21:22 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 12:21:22 -0500 (EST) From: David Langston Subject: Re: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 178 On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 Edappel8@cs.com wrote: > I resent the fact that my vote in Pennsylvania does not carry the weight > in the Electoral College of another citizen's vote in Wyoming. > Proportionately, I don't have a full vote, and he or she has more than > one full vote. Not fair. The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the grounds on which the Pentocracy (the five-member, black-robed ruling class) stopped the Florida recount, would imply by your reasoning, that the Electoral College is not only an anachronism, but it is unconstitutional (even though it is in the constitution ). The Electoral College has some useful functions analogous to the ones served by the two-Senators-per-state rule (same issue: some votes carry more weight than others) and it has, to this point, insulated us from needing national voting standards....but I am thinking that the days of its limited utility and the correlative absence of national voting standards are long gone. David Langston From VM Thu Dec 14 15:32:08 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 15:32:08 -0400 From: Jack Selzer Subject: Re: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 179 >The Electoral College has some useful functions analogous to the ones >served by the two-Senators-per-state rule (same issue: some votes carry >more weight than others) and it has, to this point, insulated us from >needing national voting standards....but I am thinking that the days of >its limited utility and the correlative absence of national voting >standards are long gone. > >David Langston I think the real "value" of the electoral college is that it has created and protected a two-party system (as opposed to a multi-party system). We may not like a system in which someone can win the election while losing narrowly the popular vote, but the electoral college means that we are at least insulated to a degree against a situation where, say, a candidate from the far right gets 35% of the vote and is elected because the other 65% is split among many candidates. The backup system of the house of reps is part of that safeguard. I personally like multi-party systems--but as they operate in France and elsewhere: run-off elections develop until SOMEONE gets over 50% of the vote. In my opinion, a multi-party system that operates with a most-votes-wins-in-one-election is a recipe for disaster. Not my most eloquent posting, I must say. I've been doing too much grading or something. But I hope the general point is clear. Jack Selzer Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies Department of English Penn State University 116 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802 phone: 814-865-0251 or 863-3069; fax 814-863-7285 jls25@psu.edu (email) http://www.psu.edu/dept/english/Programs/rhetoric/faculty.html#core (department web page) http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/l/jls25/ (personal web page) From VM Thu Dec 14 21:51:42 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 21:51:42 -0600 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 180 You could have the same scenario in a two-party set-up as in a multi-party set-up. Gore could have scored landslide victories in the big states (with just a slightly more competent campaign), giving him 65% of the popular vote. His opponent could have carried the same states, by the same votes, and received 30% of the vote. Yes, the demographics have shifted THAT much in the past century from small states to large states. Iowa is one of the larger small states, yet there are fewer people living here than in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Worse yet, to get rid of the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment that if memory serves me can ONLY be implemented if 3/4 *of all the States* approved it. That is, no Constitutional amendment can ever be a popular, democratic action. hmmmm . . . Did George Washington found the Tri-lateral Commission? michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. 970 Applewood Court #3 Coralville, IA 52241 FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 mailto:michael@mcgees.net "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin From VM Thu Dec 14 23:54:15 2000 Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 23:54:15 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 181 Pursuant to what Michael said, I realize my "druthers" in respect to changing the proportions in the Electoral College is a mere pipedream. The necessary ratification by three-quarters of the states alone would make for such an amendment an impossible hurdle. More than a quarter of the states in the U. S. of A. would lose some of their power in presidential elections. So it ain't gonna happen. Add to this insurmountable roadblock the fact that most of these smaller states are now reliably Republican, and we can see how sentiment against such a reform would have national, not just regional, support. Contra Keith, though, I still say it's a good idea--if we're serious about democracy. The small states would still have their disproportionately large say in the U. S. Senate. Wyoming (pop. 350,000, I believe) would still have as much clout there as California (pop. 34,000,000). What we would avoid via my proposal is an election like this one, where the "winner" achieved neither a majority of votes nor a plurality. Quite undemocratic. As for Jack's highly elliptical argument about the relationship between the Electoral College and milti-party vs. two-party systems, I think he needs to get some rest and come back later to re-explain himself. Only one more week, right? BE HAPPY IN YOUR WORK! Ed From VM Fri Dec 15 07:47:57 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 07:47:57 -0500 (EST) From: David Langston Subject: Re: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 182 On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 Edappel8@cs.com wrote: > As for Jack's highly elliptical argument about the relationship between the > Electoral College and milti-party vs. two-party systems, I think he needs to > get some rest and come back later to re-explain himself. Well, maybe I misheard him, but I thought he was outlining the standard poli. sci. argument that electoral systems granting victory only to those garnering the most votes (the Brits call it "first past the post" I think) tend to have two large political "parties" -- but "assemblage" might be a more appropriate term. The winners take all, and the losers are compelled to cooperate in a coalition to try to win the next time. In those venues, politics thus tend toward centrism (except in moments of great crisis), and deal-making and compromise are more highly valued than ideological purity. By contrast, countries like Italy or Germany (and, I think, Israel) with proportional systems of voting tend to have a more splintered politics with a higher value on ideology and strict party loyalty. The standard poli. sci. story is that the benefit of the winner-take-all system is political stability versus the political turmoil of Italy or Germany. The standard story is somewhat persuasive, but the analysis tends to slight, in my view, such factors in social stabilization as wealth distribution, cultural homogeneity, and hegemony of cities over the countryside. I have begun to wonder about the wisdom of using the "Australian ballot" as a measure for U.S. electoral reform. As I understand it, one proposal would have us vote only once, in a national primary, where we identify the candidates we would prefer at several stages of run-off. When the ballots are tabulated, the winners in the sequence of run-offs are counted up, and the person with the majority at the end of the last run-off wins the election. (And the bookies have a field day. I can imagine office-pools resembling those for the NCAA basketball March Madness.) I'm very fuzzy on what happens if the final run-off yields a plurality winner and no majority but I think I'm missing some crucial step in the process. I understand that Ireland and Denmark also use some version of this voting system, and it would be interesting to know if anyone knows about this voting procedure and whether it possesses all the merits its proponents claim. ...and of course, on a Burkean theme, it would be interesting to know if the different voting systems spawn characteristic rhetorical strategies: the obvious one is whether the "first past the post" systems of the U.S. and Britain concentrate on messy unity while Italy might stress separatist purity. How do each of them rally support?...and does demonizing the opposition take on a different flavor? Moreover, if we assume for the moment that electoral systems have roughly cognate rhetorics, I have no idea what kind of rhetoric might crop up with the Australian ballot. David Langston From VM Fri Dec 15 07:52:36 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 07:52:36 -0600 From: Tony Palmeri Subject: RE:Electoral College Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 183 Does anyone else find it fascinating that before the election, when most people thought that Gore would win the Electoral College and lose the popular vote, that Gore supporters (not necessarily on Burke-L) were calling themselves "strict constructionists" as regards the Electoral College? Now all of a sudden the College is the most anti-democratic instrument ever devised. Sounds like there's a variation of "heads I win, tails you lose" going on here. No, I did not vote for Dubya. -Tony Tony Palmeri, Chair Department of Communication (920) 424-4422 (office) University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (920) 235-1116 (home) Oshkosh, WI 54901 (920) 424-1279 (FAX) Palmeri@uwosh.edu Tony Palmeri's Home Page: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/ UW Oshkosh TAUWP chapter: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/TAUWP/ Commentary: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/Comment.htm From VM Fri Dec 15 10:50:35 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 10:50:35 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Ed Appel and the "P" Word Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 184 "Dionysus," whoever that may be, writes: "Has anyone ever taken the time in this forum to tell Ed Appel how much of a prick he is? Someone should." No, nobody has. Not in so many words, anyhow. But I get mail of that variety all the time in the conservative Republican community where I live, owing to my frequent commie, pinko, guilt-ridden, tree-hugging, bleeding-heart-liberal, yellow-dog-democrat sceeds I send to the local fishwrap. And you know, just the same as my admirer quoted above, THEY NEVER SIGN THEIR NAME. And I don't really know why, because I wouldn't bite back. I would reply by saying, come now, let us reason together. As I say, be happy in your work, and have a holly, jolly. Ed From VM Fri Dec 15 13:45:45 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:45:45 -0400 From: "David Dayton" Subject: Re: Ed's Second "Successful" Prognostication Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 185 The mention of alternatives to our current voting system reminded me of an interesting article published a week before the Nov. election in *The Chronicle of Higher Education.* In that article, Lila Guterman reviews various solutions that mathematicians have proposed for counting votes in an election in which there are more than two candidates for the same position. The article can be found online at http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i10/10a01801.htm . Here is an excerpt: "The frustration of voters who feel forced to choose between conviction and strategy after they enter the voting booth reveals a flaw in our voting system, say several mathematicians and political scientists, who are using the close 2000 presidential election to emphasize the benefits of alternative scoring methods." ... "Mathematical theory can help sort out which methods will cause fewer problems. It has been proven, however, that no voting procedure is perfect." "In 1952, Kenneth J. Arrow, an economist at Stanford University, showed that no voting procedure -- apart from a dictatorship, where only one person votes -- can satisfy five basic conditions of fair elections when there are three or more candidates. The conditions seem straightforward. For example, one condition says that if all voters prefer candidate A to candidate B, then A should rank higher in the election results. Another states that how voters feel about candidate C should not affect whether A ranks higher than B." ... "Although no voting method is perfect, fairer procedures exist, researchers say. Mr. Brams's favorite is approval voting, in which each person votes for as many of the candidates as he or she approves of. 'It violates the principle of one person, one vote,' Mr. Brams says. 'We have a different slogan. We say, one candidate, one vote.'" ... "[The Center for Voting and Democracy] has been promoting a system called instant runoff or single transferable vote. Under that system, voters rank the candidates from first to last place. If a candidate ga ins a majority of first-place votes, that person wins. But if no one does, the votes are re-tallied after the person with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated. The votes of people who chose that person first are shifted to their second choice. The process continues until one candidate gains a majority." ... "By contrast, Mr. Saari claims that a procedure called the Borda count is preferable to either approval voting or instant runoff in representing the views of the voters. In the Borda count, voters rank the candidates and total points are added. In a five-person race, for instance, a voter's top choice would receive five points, the next choice four, and so on." "In fact, Mr. Saari argues, the Borda count is the best procedure available -- in theory, at least. Last winter, he published a proof in the journal *Economic Theory* that the Borda count is the only voting method that fairly treats preferences that are symmetrical. That means that in a three-candidate race among A, B, and C, a voter who preferred A to B to C would have his or her ballot canceled, in essence, by one who preferred C to B to A; similarly if one person liked A better than B and B better than C, while another preferred B to C to A, and a third voter chose C over A and A over B, these votes would result in a three-way tie. All other voting procedures have 'hidden, subtle inadequacies' that can result in one candidate gaining support despite the fact that such scenarios should be ties, he says." (End of excerpt.) Of course, in light of recent events, an initial obvious objection to any of these more complicated voting schemes is that they would confuse many voters and possibly produce a large number of invalidated ballots. David Dayton ddayton@caribe.net From VM Fri Dec 15 13:22:58 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:22:58 -0500 From: "David Blakesley" Subject: Re: Ed and the "P" Word Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 186 Just an administrative note in case anyone's confused. A message from an unidentified nonsubscriber was sent to the KB list but was intercepted by the Majordomo listserv software. When such messages are intercepted, I'm notified and given the option of approving or deleting the message. I deleted the message, but Ed received a copy, hence his reply to the list to a message that no one but I had seen. It's been my policy to approve messages sent from nonsubscribing addresses when the person is registered under another address. In this case, I had no way to confirm that. The personal attack was uncalled for, I believed, so that made my editorial decision an easy one. Lest anyone think Majordomo is playing big brother, you should know that the program is designed to prevent spamming to the list and to redirect questions for the list administrator in another direction so that everyone is spared the extra junk mail. Sorry for the interruption! Dave KB Moderator ------------------------------------- Director of Professional Writing Department of English Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 Email: blakesle@purdue.edu Phone: 765-494-3772 From VM Fri Dec 15 18:36:54 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 18:36:54 -0000 From: "Sean Phelan" Subject: Electoral systems Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 187 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0071_01C066C5.FF9020C0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable < The standard poli. sci. story is that the benefit of the = winner-take-all < system is political stability versus the political turmoil of Italy or < Germany. "Political turmoil" in Germany? This is hardly comparing like with like = when you consider the length of time say Helmet Kohl was in power (I = think he was elected for 3 terms - about 12 years). This is a model of = political stability when you compare it with the regular change of = government that has characterised Italians politics. In fact, when the = current coalition partners the Social Democrats and the Greens were = going through a bit of a rocky patch early on, some commentators where = suggesting the SDs would drop the Greens for another political party = (whose name now escapes me) rather than risk holding another election. < I understand that Ireland and Denmark also use some version of this = voting < system, and it would be interesting to know if anyone knows about this < voting procedure and whether it possesses all the merits its = proponents < claim. The system of election for the Irish Presidency is proportional = representation. So to take the election of Mary Robinson in the early = 1990s as an example, she was only in second place after the first count = of votes. The vote then went to a second count because no candidate had = yet reached a majority. After the elimination of the third = candidate(there were only three), Robinson had moved to first place. = It's hard to comment on how this system has an impact at a rhetorical = level because the office of Presidency is largely ceremonial and the = pre-election debate does not tend to be that political. The office has = been considered so politically unimportant, that appointments to the = post have regularly been made without an election - though this has = changed somewhat since the Robinson Presidency when the office took on a = much more important symbolic role, touted as it was by many of her = supporters as the "end of civil war politics" (that is the domination of = the political system by the 2 populist parties and former civil war = opponents) < I'm very fuzzy < on what happens if the final run-off yields a plurality winner and no < majority but I think I'm missing some crucial step in the process Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this plurality a regular feature of = British politics? Didn't both the current Blair government and the = previous Major administration have only a minority of the popular vote = (somewhere in the low 40s I think)?=20 Sean Phelan Research Student School of Communications Dublin City University ------=_NextPart_000_0071_01C066C5.FF9020C0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

< The standard poli. sci. story is that the benefit of the=20 winner-take-all
< system is political stability versus the = political=20 turmoil of Italy or
< Germany.
 
"Political turmoil" in = Germany? This=20 is hardly comparing like with like when you consider the length of = time say=20 Helmet Kohl was in power (I think he was elected for 3 terms = - about 12=20 years).  This is a model of political stability when you compare=20 it with the regular change of government that has = characterised=20 Italians politics. In fact, when the current coalition partners the = Social=20 Democrats and the Greens were going through a bit of a rocky patch = early=20 on, some commentators where suggesting the SDs would drop the = Greens for=20 another political party (whose name now escapes me) rather than=20 risk holding another election.
 
 
< I understand that Ireland and Denmark also use some version of = this=20 voting
< system, and it would be interesting to know if anyone = knows about=20 this
< voting procedure and whether it possesses all the merits = its=20 proponents
< claim.
The system of election for the = Irish=20 Presidency is proportional representation. So to take the election of = Mary=20 Robinson in the early 1990s as an example, she was only in second=20 place after the first count of votes. The vote then went to a = second=20 count because no candidate had yet reached a majority. After the=20 elimination of the third candidate(there were only three),=20 Robinson had moved to first place. It's hard to comment on how = this=20 system has an impact at a rhetorical level because the office of = Presidency=20 is largely ceremonial and the pre-election debate does not tend to be = that=20 political. The office has been considered so politically = unimportant,=20 that appointments to the post have regularly been made without = an=20 election - though this has changed somewhat since the Robinson = Presidency=20 when the office took on a much more important symbolic role, touted = as it=20 was by many of her supporters as the "end of civil war = politics" (that=20 is the domination of the political system by the 2=20 populist parties and former civil war = opponents)
 
<=20 I'm very fuzzy
< on what happens if the final run-off yields a = plurality=20 winner and no
< majority but I think I'm missing some crucial step = in the=20 process

Correct me if I'm wrong, but = isn't this=20 plurality a regular feature of British politics? Didn't both = the=20 current Blair government and the previous Major = administration have only a minority of the popular = vote=20 (somewhere in the low 40s I think)? 
 
Sean Phelan
Research Student
School of = Communications
Dublin City=20 University
------=_NextPart_000_0071_01C066C5.FF9020C0-- From VM Fri Dec 15 14:05:51 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 14:05:51 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: Perception of Supreme Court Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 188 In response to Ed's comments about the Supreme Court's having stolen this election for Bush, I need a sounding board. Obviously this list is dominated by liberals like Ed, Michael, me, and a host of others who perhaps don't share the public's perceptions. What is the public's perception of all this? Do they think the Court acted politically? Or does it simply depend on party affiliation? As a follower of judicial rhetoric I must say that I was aghast at their decision in Bush v. Gore. It had a great number of problems: (1) The staunch, conservative defenders of states' rights stuck their noses in the middle of Florida's business to tell them what to do--very unusual. (2) Sandra Day O'Connor, the only Court member who was in a state legislature in an earlier life and who was the likely swing vote for conservatives here, didn't add her name to ANY opinion. For such an important 5-4 decision, the Court decided to sign it "per curiam" (by the court). Very strange. (Bringing in O'Connor by implication?) (3) The decision flies in the face of the Court's practice of deferring to states when they decide state law. In a study I did on Supreme Court overruling opinions (where the Supreme Court overrules itself), I found that a large percentage of these cases were cases involved the Court reversing itself when a state court reversed itself on a matter of state law. That is, when a state supreme court decided it had erred earlier (even though that earlier error was endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court), it reversed itself and was followed by the high court. (The high court standing ready to accept the embarassment of reversal just to back up the the state court's position.) (4) The decision turned on concerns about equal protection afforded to voters and the fact that varying standards for determining what is a vote (dimples, chads hanging, chads punched out, etc.) supposedly undermined that equal protection. A great number of states have vague standards like Florida's "intent of the voter"; thus, lots of states will have to scramble to avoid lawsuits claiming unfairness. PLEASE NOTE: The Supreme Court is LOATHE to upset apple carts like this, especially conservatives who tend to want to endorse nearly any dumb rule a state wants to pass (assuming it isn't patently violative of constitutional rights). They also like to avoid causing the proliferation of lawsuits. (5) The state supreme court in Florida was truly in a no-win situation, and the U.S. Supreme Court probably would have ruled against them whatever they did. Specifically, the state court could have said (for example): "In recounts, you are to only count ballots that have a chad dislodged on at least one corner." That less vague standard probably would have passed constitutional muster (which got them in trouble here), but then I have little doubt that the conservatives would charge that the state court was "making new law" by going beyond the "intent of the voter" standard defined by the legislature (as they seemed to imply on the first decision which ostensibly violated the deadline for having votes counted). Unusual to take one's state brethren to the woodshed whatever they do. Even though average members of the voting public are unlikely to understand the fine details of this legal dispute, does it appear to the rest of you that this decision has cost the Supreme Court some credibility? Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Fri Dec 15 14:25:19 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 14:25:19 -0600 From: cj Subject: Fwd: Supreme Court Decision Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 189 FYI -- lifted from the WPA-L listserv. --CJ Jeney-- >Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:03:57 -0400 >From: "Martin E. Rosenberg" >Subject: 3rd World Country/Supreme Court Decision > >Hi Folks: > >Thought _y'all_'d get a kick outa this.......mer >Received: from nova.kettering.edu (nova.kettering.edu [192.138.137.2]) > ********************************************************************************** Q: I'm not a lawyer and I don't understand the recent Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. Can you explain it to me? A: Sure. I'm a lawyer. I read it. It says Bush wins, even if Gore got themost votes. Q: But wait a second. The US Supreme Court has to give a reason, right? A: Right. Q: So Bush wins because hand-counts are illegal? A: Oh no. Six of the justices (two-thirds majority) believed the hand-counts were legal and should be done. Q: Oh. So the justices did not believe that the hand-counts would find any legal ballots? A. Nope. The five conservative justices clearly held (and all nine justices agreed) "that punch card balloting machines can produce an unfortunate number of ballots which are not punched in a clean, complete way by the voter." So there are legal votes that should be counted but can't be. Q: Oh. Does this have something to do with states' rights? Don't conservatives love that? A: Generally yes. These five justices have held that the federal government has no business telling a sovereign state university it can't steal trade secrets just because such stealing is prohibited by law. Nor does thefederal government have any business telling a state that it should bar guns in schools. Nor can the federal government use the equal protection clause to force states to take measures to stop violence against women. Q: Is there an exception in this case? A: Yes, the Gore exception. States have no rights to have their own state elections when it can result in Gore being elected President. This decision is limited to only this situation. Q: C'mon. The Supremes didn't really say that. You're exaggerating. A: Nope. They held "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, or the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities." Q: What complexities? A: They don't say. Q: I'll bet I know the reason. I heard Jim Baker say this. The votes can't be counted because the Florida Supreme Court "changed the rules of the election after it was held." Right? A. Dead wrong. The US Supreme Court made clear that the Florida Supreme Court did not change the rules of the election. But the US Supreme Court found the failure of the Florida Court to change the rules was wrong. Q: Huh? A: The Legislature declared that the only legal standard for counting vote is "clear intent of the voter." The Florida Court was condemned for not adopting a clearer standard. Q: I thought the Florida Court was not allowed to change the Legislature's law after the election. A: Right. Q: So what's the problem? A: They should have. The US Supreme Court said the Florida Supreme Court should have "adopt[ed] adequate statewide standards for determining what is a legal vote" Q: I thought only the Legislature could "adopt" new law. A: Right. Q: So if the Court had adopted new standards, I thought it would have been overturned. A: Right. You're catching on. Q: If the Court had adopted new standards, it would have been overturned for changing the rules. And if it didn't, it's overturned for not changing the rules. That means that no matter what the Florida Supreme Court did, legal votes could never be counted. A: Right. Next question. Q: Wait, wait. I thought the problem was "equal protection," that some counties counted votes differently from others. Isn't that a problem? A: It sure is. Across the nation, we vote in a hodgepodge of systems. Some, like the optical-scanners in largely Republican-leaning counties record 99.7% of the votes. Some, like the punchcard systems in largely Democratic-leaning counties record only 97% of the votes. So approximately 3% of Democratic votes are thrown in the trash can. Q: Aha! That's a severe equal-protection problem!!! A: No it's not. The Supreme Court wasn't worried about the 3% of Democratic ballots thrown in the trashcan in Florida. That "complexity" was not a problem. Q: Was it the butterfly ballots that violated Florida law and tricked more than 20,000 Democrats to vote for Buchanan or Gore and Buchanan. A: Nope. The Supreme Court has no problem believing that Buchanan got his highest, best support in a precinct consisting of a Jewish old age home with Holocaust survivors, who apparently have changed their mind about Hitler. Q: Yikes. So what was the serious equal protection problem? A: The problem was neither the butterfly ballot nor the 3% of Democrats (largely African-American) disenfranchised. The problem is that somewhat less than .005% of the ballots may have been determined under slightly different standards because judges sworn to uphold the law and doing their best to accomplish the legislative mandate of "clear intent of the voter" may have a slightly opinion about the voter's intent. Q: Hmmm. OK, so if those votes are thrown out, you can still count the votes where everyone agrees the voter's intent is clear? A: Nope. Q: Why not? A: No time. Q: No time to count legal votes where everyone, even Republicans, agree the intent is clear? Why not? A: Because December 12 was yesterday. Q: Is December 12 a deadline for counting votes? A: No. January 6 is the deadline. In 1960, Hawaii's votes weren't counted until January 4. Q: So why is December 12 important? A: December 12 is a deadline by which Congress can't challenge the results. Q: What does the Congressional role have to do with the Supreme Court? A: Nothing. Q: But I thought --- A: The Florida Supreme Court had earlier held it would like to complete its work by December 12 to make things easier for Congress. The United States Supreme Court is trying to help the Florida Supreme Court out by forcing the Florida court to abide by a deadline that everyone agrees is not binding. Q: But I thought the Florida Court was going to just barely have the votes counted by December 12. A: They would have made it, but the five conservative justices stopped the recount last Saturday. Q: Why? A: Justice Scalia said some of the counts may not be legal. Q: So why not separate the votes into piles, indentations for Gore, hanging chads for Bush, votes that everyone agrees went to one candidate or the other so that we know exactly how Florida voted before determining who won? Then, if some ballots (say, indentations) have to be thrown out, the American people will know right away who won Florida. A. Great idea! The US Supreme Court rejected it. They held that such counts would likely to produce election results showing Gore won and Gore's winning would cause "public acceptance" and that would "cast a cloud" over Bush's "legitimacy" that would harm "democratic stability." Q: In other words, if America knows the truth that Gore won, they won't accept the US Supreme Court overturning Gore's victory? A: Yes. Q: Is that a legal reason to stop recounts? or a political one? A: Let's just say in all of American history and all of American law, this reason has no basis in law. But that doesn't stop the five conservatives from creating new law out of thin air. Q: Aren't these conservative justices against judicial activism? A: Yes, when liberal judges are perceived to have done it. Q: Well, if the December 12 deadline is not binding, why not count the votes? A: The US Supreme Court, after admitting the December 12 deadline is not binding, set December 12 as a binding deadline at 10 p.m. on December 12. Q: Didn't the US Supreme Court condemn the Florida Supreme Court for arbitrarily setting a deadline? A: Yes. Q: But, but -- A: Not to worry. The US Supreme Court does not have to follow laws it sets for other courts. Q: So who caused Florida to miss the December 12 deadline? A: The Bush lawyers who first went to court to stop the recount, the rent-a-mob in Miami that got paid Florida vacations for intimidating officials, and the US Supreme Court for stopping the recount Q: So who is punished for this behavior? A: Gore, of course. Q: Tell me this: Florida's laws are unconstitutional? A: Yes Q: And the laws of 50 states that allow votes to be cast or counted differently are unconstitutional? A: Yes. And 33 states have the "clear intent of the voter" standard that the US Supreme Court found was illegal in Florida Q: Then why aren't the results of 33 states thrown out? A: Um. Because um ...the Supreme Court doesn't say Q: But if Florida's certification includes counts expressly declared by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, we don't know who really won the election there, right? A: Right. Though a careful analysis by the Miami Herald shows Gore won Florida by about 20,000 votes (excluding the butterfly ballot errors) Q: So, what do we do, have a re-vote? throw out the entire state? count under a single uniform standard? A: No. We just don't count the votes that favor Gore. Q: That's completely bizarre! That sounds like rank political favoritism! Did the justices have any financial interest in the case? A: Scalia's two sons are both lawyers working for Bush. Thomas's wife is collecting applications for people who want to work in the Bush administration. Q: Why didn't they recuse themselves? A: If either had recused himself, the vote would be 4-4, and the Florida Supreme Court decision allowing recounts would have been affirmed. Q: I can't believe the justices acted in such a blatantly political way. A: Read the opinions for yourself: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/supremecourt/00-949_dec12.fdf (December 9 stay stopping the recount) http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/00pdf/00-949.pdf (December 12 opinion) Q: So what are the consequences of this? A: The guy who got the most votes in the US and in Florida and under our Constitution (Al Gore) will lose to America's second choice who won the all important 5-4 Supreme Court vote. Q: I thought in a democracy, the guy with the most votes wins. A: True, in a democracy. But America is not a democracy. In America in 2000, the guy with the most US Supreme Court votes wins. Q: So what will happen to the Supreme Court when Bush becomes President. A: He will appoint more justices in the mode of Thomas and Scalia to ensure that the will of the people is less and less respected. Soon lawless justices may constitute 6-3 or even 7-2 on the court. Q: Is there any way to stop this? A: YES. No federal judge can be confirmed without a vote in the Senate. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. If only 41 of the 50 Democratic Senators stand up to Bush and his Supremes and say that they will not approve a single judge appointed by him until a President can be democratically elected in 2004, the judicial reign of terror can end and one day we can hope to return to the rule of law. Q: What do I do now? A: Email this to everyone you know, and write or call your senator, reminding him that Gore beat Bush by several hundred thousand votes (three times Kennedy's margin over Nixon) and that you believe that VOTERS rather than JUDGES should determine who wins an election by counting every vote. And to protect our judiciary from overturning the will of the people, you want them to confirm NO NEW JUDGES until 2004 when a president is finally chosen by most of the American people. Mark H. Levine Attorney at Law From VM Fri Dec 15 16:05:38 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 16:05:38 -0600 From: Tony Palmeri Subject: RE:Perception of Supreme Court Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 190 Clarke says:

"Even though average members of the voting public are unlikely to understand
the fine details of this legal dispute, does it appear to the rest of you
that this decision has cost the Supreme Court some credibility?"

I believe that the Supreme Court's credibility would suffer much had they reversed a _unanimous_ Florida Supreme Court.   Florida's Chief Justice Wells, along with trial judge Sauls (and along with judge Terry Lewis when he upheld the secretary of state's right to certify the early results), provided legal rationales for stopping a recount that helped provide a "cover" for the US Supreme Court majority.   Frankly, I read Wells' dissent in the Florida case and found it pretty darn persuasive (I voted for Nader and for me Bush is only marginally more scary than Gore, so perhaps that colors my view). 

The last President elected under this big of a cloud, "Rutherfraud" B. Hayes, actually did one good thing as regards the Courts. He appointed John Marshall Harlan to the bench.  Harlan was one of the great progressives in the history of the Court, the lone dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson, and in 1907 (again in a dissent) he became the first Supreme Court Justice in history to argue that freedom of speech was a fundamental civil right that should be protected from state encroachment.  It was not until 1925 that a Supreme Court majority finally adopted this position (and of course not until 1954 that Harlan's position in Plessy was adopted).   Who knows, maybe Dubya will unwittingly give us a Harlan, much as his daddy unwittingly gave us David Souter.  Whatever credibility the Court has had, historically, has come from individual justices like those two, at least in my opinion. 

-Tony





Tony Palmeri, Chair                            
Department of Communication            (920) 424-4422 (office)
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh        (920) 235-1116 (home)
Oshkosh, WI 54901                           (920) 424-1279 (FAX)
Palmeri@uwosh.edu
                                
Commentary: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/Comment.htm From VM Fri Dec 15 17:31:22 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 17:31:22 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Perception of Supreme Court Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 191 Thanks to Sean and Clarke for their extremely enlightening posts. To Clarke's query about perceptions, last night on NBC or MSNBC, I believe it was, a Reuter's poll showed that 48 percent of USAmericans believe the election was essentially stolen, versus 48 percent who approve of the outcome (a split much like the election itself). Where the Supremely-Republican Court fits into all this cannot diverge very much from the 48 percent figure, I would surmise. Thanks to CJ for relaying to us a magnificent dissection of the Supremes vivisection perpetrated on the USAmerican body politic. It is great. I want to cite my two favorite passages from this mordant Q & A: "Q. I thought in a democracy the guy with the most votes wins. "A. True, in a democracy. But America is not a democracy. In America in 2000, the guy with the most U. S. Supreme Court votee wins.." Also: "No federal judge can be confirmed without a vote in the Senate. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. If only 41 of the 50 Democratic Senators stand up to Bush and his Supremes and say that they will not approve a single judge appointed by him until a President can be democratically elected in 2004, the judicial reign of terror can end and one day we can hope to return to the rule of law." What's the author's e-mail address, CJ? Or snail mail address? I'd like to get in touch with him. Thanks again for that scathingly well-aimed polemic. Ed From VM Fri Dec 15 16:41:07 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 16:41:07 -0600 From: cj Subject: Re: Perception of Supreme Court Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 192 Ed asked: >What's the author's e-mail address, CJ? Or snail mail address? I'd like to >get in touch with him. And Michael provided this URL: http://www.michaelmoore.com/2000_12_15.html The author is listed as Mark H. Levine, Attorney at Law, whose email address is: MarkLevineEsq@aol.com Glad you liked it! CeeJ ============================ Cynthia Jeney Assistant Professor Dept. of English, Foreign Languages, and Journalism Missouri Western State College jeney@griffon.mwsc.edu ============================ From VM Fri Dec 15 17:04:23 2000 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 17:04:23 -0800 From: RWess@orst.edu Subject: Supreme Court: Bush v. Gore Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 193 Below you will find "Bush v. Gore." Don't start reading unless you want to settle down for about 2000 words. I wrote it because I was so angry that writing it was the only way I could get it out of my head. Bush becoming president is only a small part of my anger; I voted for Nader and see Bush and Gore as more alike than different, two commercials for corporate America that has them both firmly under control. For my money, Nader was the only one who talked about the real world. Most of my anger arises because of the reasoning of the Court. As a Burkean, the Constitution interests me and being a Justice looks to me like an honorable profession. It's the only job in government that I could ever imagine wanting to have. In my view, what the Court did this time disgraces this profession. If you venture forth into the 2000 words, you will find in the first three paragraphs a prophecy. After that, there is an analysis of the Court's reasoning in both cases, Bush v Palm Beach, decided on 12/4, and Bush v Gore, decided on 12/12. I read all the opinions of both the Florida and US Supremes as well as transcripts of oral arguments and a number of the briefs. Toward the end you'll find an analysis of the equal protection argument on which the "gang of five" relied in the end. This argument, I suggest, may go down in history as one of the great acts of judicial hypocrisy. A final note. You no doubt recall all the talk in the campaign about the top 1% who would benefit most from Bush's tax cut. It's always been a mystery to me why anyone outside that 1% would vote republican. Now I know. Time did a poll during the campaign. Turns out 19% of the country think they're in the top 1% and another 20% expect to be there before they retire. So it goes-- *** Bush v. Gore In Bush v. Gore, decided 12/12/00, the Supreme Court of the United States rather than the voters of Florida ended the race for the presidency. That these voters did not resolve the matter in a manner acceptable across the political spectrum will always be the tragedy of the 2000 election. But there is also a second tragedy, one that may in the long run overshadow the first. The Court's reasoning in Bush v. Gore falls far short of the wisdom of the Constitution. As the Constitution in the years ahead teaches the lesson that Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas­­the Court majority­­failed to comprehend when it counted most, the Court will live out a tragedy of its own making, and the nation will be the loser. While history is likely to judge that the Rehnquist Court, consistent with its federalist principles, should have left this disputed election in the hands of Florida, once the Court involved itself there was only one way it could have acted properly. As the dissenters­­Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer­­urged, the case should have been returned to Florida for one last attempt to allow the voters to decide the election. True, because of the partisan rancor that seemed to get worse each passing day, it's likely that this attempt would have failed. A final recount might very well have given Gore the lead and resulted in the Florida Supreme Court ordering the Florida Executive to certify a slate of Gore electors, but before that happened it's highly likely that the Florida Legislature would have completed the job it started of putting its authority behind a Bush slate of electors to insure that one Bush slate would be in place by the 12/18 meeting of the electoral college should the slate certified for Bush on 11/26 ever be nullified. But even if the Rehnquist Court had failed in a final attempt to allow the voters to determine the outcome, it would at least have acted impartially and strengthened the principle of judicial independence that is so important for the nation. The wisdom of our Constitution resides in its capacity to allow the nation to work out its conflicts in even the most extreme worst­case scenarios. An election should obviously be decided by the voters. But what happens when that doesn't happen? What happens when a state sends to Congress not one slate of electors chosen by its voters but competing slates authorized by different institutions of its government? In Justice Breyer's words, The decision by both the Constitutions's Framers and the 1886 Congress to minimize this Court's role in resolving close federal presidential elections is as wise as it is clear. However awkward or difficult it may be for Congress to resolve difficult electoral disputes, Congress, being a political body, expresses the people's will far more accurately than does an unelected Court. (Breyer dissent, p. 12) People who think it was better for the Court to step than to have the dispute end up in Congress fail to understand the wisdom of the Constitution, which is designed not for angels but for human beings with human failings. The partisan rancor that now abounds in the country makes it perfectly clear why the Constitution wisely gives Congress the job of bringing closure in a worst­case scenario like the 2000 election. The Congress is directly accountable to the people and the people's rancor can dissipate itself in an election cycle. It's likely that if Bush and Gore slates of electors had gone to Congress, the Republican majority would have found a way to choose Bush even if there was strong support in the country for the Gore slate. But in doing that, the Republicans would have put at risk its majority in the 2002 election. People angry at the Republicans would be energized to work for Democratic victories in the House and Senate races in 2002. That's the political dynamic of democracy at work. But now, by in effect playing the role that should have been played by Congress, the Rehnquist Court has prevented this dynamic from working itself out in an appropriate way and will instead visit it upon itself. The Court is accountable to the political process at only one point: the appointment of new Justices. New appointments will now become virtual civil wars that will make the fights over the Bork and Thomas nominations look like tea parties. Within hours of the stay on 12/9 by which the Court stopped the recount authorized by the Florida Supreme Court on 12/8, news stories started circulating about why for personal reasons Justices O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas might want to see Bush in office. One expects any day to hear a similar story about Kennedy and references to the group as the "gang of five." That is just the beginning. The wars over appointments to the Court will politicize it, demean it, and thereby weaken it. The independence of the judiciary that is so important to our country has been dealt a body blow from which it will take a generation to recover. Judges have human failings too. By closely examining the Court's reasoning first in Bush v. Palm Beach, decided on 12/4, and then in Bush v. Gore, one sees a picture emerge of Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas deciding to put Bush in office and then grasping about for legal justifications, sliding from one to another, looking for the best face­saving justification no matter how contrived or how inconsistent with their own well established judicial philosophies. Partisanship tragically overtook judicial independence. On 12/4, the Court vacated the Florida Supreme Court's 11/21 decision in Bush v. Palm Beach. In its order, the Court speaks to the Florida Supreme Court with reference to the "safe harbor" provision in the United States Code, 3USC5, under which Congress spells out the conditions­­including a date certain, in this case December 12­­under which it guarantees to the states that it will not challenge their electors (the "safe harbor"). 3USC5, the Court says, contains a principle of federal law that would assure finality of the State's determination [of electors] if made pursuant to a state law in effect before the election, a legislative wish to take advantage of the "safe harbor" would counsel against any construction of the Election Code that Congress might deem to be a change in the law. (p. 6; emphasis added) "Congress might deem to be a change in the law"­­in other words, 3USC5 envisions Congress not the Court deciding whether a state's electors qualify for "safe harbor." The Court's error resides in the phrase "legislative wish." By telling the Florida Supreme Court to attribute to Florida's legislature a "legislative wish" to take advantage of "safe harbor," the Court (1) brings 3USC5 under Article II, section 1 of the Constitution, which authorizes legislatures to determine the manner of appointing electors and thereby (2) gives itself a legal justification for displacing Congress and giving itself the job of ruling on whether a state's electors qualify under "safe harbor." The shortcoming of this legal reasoning is that it ignores the bedrock matter of the separation of powers. Who should decide on whether there has been "a change in the law" in the case of a dispute over electors for President? Congress or the Court? The Court sidesteps this fundamental question in ways that Breyer pinpoints in his dissent. Additionally, this "legislative wish" is one the Court itself makes up. It is no where in Florida statutes. In other words, Justices praised for their judicial restraint by those opposed to judicial "activism" are here blatantly activist. The weakness of the Court's reasoning in bringing 3USC5 under Article II is evident in the fact that while it is the basis on which the Court involved itself in this dispute to begin with, it retreats to the margin in Bush v. Gore, as only Justice Rehnquist's opinion, with Scalia and Thomas concurring, stands firmly behind it. The reasoning remains in the opinion of the majority of five only in a limited form that is nothing short of Kafkaesque: (1) the Court tells the Florida Supreme Court on 12/4 to take cognizance of 3USC5, with its 12/12 deadline; (2) the Florida Supreme Court obediently does this in its 12/8 decision in Bush v. Gore; then, (3) the Court, on 12/12, tells the Florida Supreme Court that because it committed itself to 12/12, no more time is left to do anything. In the end, the bare majority of five holds itself together mainly on the basis of equal protection issues, characterized as "constitutional problems," based on different applications of the "intent of the voter" standard that the Florida legislature established for manual recounts. Notably, in the first case, Bush v. Palm Beach, the Court even rejected Bush's request to hear his equal protection argument; the Court considered only 3USC5 and Article II, as noted above. But in the end the Court turned to this issue and added two additional levels of judicial hypocrisy. First, the four dissenters, including the two who shared the majority's concern with these "constitutional problems," Breyer and Souter, all thought the case could be returned to Florida with instructions on how to address these "constitutional problems" satisfactorily. Their dissents note that there is precedent for going past even the 12/18 electoral college deadline. Justice Stevens notes a case of electors being determined as late as 1/4. Justice Ginsburg adds that this year December 27 is the "date on which Congress, if it has not received a State's electoral votes, shall request the state secretary to send a certified return immediately" (pp. 9-10). In other words, there was a lot of time to address the equal protection concerns. But the majority, relying on its Kafkaesque logic, insisted that time had run out. Second, if the citizens of Florida suffer unequal protection in their voting, it's clear that machines are by far the primary reason. As dissenters note, the machines using punch card ballots failed to register votes for President five times more often than machines using optical-scanning systems. The actual number of voters affected unequally by this difference­­punch card ballots were used in the most populous counties­­dwarfs the number who might be affected by different applications of the "intent of the voter" standard. Further, it's undeniable that manual recounts found votes that the machines failed to read. Many such votes in the end went uncounted. The Court majority ironically denied equal protection to these voters in the name of equal protection. But the majority's hypocrisy on this issue goes even deeper. The majority might have ruled that the Florida election law is flatly unconstitutional on equal protection grounds. Such a ruling would have had the beneficial effect of authorizing lawsuits across the country contesting various inequities in voting procedure, including machines used in voting. But the most inefficient machines tend to be in areas where the Democrats are strong­­as illustrated by what we saw in Florida­­so that such a ruling would have actually benefited the Democrats in the long run however much it would have hurt Gore in the near term. Anticipating that possibility, the Court majority carefully includes in its ruling a provision that will keep it from happening: "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities" ("Per Curiam" opinion for the Court, pp. 10-11). Hence, the Court's ruling, in another Kafkaesque touch, is technically a remand back to Florida "for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion" (p. 13) that simultaneously tells Florida that there is no more time for such proceedings. The New York Times editorial on the decision (12/14/00) observes, "the majority was careful to circumscribe the implications of its equal protection views to the specific circumstances in Florida." But maybe there is, the editorial adds, "at least a hope that the court might someday apply the same concerns more broadly in elections to insure equal voting rights." Good luck! Bush v. Gore will be the Rehnquist legacy. Purporting to oppose judicial activism, Rehnquist will go down in history as a judicial activist in the narrowest partisan sense. A defender of federalism, he will be remembered for sacrificing judicial principle to partisan interest when the chips were down. Bush v. Gore ended the presidential race, but it started a political war over the Court. In the campaign, when asked about Court appointments, Bush said he greatly admires Scalia. If he tries to appoint another Scalia, don't be surprised if the Democrats leave the position unfilled; you need 60 votes for cloture in the Senate, so the Democrats have far more than enough to keep any nomination from coming to a vote. If on the other hand, Bush reaches out to Democrats by nominating someone acceptable to a substantial number of them, he will enrage the right wing that was the backbone of his campaign. Such political struggles will be unprecedented in their intensity, and that will be a disaster for the Court, but they are inevitable for many years to come. From VM Sat Dec 16 10:17:14 2000 Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 10:17:14 -0500 From: "David Tietge" Subject: Fw: Hey Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 194 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0034_01C06749.5C5AC520 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable David Tietge Long Island University, Brooklyn ----- Original Message -----=20 From: David Tietge=20 To: blakesle@purdue.com=20 Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2000 10:15 AM Subject: Fw: Hey David Tietge Long Island University, Brooklyn ----- Original Message -----=20 From: David Tietge=20 To: David Blakesley=20 Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 5:32 PM Subject: Hey Hey Dave, I have tried three email addresses for you, and they keep getting kicked = back. I hope this one works. We haven't talked lately, so I thought I would see what you were up to. = How are you settling into the Perdue program and West Lafayette? =20 I'm meeting with the prospective publisher from Ohio UP at the end of = this month to discuss the direction of the project. Any advice on how = to deal with publishers? I have rewritten the third chapter and am = beginning the fourth--scientific metaphor and symbolicity (any = indispensable books you can recommend?). I decided that rewriting was = my best (and most manageable) option. =20 LIU is good. Because of released time I got this year, I only had to = teach 6 credits. Pretty sweet. Next semester, I only have to teach 3 = (and it's the grad course in Modern Rhet Theory--I can't wait!). I hope = to have the book finished over the summer. The Department is making = subtle hints about having me direct the Writing Program in 2002, but = I'll only do it under certain conditions, one of which is feeling = comfortable enough in my publications to take on the job. The other is = turning the part-time faculty support position that we currently have = into something full-time. I can't understand how they ran a program = that size without faculty support. It boggles the mind. _And_ they = expect people to publish. Unbelievable. Kathy is doing well. She is adjuncting at Ocean County College and has = a job in environmental proposal writing at Foster-Wheeler--as ideal a = job as she could have found in the private sector. She was looking for = a multicultural ethics book to teach an intro course next semester, but = she couldn't find one at any of the dozen or so publishers she checked = out. I told her that that indicates a gap in scholarship (or editing, = at any rate) and that she should edit her own. It would be fairly easy = to do, and it would be good experience if she decided to look for a = tenure-line job in the future. Carlie is turning into quite the little intellectual. She was lecturing = me today on geology. She discovered a book on the earth's crust and is = apparently fascinated (for the time being) with the subject. I bought = her a cheap little telescope for Christmas. If she likes it, I may = upgrade it for her birthday. Say hi to Julie and the babies. You've probably got a fun Christmas = planned. Let me know how things are going. BTW, if you need anything = from the Warner Bros. store at the World Trade Center, I pass by it = every day. I don't know if I could get anything to you by Christmas, = though. . . Dave ------=_NextPart_000_0034_01C06749.5C5AC520 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
 
David Tietge
Long Island University, Brooklyn
----- Original Message -----=20
From: David = Tietge=20
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2000 10:15 AM
Subject: Fw: Hey

 
David Tietge
Long Island University, Brooklyn
----- Original Message -----=20
From: David = Tietge=20
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 5:32 PM
Subject: Hey

Hey Dave,
 
I have tried three email addresses for you, and they keep getting = kicked=20 back.  I hope this one works.
 
We haven't talked lately, so I thought I would see what you were up = to.  How are you settling into the Perdue program and West = Lafayette? =20
 
I'm meeting with the prospective publisher from Ohio UP at the end = of this=20 month to discuss the direction of the project.  Any advice on how = to deal=20 with publishers?  I have rewritten the third chapter and am = beginning the=20 fourth--scientific metaphor and symbolicity (any indispensable books you = can=20 recommend?).  I decided that rewriting was my best (and most = manageable)=20 option. 
 
LIU is good.  Because of released time I got this year, I only = had to=20 teach 6 credits.  Pretty sweet.  Next semester, I only have to = teach 3=20 (and it's the grad course in Modern Rhet Theory--I can't wait!).  I = hope to=20 have the book finished over the summer.  The Department is making = subtle=20 hints about having me direct the Writing Program in 2002, but I'll only = do it=20 under certain conditions, one of which is feeling comfortable enough in = my=20 publications to take on the job.  The other is turning the = part-time=20 faculty support position that we currently have into something = full-time. =20 I can't understand how they ran a program that size without faculty=20 support.  It boggles the mind.  _And_ they expect people to=20 publish.  Unbelievable.
 
Kathy is doing well.  She is adjuncting at Ocean County = College and=20 has a job in environmental proposal writing at Foster-Wheeler--as ideal = a job as=20 she could have found in the private sector.  She was looking for a=20 multicultural ethics book to teach an intro course next semester, but = she=20 couldn't find one at any of the dozen or so publishers she checked = out.  I=20 told her that that indicates a gap in scholarship (or editing, at any = rate) and=20 that she should edit her own.  It would be fairly easy to do, and = it would=20 be good experience if she decided to look for a tenure-line job in the=20 future.
 
Carlie is turning into quite the little intellectual.  She was = lecturing me today on geology.  She discovered a book on the = earth's crust=20 and is apparently fascinated (for the time being) with the = subject.  I=20 bought her a cheap little telescope for Christmas.  If she likes = it, I may=20 upgrade it for her birthday.
 
Say hi to Julie and the babies.  You've probably got a fun = Christmas=20 planned.  Let me know how things are going.  BTW, if you need = anything=20 from the Warner Bros. store at the World Trade Center, I pass by it = every=20 day.  I don't know if I could get anything to you by Christmas, = though. .=20 .
 
Dave
------=_NextPart_000_0034_01C06749.5C5AC520-- From VM Sat Dec 16 10:39:51 2000 Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 10:39:51 -0500 From: "David Tietge" Subject: Apology Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 195 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0065_01C0674C.84EBDF80 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_001_0066_01C0674C.84EBDF80" ------=_NextPart_001_0066_01C0674C.84EBDF80 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable My apologies for the posting of the email intended for Dave Blakesley. = I inadvertently used the wrong email address. David Tietge Long Island University, Brooklyn ------=_NextPart_001_0066_01C0674C.84EBDF80 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
My apologies for the posting of the email intended for Dave=20 Blakesley.  I inadvertently used the wrong email address.
 
David Tietge
Long Island University, = Brooklyn
------=_NextPart_001_0066_01C0674C.84EBDF80-- ------=_NextPart_000_0065_01C0674C.84EBDF80 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; name="David Tietge.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="David Tietge.vcf" BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 N:Tietge;David FN:David Tietge ORG:Long Island University;English TITLE:Assistant Professor TEL;WORK;VOICE:(718) 780-4323 ADR;WORK:;H443;1 University Plaza;Brooklyn;NY;11201 LABEL;WORK;ENCODING=3DQUOTED-PRINTABLE:H443=3D0D=3D0A1 University = Plaza=3D0D=3D0ABrooklyn, NY 11201 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:tietgedavid@home.com REV:20001216T153951Z END:VCARD ------=_NextPart_000_0065_01C0674C.84EBDF80-- From VM Sat Dec 16 11:46:03 2000 Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 11:46:03 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Supreme Court: Bush vs. Gore Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 196 I have read Robert Wess's analysis carefully, twice. I am impressed. I hope both he and Clarke, both experts in Court and Constitutional rhetoric, develop their postings further and publish them. "Kafkaesque" is truly the word to characterize these two rulings of the Supremely-Republican Court. Bald, brazen, blatant, shameless are four other appropriate descriptives. One would think the embarrassment of it all would have been enough to inhibit persons with normal sensitivities and self-regard from perpetrating such a travesty. The fact that the "gang of five" will be exposed by the searchlights of history to be the buffoons that they are seems not to have mattered at all, their blind, partisan willfulness to win at whatever cost overriding all. It's difficult to isolate the biggest outrage in the Court's anfractuous "reasoning." This thoughtful inclusion in their "case" sounds to me like the front-runner: "'Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.'" Translation: "We're only screwing the Democrats of Florida here, folks. Don't get the idea we're plumping for equal access to the franchise for everyone, Dems and Repubs alike, across the whole of this beautifully segregated land of rich and poor voting districts." The one place I would take issue with you, Robert, is in your intro, not in your analysis. You say you voted for Nader because he was the only candidate with his feet in "reality," because Gore, like Bush, is in the thrall of the corporate interests. Up to a point, you're right, but only up to a point. I see significant differences between Gore and Bush, the principal one being that Gore is a Democrat and Bush is a Republican. I vote for the party, not for the candidate. A vote cast for a Republican Presidential candidate, say, is a vote for a Republican Cabinet, a Republican Sub-Cabinate, Republicans from so-called "think tanks" like the Cato, American Enterprise, and Heritage, and their like, filling up the 7,000 jobs listed in the "Plum Book," enhanced cooperation with the likes of Delay, Armey, and Lott in promoting conservative legislative initiatives. Such personnel and executive-congressional relationships, to say nothing of court appointments, would look significantly, if not strikingly, different with Al Gore in command. Ralph Nader will never be in command. He would have been my choice, too, IF! But the "IF" is way too huge, as I see it, for me to have wasted my vote on him. Thomas Friedman had an excellent column in the NYT earlier this week on this very topic. His sardonic conclusion, directed at the Nader voters and what they have "accomplished" in this election was--and it shall be mine also-- "Have a good day." Ed From VM Sat Dec 16 12:23:26 2000 Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 12:23:26 -0500 From: lindsays@purdue.edu Subject: Politics and Perspectivism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 197 Although it is certainly entertaining to read all of the recent political posts, I am reminded of Kenneth Burke's perspectivism, his appreciation for the word "perhaps." In his second book of criticism, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (hereafter, PC), Burke uses the terms "psychosis" and "psychotic" as John Dewey used them--not in a psychiatric sense, but referring simply to "a pronounced character of the mind" (PC 40). Burke views Dewey's concept of "occupational psychosis" as being interchangeable with Veblen's concept of trained incapacity. Burke's own way of putting the point is: "A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing" (PC 49). Burke's use of the terminology "seeing" and "not seeing" brings to mind the concepts of selective perception, selective organization, and selective interpretation, as taught by interpersonal communication specialists Berko, Rosenfeld, and Samovar. They cite H. M. Tomlinson: "We see things not as they are, but as we are." The point that all of these thinkers make is that humans perceive the world partially, selectively. Surely, in a 7-2 or even a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling (and in a 4-3 Florida Supreme Court ruling) perspective has played a significant role. Clearly, there must be strong arguments on both sides of these issues. Many recent posts have demonstrated Burke's point magnificently. Those who see in one way have found fantastic ways of not seeing in other ways. Let the dialectic continue, but be aware of the limitations of any single perspective. Stan A. Lindsay Department of English Purdue University lindsays@purdue.edu From VM Sat Dec 16 14:15:46 2000 Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 14:15:46 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Politics and Perspectivism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 198 In Response to Stan: All right, you've introduced an important dramatistic insight into the present discussion: the necessarily selective/reflective/deflective virtues and vices of any terminology or argumentative position. Question: All angles of terministic approach to a problem being in some ways limited in scope, "truth," or applicability, are they all therefore "equal," equal in reason, in practical effect--always factoring in the tyrannies of the "sheer brute materials of the world as it is" (GM, about p. 100)? Robert has just favored us with a close, careful, critical reading of the two opinions handed down in the last two weeks or so by the U. S. Supreme Court. He has found the opinions to be woefully wanting in law, reason, ideological consistency, and practical effect on our democratic form of government. I challenge you to step down off of your lofty platform of generalization and do something similar to what Robert has done in terms of the nitty gritties of what the five-member majority has said--from the opposite, putatively as "truthful," side of the question. Since you allude to P&C as the basis of your demurrers, you might keep in mind as you do so the standard of "truith" Burke proposes there, the long-term survival interests of humankind in the broadest sense. You've introduced a provocative point. I'd like to see you run with it. Ed From VM Sun Dec 17 15:49:13 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 15:49:13 -0500 From: "David Blakesley" Subject: Dramatism and Development Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 199 I wanted to let everyone know that KB's _Dramatism and Development_ (1972; 2000) has been reprinted by Clark University Press and is thus now readily available once again. Many thanks to Bernie Kaplan for arranging its reissue and, of course, for making the work possible in the first place. _Dramatism and Development_contains two Burke essays not published anywhere else: "Biology, Psychology, Words" and "Archetype and Entelechy." Since many of you will be interested in obtaining a copy ($7.50 + S&H), I have placed an order form at the KB website that you can download and print. It's in Adobe Acrobat format (a .pdf file) at the following address: http://www.sla.purdue.edu/people/engl/dblakesley/burke/orderform.pdf Bernie, if you have a chance, I would love to hear your memories of KB's visit to deliver the Heinz Werner lecture in 1971. I'll bet others would as well. Cheers, Dave -------------------------------- Director of Professional Writing Department of English Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 Email: blakesle@purdue.edu Phone: (765) 494-3772 Fax: (765) 494-3780 From VM Sun Dec 17 15:54:51 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 15:54:51 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 200 OK, as Stan suggested and Clarke said, there's been a markedly liberal slant to discussion of the election and its aftermath on this list. Stan argued, in an abridged fashion, for a fuller dialectic. Clarke asked for some sign, at least, of positions the other side might be taking. Are there any conservatives out there, in Burkeville, who would like to skewer us selectively deflective pinko bigots? Does dramatism, as an approach to language, life, and issues of truth and validity, in and of itself tend to factor out persons of a conservative persuasion? The answer to the last question is "yes," it seems to me. In a discussion at the ECA Rhetoric and Public Address Conference a dozen years ago, I referred to Burke as "the quintessential liberal," a thinker whose very system itself, if you want to call it that, would tend to select out conservatives, who tend to take an absolutist epistemological position, I do believe. (How did Robert Frost, himself very much a conservative, define a liberal? Thusly: Somebody who won't take his or her own side in a fight.) At the 1990 Burke Conference in New Harmony, I had the pleasure of dining with two professors from the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville. Like an idiot, I asked whether they were Fundamentalists. (I had momentarily forgotten from my Church and Society class at seminary that there are more liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention than in the United Church of Christ, the most far-left denomination in Mainline Protestantism. Reason: There are so many more Southern Baptists.) One of the two scholars half ridiculed me for asking such a stupid question. How could one be in any way a Burkean and still be a Fundamentalist? he chided. Is it just as absurd to ask, are there any fire-breathing, redneck, full-moon political conservatives lurking on this list? I myself certainly hold some conservative positions. I almost got run off this list on a rail last August for articulating one of them. My internal ideological dialogue makes me, therefore, to some extent, a dialectician conversing across the political and social abyss that divides. Speak up, conservatives, wherever and whoever you may happen to be! I remember receiving a personal e-mail last spring from a subscriber who was ostensibly taken aback by my screeds against Charlton Heston and the gun lobby. She indignantly inquired how she could get off this offensive list, thoughtfully hurling back at me my repugnant notions. I responded by thanking her for reading my piece, and by suggest that she simply get onto the list herself and ANSWER ME. I never heard from her again. Somewhere in Chapter 5 of his book Kenneth Burke and the Conversation After Philosophy, Tim Crusius avers that there exist some notions, ideas, and ideological tenets that Burke would give virtually no credence to whatsoever, that his project of rescuing and rephrasing via the "discount" does not mean a wholesale embrace, no matter how undemonstrative, of any and every patently unjust and destructive opinion under the sun. Remember: Pay some heed to "the collective revelation of testing and discussion" (PLF). Bottom line: Let's hear it for Bush, Katherine Harris, Rube Goldberg voting devices in Palm Beach County, and the sublime wisdom of the Rehnquist Court, if you are of a mind to make a case on their behalf. One more thing. Maybe "dionysus" did fairly accurately label me in the vulgar post he tried to get on kb. He's a gutless coward for not signing his name, but he may still have a point. I apologize to Robert for my possibly rudely ironic "complementary" close yesterday. He has a right to vote for Nader if he so desires. I surely would have done so myself--if Nader had been a major-party candidate. Besides, Oregon went for Bush in any case. Robert's vote did not bring us the Presidency of Butterfly Bush. Also, I apologize to Jack for maybe too snidely suggesting he needs to redraft his two-party/multiparty post so that we senile old folks can fathom it. I don't say I won't be snide, rude, or bigoted again in later posts. I'm just saying I apologize. Ed From VM Sun Dec 17 19:08:07 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 19:08:07 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 201 I have to admit, Scott makes a good point, one that can be generalized in the notion of "freedom of communication" rather than "freedom of speech." In "freedom of speech," communicators can say, may say, anything they want, consistent with Justice Holmes' exceptions. They can say anything they want through any medium they choose. It follows the logic of an "actional" model of communication. In "freedom of communication," equal stress is put on the right of listeners, or potential listeners, to "tune out," separate themselves from what they regard as objectionable talk, or scream bloody murder back at the offensive communicator. This concept follows the logic of a "transactional" model of communication. The investigator looks at and assesses the communication via the notion of a "system," with communication, and attendent rights thereof, simultaneously occurring between and among what other models call "senders" and "receivers." Analysis of communication by way of "actional," "interactional," and "transactional" approaches is nothing new, of course. Only, I haven't seen the transactional concept being directly and explicitly applied to questions of freedom of speech. As Scott has implied, people have a right to tune out. I apply this right to Fundamentalist Protestant Christians, who, as I see it, definitely have the prerogative to take their children out of public schools and put them in their own parochial schools, where they can be taught "special creation" of each species, even "young earth science," whereby students may learn that the earth and all that dwells therein is only about six to ten thousand years old. I'm not for vouchers, but I do not look down my nose at conservatives who, in this fashion, abjure "corruption" of their youth, as they would see it. Nor do I condemn their efforts to "clean up" television and radio, media whose messages come directly into the home. The on/off switch does not provide enough safeguard, as I see it, for religious believers, or anyone else, who seek a higher level of social purity. Those who want what the conservatives would call "dirty media" can get up off their sofas and go buy it or rent it at some store. Conversely--contra the arguments put forward by conservatives--gay males and lesbians have every right to mount boycotts against Dr. Laura and her TV show. They are exercising their right under the rubric of "freedom of communication." Dr. Laura has the right to impugn the morals of gays all she wants. She can say as much to her neighbors. She can shout it out of her window. She can mount a soapbox in a nearby park and vilify gays all day. Nobody's going to arrest her. Gays, however, have a right to cut her out of a deal with a media megaphone like a television network. TELEVISION COMES INTO THEIR HOMES! THEY DON'T HAVE TO L.ISTEN! THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO KEEP HER MESSAGE OF VILIFICATION AND DISCRIMINATION OUT OF EARSHOT ANYWAY THEY CAN, CONSISTENT WITH THE LAW! I presume, Scott, you're consistent enough to underwrite these other applications of the very same principle you implied in your post. To David I say, hey, that's too bad. I've been reading over the years what's been happening within the Southern Baptist denomination. Many seminaries have been taken over by the extreem Right. A schism may be in the air, what with the Texas Convention now withholding, or threatening to withhold, funding for the national church. I'm sorry to hear that my moderate friends may be working now in a hostile environment, if they are still teaching at Louisville at all. One of the two used the Rhetoric of Religion in one of his classers. That's not required reading a Fundamentalist would put in the syllabus. Ed From VM Sun Dec 17 20:46:50 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 20:46:50 -0500 From: "Camille K. Lewis" Subject: RE: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 202 Why bother with finding only the "conservatives"? Why are there only *two* sides? Wouldn't our patron saint have preferred that we find many sides to the same argument? Wouldn't that have been the antinomian thing? Wouldn't a healthy dose of perspective by incongruity be satisfying right now? I bristle at calling myself a 'liberal' or a 'conservative.' I don't like names that reduce people to a set of strict positions that no one could possibly hold all the time. I don't like 'Democrat' or 'Republican' either because both sides make me ill. I like to dance between the positions or with a third and a fourth that are missed by either of the other two. That's why Burke makes me so happy. So maybe a more interesting question is, "What are the other sides besides these two?" Wouldn't that be more productive? Camille PS - To be frank with you, Ed, I'm really too beat to go into this discussion at length, but my graduate student curiosity is getting the very best of me. So here goes. . . . Why is it so laughable and so hilarious and so inconceivable for the likes of a fundamentalist to be a Burkean? Wouldn't that be the ultimate perspective by incongruity? Couldn't you imagine the most unbelievable comedy in such a position? I'm not goading here. I'm serious. Tired, but serious. From VM Sun Dec 17 21:55:32 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 21:55:32 -0500 (EST) From: David Langston Subject: fundamentalists Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 203 On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, Camille K. Lewis wrote: > Why is it so laughable and so hilarious and so inconceivable for the > likes of a fundamentalist to be a Burkean? In the spirit of your advocacy of multiple political positions, there are, I suspect, multiple answers to to that question. But the answer that seems most obvious to me is that, for fundamentalists, texts are not actions susceptible to various enactments. Fundies hold out for a one-to-one correspondence between what the text says and what the text means. Burke's theory of meaning, that a text's symbolic action works by analogy and can authorize diverse possible enactments, is at variance with the fundamentalists' postion that a text means what it says. Moreover, KB's sense that names are titles for actions or terministic screens will pick out different details, depending on circumstance, is not a fundamentalist's cup of tea. There is associated cultural baggage that would tend to make contemporary fundamentalists distrustful of Burke: they have an aversion to drama as a crucible of meaning, and they see divine creation as positive rather than negative and they think of god with an agency beyond the terministic....but I think those differences are maybe more historical accidents than they are essential to a fundamentalist theory of meaning. (Of course, the above remarks deserve one rather fat caveat: fundamentalists are no more interested in single meanings than anyone else when it comes to wielding power. As the Taliban Five on the Supreme Court demonstrated, fundamentalists of every stripe will abandon "strict constructionism" whenever it suits their purposes; in that regard, fundamentalism is a theory of meaning that is profoundly anti-historical in cast. The moment of conversion/revelation cements every meaning in place independent of its past; meaning of the text did not arise historically nor will it undergo historical modifications. "My current understanding," they say, "is identical with the Original Meaning of the text." If fundamentalists get into trouble, they just have a converstion experience and, bingo, the text has a NEW, invariant meaning. This last point is a different starting point than the one Burke operates from in his discussion of analogies and perspective by incongruity in _Permanence and Change_ ...and as KB is always fond of observing, the choice of a starting point always has such huge implications by the fifth act of the drama.) David Langston From VM Sun Dec 17 13:27:18 2000 Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 13:27:18 -0800 (PST) From: David Stacey Subject: Re: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 204 On Sun, 17 Dec 2000 Edappel8@cs.com wrote: > > At the 1990 Burke Conference in New Harmony, I had the pleasure of dining > with two professors from the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville. Like > an idiot, I asked whether they were Fundamentalists. (I had momentarily > forgotten from my Church and Society class at seminary that there are more > liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention than in the United Church of > Christ, the most far-left denomination in Mainline Protestantism. Reason: > There are so many more Southern Baptists.) You know, I think there's a sad story to add here. When I was doing the PhD in Rhet and Comp at the U of Louisville in the 80s, the Baptist Seminary was a great shining beacon on the hill, full of amazing and kind and LIBERAL thinkers who gave us a lot of help in the library and on committees and such. It was a special place. But I think it's long over. It's my understanding that all the liberals have been routed and it's indeed now, as is the whole denomination, run by a particularly hard version of fundamentalism. Alas, our good friends like Glen Stassen and many of the others are now long gone. I haven't been back to Louisville in quite a while, and what I know is only what I've heard over the years. But I think it's a sad story, if true. David From VM Mon Dec 18 08:41:01 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 08:41:01 From: "james adam bateman" Subject: Re: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 205 Ed, Perhaps you’re right. It’s possible that the reason no conservatives contribute to the ongoing dialog of the list is that no Burke scholar would be conservative. Perhaps Burke has a better answer. To feel a part of any group, to identify with one, any person has to be able to rhetorically participate in its language and culture. It seems that by such severe attacks, while inviting a response, you alienate possible contributors to the discussion, and rhetorically exclude them. In his “Rhetoric of Motives” Burke asserts that: “One need not scrutinize the concept of ‘identification’ very sharply to see, implied in it at every turn, its ironic counterpart: division.” I’m sure you know this passage, undoubtedly better than I. It seems that based on Burke’s most basic assertions, applied to the community of this very list, that the minority of the people who might participate, would at the very least feel a little timid about responding to such aggressive assertions. It seems that you, and others, feel like you have some access to the truth that others don’t have. The very way that you address conservatives: “fire-breathing, redneck, full-moon political conservatives” is enough to divide. It seems to me, that as a rhetorician, or at least as one who is very aware of rhetorical theory, Burke’s in particular, you would remember that, in his words: “Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division… if men where not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity” It seems like you are earnestly affirming identification with liberals, and identifying Burkeans as liberal, that you are necessarily dividing. This is unfortunate when a Burkean role should be neither liberal nor conservative, instead apolitical and even inclusive. Because men are apart from one another, and further divided by partisan rhetoric, it should be the rhetorician’s job to “proclaim their unity.” Adam >From: Edappel8@cs.com >To: kb@purdue.edu >Subject: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? >Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 15:54:51 EST > >OK, as Stan suggested and Clarke said, there's been a markedly liberal >slant >to discussion of the election and its aftermath on this list. Stan argued, >in an abridged fashion, for a fuller dialectic. Clarke asked for some >sign, >at least, of positions the other side might be taking. Are there any >conservatives out there, in Burkeville, who would like to skewer us >selectively deflective pinko bigots? Does dramatism, as an approach to >language, life, and issues of truth and validity, in and of itself tend to >factor out persons of a conservative persuasion? > >The answer to the last question is "yes," it seems to me. In a discussion >at >the ECA Rhetoric and Public Address Conference a dozen years ago, I >referred >to Burke as "the quintessential liberal," a thinker whose very system >itself, >if you want to call it that, would tend to select out conservatives, who >tend >to take an absolutist epistemological position, I do believe. (How did >Robert Frost, himself very much a conservative, define a liberal? Thusly: >Somebody who won't take his or her own side in a fight.) > >At the 1990 Burke Conference in New Harmony, I had the pleasure of dining >with two professors from the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville. Like >an idiot, I asked whether they were Fundamentalists. (I had momentarily >forgotten from my Church and Society class at seminary that there are more >liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention than in the United Church of >Christ, the most far-left denomination in Mainline Protestantism. Reason: >There are so many more Southern Baptists.) One of the two scholars half >ridiculed me for asking such a stupid question. How could one be in any >way >a Burkean and still be a Fundamentalist? he chided. Is it just as absurd >to >ask, are there any fire-breathing, redneck, full-moon political >conservatives >lurking on this list? > >I myself certainly hold some conservative positions. I almost got run off >this list on a rail last August for articulating one of them. My internal >ideological dialogue makes me, therefore, to some extent, a dialectician >conversing across the political and social abyss that divides. > >Speak up, conservatives, wherever and whoever you may happen to be! I >remember receiving a personal e-mail last spring from a subscriber who was >ostensibly taken aback by my screeds against Charlton Heston and the gun >lobby. She indignantly inquired how she could get off this offensive list, >thoughtfully hurling back at me my repugnant notions. I responded by >thanking her for reading my piece, and by suggest that she simply get onto >the list herself and ANSWER ME. I never heard from her again. > >Somewhere in Chapter 5 of his book Kenneth Burke and the Conversation After >Philosophy, Tim Crusius avers that there exist some notions, ideas, and >ideological tenets that Burke would give virtually no credence to >whatsoever, >that his project of rescuing and rephrasing via the "discount" does not >mean >a wholesale embrace, no matter how undemonstrative, of any and every >patently >unjust and destructive opinion under the sun. Remember: Pay some heed to >"the collective revelation of testing and discussion" (PLF). > >Bottom line: Let's hear it for Bush, Katherine Harris, Rube Goldberg voting >devices in Palm Beach County, and the sublime wisdom of the Rehnquist >Court, >if you are of a mind to make a case on their behalf. > >One more thing. Maybe "dionysus" did fairly accurately label me in the >vulgar post he tried to get on kb. He's a gutless coward for not signing >his >name, but he may still have a point. I apologize to Robert for my possibly >rudely ironic "complementary" close yesterday. He has a right to vote for >Nader if he so desires. I surely would have done so myself--if Nader had >been a major-party candidate. Besides, Oregon went for Bush in any case. >Robert's vote did not bring us the Presidency of Butterfly Bush. > >Also, I apologize to Jack for maybe too snidely suggesting he needs to >redraft his two-party/multiparty post so that we senile old folks can >fathom >it. > >I don't say I won't be snide, rude, or bigoted again in later posts. I'm >just saying I apologize. > > > >Ed _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From VM Mon Dec 18 08:08:19 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 08:08:19 -0500 From: "David Tietge" Subject: Re: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 206 There's an interesting and relevant story on the rise of "fundamentalist intellectuals" in the October issue (it might be September) of _The Atlantic Monthly_. In it, the author posits that pluralistic intellectual inquiry and fundamentalist academic principles are not as at odds with one another as we often assume. However, I was left wondering after reading it whether the mere inclusion of Nietzsche or Derrida in a curriculum was the same as engaging in a dialogue with the texts and whether fundamentalist intellectuals were as dogmatic in their reading of such figures as they were of Scripture. If so, it would be a highly ironic education. David Tietge Long Island University, Brooklyn From VM Mon Dec 18 10:27:13 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 10:27:13 -0600 From: cj Subject: Do Conservatives Wear Sheep's Clothing? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 207 David Tietge commented: >However, I was left wondering after reading it whether >the mere inclusion of Nietzsche or Derrida in a curriculum was the same as >engaging in a dialogue with the texts Yes, this reminds me of the time a famous Shakespearean scholar encouraged female students to write on feminist topics, proclaiming a powerful interest in feminism. So we all trotted off to our Kristeva and Showalter, etc, to make wonderful wild deconstructive claims about Hermia, Ophelia, and in my case, Tamora. .....Then he demonstrated in punitive grades and harsh comments that his "interest" in feminism was to have grad students supply all the best sources for his own project in refutation and derision. I guess he didn't know (or more likely didn't care -- he's a real big name) that we all used to have coffee together and with other Renaissance faculty and compared notes. What a sobering term. I try to remember to review Burke's discussion of "smugness" to level my own head about my role as a teacher. CeeJ From VM Mon Dec 18 12:06:51 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 12:06:51 -0500 From: "Scott McLemee" Subject: Re: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 208 >I presume, Scott, you're consistent enough to underwrite these other >applications of the very same principle you implied in your post. Certainly. But perhaps it would be more pertinent to focus on what was explicit, not the implicit. Namely: to rant at great length on a topic of no relevance to the group assembled means that people in that group will either express discontent, or else quietly leave. (This may well be a proposition with broader social implications, though it is a particular application that springs most forcefully to mind). Burke is, of course, potentially relevant to any discussion. Yet not every discussion belongs on the Burke-list. That doesn't seem like a terribly difficult principle of discursive tact to comprehend, now, does it? Burke's work could be applied to analyzing, say, cookbooks. But if someone insisted on dumping huge messages full of recipes to this list, the response might not be one of great delight and appreciation. I wonder if the moderator would be willing to remind us how to unsubscribe? Just in case one needed to.... From VM Mon Dec 18 12:14:40 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 12:14:40 -0500 From: "David Tietge" Subject: The Evangelical Mind Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 209 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0009_01C068EC.18D42220 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_001_000A_01C068EC.18D42220" ------=_NextPart_001_000A_01C068EC.18D42220 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable For anyone who is interested (like maybe Camille), I was able to lay my = hands on the _The Atlantic Monthly_ article. It is in the October 2000 = issue and is entitled "The Opening of the Evangelical Mind" (55-76). It = is written by Alan Wolfe, who is a political scientist and sociologist = interested in, as the editors put it, "America's many social parts and = how their members think and act." Just FYI. David Tietge Long Island University, Brooklyn ------=_NextPart_001_000A_01C068EC.18D42220 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
For anyone who is interested (like maybe Camille), I was able to = lay my=20 hands on the _The Atlantic Monthly_ article.  It is in the October = 2000=20 issue and is entitled "The Opening of the Evangelical Mind" = (55-76).  It is=20 written by Alan Wolfe, who is a political scientist and sociologist = interested=20 in, as the editors put it, "America's many social parts and how their = members=20 think and act."  Just FYI.
 
David Tietge
Long Island University, = Brooklyn
------=_NextPart_001_000A_01C068EC.18D42220-- ------=_NextPart_000_0009_01C068EC.18D42220 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; name="David Tietge.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="David Tietge.vcf" BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 N:Tietge;David FN:David Tietge ORG:Long Island University;English TITLE:Assistant Professor TEL;WORK;VOICE:(718) 780-4323 ADR;WORK:;H443;1 University Plaza;Brooklyn;NY;11201 LABEL;WORK;ENCODING=3DQUOTED-PRINTABLE:H443=3D0D=3D0A1 University = Plaza=3D0D=3D0ABrooklyn, NY 11201 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:tietgedavid@home.com REV:20001218T171440Z END:VCARD ------=_NextPart_000_0009_01C068EC.18D42220-- From VM Mon Dec 18 12:40:31 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 12:40:31 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing) Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 210 In Response to James: You suggest that my "aggressive assertions" and "severe attacks . . . alienate possible contributors to the discussion, and rhetorically exclude them." You cite as an example my reference to "fire-breathing, redneck, full-moon conservatives." You might recall, also, to balance things out, my characterization of myself as a "commie, pinko, guilt-ridden, bleeding-heart-liberal, tree-hugging, nature-worshipping (Presbyterian style), yellow-dog Democrat." Don't you get a feel for the sixth term in the hexad here, James, the element of "attitude"? The manner in which I phrase many of my putatively "poison pen" broadsides ought to "metacommunicate" just a little bit, anyway. Not to give away a lot of trade secrets or anything, but much of what I say is meant tongue in cheek. I think that should be obvious. I don't mean I'm not sincere in my support of the positions and ideas I hurl out into the seeming void of the kb discussion list. But I do like to sardonically "bait" subscribers to this list, as Leslie Bruder--was that his name?--observed during his brief but incandescent tenure as kb poet in residence. I want to tease, entice, lure, badger busy lurkers into responding, to arrest them on their way to a really important, practical event, like the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge's poem. Camille was "beat," "tired" from the strenuous grind of putting this semester safely to bed. Yet she fought her fatique and joined in the fray with an excellent post, bringing the discussion back to some basic Burkean principles. I once said to Michael in a private post--I think it's OK for me to say what I said to him, not vice versa--that this discussion list is "funny," ha-ha funny, in that a dozen or so do their routines like "trained seals" at Florida's Sea World, if that's what it's called. Thus, to mash the metaphor, if I'm going to be a headliner in a burlesque show, where only a few in the room actually take off their clothes, I'm, to some extent, going to "burlesque" the whole business. Now to Camille. She asks: "Why is it so laughable and so hilarious and so inconceivable for the likes of a fundamentalist to be a Burkean? Wouldn't that be the ultimate perspective by incongruity? Couldn't you imagine the most unbelievable comedy in such a position? I'm not goading here. I'm serious. Tired, but serious." Maybe, Camille, to accommodate your "analogical extension," we would have to make a distinction between "being a Burkean" and "using Burke." An "intellectual Fundamentalist" of the kind David T. speaks of in his interesting post might very well find ways of using Burke's ideas in one way or another to advance his or her program of apologetics and evangelism, just as he or she might be able to address and commandeer parts of Nietzsche and Derrida. For reasons David L. enumerated clearly, as well as perhaps some others, I can't see how a Fundamentalist of any religion or political creed could "be a Burkean." As David L. pointed out, Fundamentalists, by definition, will espouse a radically different view of language, a positivist, representationalist, empiricist, even scientist conception. Equally inconguous--you're right that it would make for the "ultimate perspective by incongruity"--is the genre of drama fundamentalism of any kind will embody. As Burke says in the "Recommending by Tragedy" section of P&C (pp. 195-97), to take religious fundamentalism as our representative anecdote for fundamentalism, any full religous expression will be in the tragic frame. Religious fundamentalism is always in the tragic frame. When Burke defines "logology" as "the systematic study of theological terms for the light they might throw on the forms of language," theological terms being the most thoroughgoing, far-reaching, ultimate terms in language, Burke has especially in mind orthodox, to-the-end-of-the-line religious expressions of faith. That's why Rueckert, in Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations, calls "tragedy" Burke's "representative anecdote" for the nature of language and its usage. Tragedy is founded on the motive of perfection. (See my articles on Falwell, Fisher, M. L. King, Jr., and "Implications and Importance of the Negative in Burke's Dramatistic Philosophy of Language" for particulars.) Fundamentalists, American Protestant style, have a perfected drama, perfected morality, perfected set of dialectical oppositions, perfected view of the Scriptures, etc. (My wife is calling me to lunch so I can't rant in detail here.) All this tragic-frame perfectionism is antithetical to the anti-systematic, look-for-an-element-of-"truth"-or-usefulness-in-almost-any-and-all-points-of-v iew, let's-just-"muddle through"-as-best-we-can, comic-frame approach of dramatism. A dramatist can "discount for language" and "use" Fundamentalism to learn more about human nature. He or she can "rescue" truth from such a postutre. A Fundamentalist will not return the favor in the direction of dramatism. Gotta go. It's been fun. Ed From VM Mon Dec 18 12:31:06 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 12:31:06 -0500 (EST) From: David Langston Subject: Re: The Evangelical Mind Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 211 This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info. ------=_NextPart_000_0009_01C068EC.18D42220 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-ID: Because I use a primitive e-mail program, I could not read the attachments in the "evangelical mind" posting. So maybe I missed something...but it seems worth pointing out with regard to Camille Lewis's project, that only a portion of Christian evangelicals are fundamentalists. Many evangelicals are "pietists" who place a much higher value on spiritual renewal of the individual than they do on textual authority -- which more often than not is a notion of meaning in distinct tension with fundamentalism. As I use the term, fundamentalism is a wider phenomenon than Christian conservatism. It includes those branches of Islam, the legal establishment, and political ideologues of all varieties who anchor textual meaning in a single, undeviating Original Intention inscribed in a particular text. David Langston ------=_NextPart_000_0009_01C068EC.18D42220-- From VM Mon Dec 18 12:22:25 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 12:22:25 -0600 From: dave klope Subject: Fundamentalists Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 212 --------------BB8F7FE9BF3C11BB2AC05270 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit But the answer that seems most obvious to me is that, for fundamentalists, texts are not actions susceptible to various enactments. Fundies hold out for a one-to-one correspondence between what the text says and what the text means. Burke's theory of meaning, that a text's symbolic action works by analogy and can authorize diverse possible enactments, is at variance with the fundamentalists' postion that a text means what it says. I find it a high, precise irony that, if we are to take the term "fundamentalist" as a text within David Langston's longer text, that he makes the exact move that he faults "fundamentalists" of: presuming there is only one meaning, and that he knows it; essentializing a text in an ahistorical manner. It certainly makes the construction of a "straw man" fallacy more efficient. Dave Klope Trinity Christian College --------------BB8F7FE9BF3C11BB2AC05270 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit But the answer that seems most obvious to me is that, for fundamentalists,
texts are not actions susceptible to various enactments.  Fundies hold out
for a one-to-one correspondence between what the text says and what the
text means.  Burke's theory of meaning, that a text's symbolic action
works by analogy and can authorize diverse possible enactments, is at
variance with the fundamentalists' postion that a text means what it says.

I find it a high, precise irony that, if we are to take the term "fundamentalist" as a text within David Langston's longer text, that he makes the exact move that he faults "fundamentalists" of: presuming there is only one meaning, and that he knows it; essentializing a text in an ahistorical manner. It certainly makes the construction of a "straw man" fallacy more efficient.
Dave Klope
Trinity Christian College --------------BB8F7FE9BF3C11BB2AC05270-- From VM Mon Dec 18 12:42:10 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 12:42:10 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: Burkean relevance of the Supreme Court Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 213 Thanks to all who responded to my query about public perceptions of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. I'm especially beholden to Bob Wess for his thorough and enlightening analysis. To Scott McLemee's concern that we tend to rant on about subjects that might be of little interest to the whole list, I plead guilty, but suggest that this such ranting can lead to insights and ponderings we otherwise might not undertake. For example, we've now raised a serious question about whether the term "Conservative Burkean" is an oxymoron. But let me go further and explain my own specific interest in calling on this listserv for insight into judicial rhetoric (especially judicial rhetoric of such great importance): As readers of the Quarterly Journal of Speech will find shortly (February to be exact) I have long worked to use dramatistic analysis to understand judicial opinions such as the one under discussion here. My 1988 dissertation used a modified form of pentadic analysis to explain the strategies used by 19th century judges in the creation of corporate criminal liability. The problem was that corporations couldn't be convicted of crimes because they couldn't "do" anything (at least not anything beyond their chartered purposes). The judges had to develop an agency of action (which, in ironic Burkean fashion, began with problems of inaction--nonfeasance in civil law) before building conceptions of corporate purpose, scenes of action, agent, and eventually attitude. By the 1970s, corporations could be convicted of homicide! After spending two years in the University of Iowa Law school (to prepare for writing this dissertation), I became convinced that the central *rhetorical* work of judicial opinion writers was not to apply principles, reason legally, or follow some judicial philosophy, but to characterize action: the action of lower courts (what was the Florida Supreme Court doing, when, where, why, how, and who are they?), of executive agents (what was Katherine Harris doing, etc.?), of the framers and amenders of the Constitution (who did they intend to be the final arbitor of elections?), of the Florida legislature (what was their "intent" in creating apparently conflicting election laws?), and--very critical here--what are *WE* (the Court) doing and how will our motives be interpreted in the future (prospective concerns that are both political and legal)? I also noticed that the characterization of one act carried implications for the characterization of other acts. For example, if the framers of the Constitution are shown to have an intention which the Florida Supreme Court misunderstood, then that shapes the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation (through its written opinion) of what the Florida Supreme Court was doing. Coordinating characterizations of actions effectively works to craft judicial opinions that provide seamless webs of action which circumscribe court action. That is, these "webs of action" carry terministic/grammatical implications for constructing the actions and motives of judicial decision makers. All judicial opinions reach the same conclusion about the opinion-writers' decisions: "We had to do this because that is what law and justice require!" (Note that my modification of pentadic analysis added a consideration of the terministic interaction among related pentadic sets--between judicial characterizations of framers' motives, lower court motives, legislative motives, etc., in the judicial opinion.) In a shameless plug of my own work, I'll add that the forthcoming QJS piece analyzes the Supreme Court's majority and dissenting opinions in Korematsu v. United States--the case that effectively supported the internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I would welcome comments on my use of Burke in this "multi-pentadic" analysis. Happy holidays! Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Mon Dec 18 15:09:10 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 15:09:10 -0500 From: "Scott McLemee" Subject: Burkean conservatism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 214 Prof. Rountree writes: >To Scott McLemee's concern that we tend to rant on about subjects that >might be of little interest to the whole list, I plead guilty, but suggest >that this such ranting can lead to insights and ponderings we otherwise >might not undertake. For example, we've now raised a serious question about >whether the term "Conservative Burkean" is an oxymoron. Indeed, that's a striking exception. Occasionally there's a signal amidst the noise. Trying to imagine what a "conservative Burkean" might look like is a very suggestive thought experiment--one of the most interesting things to come up on this list in a while. On the most superficial level, such an entity is by definition impossible--given KB's commitments to "dissociation of ideas" and "perspective by incongruity." At the same time, there is a good bit in his work aimed at admonishing "progressive" thinking, as such. His definition of Man as a creature "rotten with perfection" and congenitally prone to a dialectic of violence and order....well, there's a little of the other Burke in that. (Or even, perhaps, de Maistre?) From VM Mon Dec 18 16:23:55 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 16:23:55 -0800 From: "Jerry Ross" Subject: Re: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing) Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 215 Ya know, when I read Robert Wess's initial post regarding the court's decision, full of richly deserved righteous indignation and heartfelt concern over what's happened to our democratic processes, I noticed his use of the word "tragic." And I was thinking of a response something like the lines that our irrerepressible carnival barker Ed Appel penned in a later permutation of the conversation: All this tragic-frame perfectionism is antithetical to the anti-systematic, look-for-an-element-of-"truth"-or-usefulness-in-almost-any-and-all-points-of -view, let's-just-"muddle through"-as-best-we-can, comic-frame approach of dramatism. Frankly, that's been my attitude throughout this whole ordeal. In any other country, such a divided election full of political chicanery would have folks out in the streets with guns. In this election, most of the people out in the streets were paid by their respective campaigns. The majority of us could really care less, one way or the other. Here we are in the middle of a coup by a right wing junta, and what's the typical response of most Americans? Let's forward everyone another joke in our email. It's really hard to take any of it seriously. Take a look at The Onion's post-election headline, for example. ( http://www.theonion.com/onion3640/bush_or_gore.html ) I'll just quote the mock article's opener here for context: "Bush or Gore: A New Era Dawns" AUSTIN, TX, OR NASHVILLE, TN--In one of the narrowest presidential votes in U.S. history, either George W. Bush or Al Gore was elected the 43rd president of the United States Tuesday, proclaiming the win "a victory for the American people and the dawn of a bold new era in this great nation." If you care to read the entire article, it's a great little rhetorical experiment in the problem of naming we now face. Must be some fancy term in the tradition for this technique, of using Bush/Gore interchangeably, not only for comic effect, but to highlight the essentially undecidabile, arbitrary ambiguity of the signifier. Either name will do, for both candidates are arbitrary representatives of the power structure, a cardboard stand-in to fill a slot in the symbolic order. They say the same things, and due to the mutual constraints of a two party system, will probably end up doing more or less the same things. Americans won't see a big change in their lifestyles or social structures. Everything will continue along more or less as it has, except we'll have a new butt for all our jokes. We are a nation of law, the rituals have been followed, the order decreed, and so on we go with the serious business of getting and spending, the true symbolic order which the elections distracted us from only for a moment. J From VM Tue Dec 19 01:34:55 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 01:34:55 -0000 From: "William Kraemer" Subject: Re: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 216

I think James Bateman's reply to Ed is accurate in many ways. I was really flattered when I was invited to join this listserv. I am often disturbed, however, by this listserv's lack of interest in anything but tired Burkean truisms and cliches. Now comes the election chit chat.

It really surprises me that so many advanced degreed people on this listerv so uncritically accept what they heard or saw on the news regarding the presidential election. All the chicanery is on one side and all the virtue on the other. Which side is which is decided before, not after the discussion.

There is so much mindless, little red book waggling, all around academia, that I suppose I should not be surprised.

Anyone who can prove I am white, or male, or conservative wins $500. Seriously. Go get it, you rhetoricians.

 

 

>Perhaps you’re right. It’s possible that the reason no
>conservatives contribute to the ongoing dialog of the list is that
>no Burke scholar would be conservative. Perhaps Burke has a better
>answer. To feel a part of any group, to identify with one, any
>person has to be able to rhetorically participate in its language
>and culture. It seems that by such severe attacks, while inviting a
>response, you alienate possible contributors to the discussion, and
>rhetorically exclude them.
>
>In his “Rhetoric of Motives” Burke asserts that: “One need not
>scrutinize the concept of ‘identification’ very sharply to see,
>implied in it at every turn, its ironic counterpart: division.” I’m
>sure you know this passage, undoubtedly better than I. It seems
>that based on Burke’s most basic assertions, applied to the
>community of this very list, that the minority of the people who
>might participate, would at the very least feel a little timid about
>responding to such aggressive assertions. It seems that you, and
>others, feel like you have some access to the truth that others
>don’t have. very way that you address conservatives:
>“fire-breathing, redneckThe , full-moon political conservatives” is
>enough to divide. It seems to me, that as a rhetorician, or at
>least as one who is very aware of rhetorical theory, Burke’s in
>particular, you would remember that, in his words: “Identification
>is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division… if
>men where not apart from one another, there would be no need for the
>rhetorician to proclaim their unity”
>
>It seems like you are earnestly affirming identification with
>liberals, and identifying Burkeans as liberal, that you are
>necessarily dividing. This is unfortunate when a Burkean role
>should be neither liberal nor conservative, instead apolitical and
>even inclusive. Because men are apart from one another, and further
>divided by partisan rhetoric, it should be the rhetorician’s job to
>“proclaim their unity.”
>
>Adam
>
>
>
>>From: Edappel8@cs.com
>>To: kb@purdue.edu
>>Subject: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)?
>>Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 15:54:51 EST
>>
>>OK, as Stan suggested and Clarke said, there's been a markedly
>>liberal slant
>>to discussion of the election and its aftermath on this list. Stan
>>argued,
>>in an abridged fashion, for a fuller dialectic. Clarke asked for
>>some sign,
>>at least, of positions the other side might be taking. Are there
>>any
>>conservatives out there, in Burkeville, who would like to skewer us
>>selectively deflective pinko bigots? Does dramatism, as an
>>approach to
>>language, life, and issues of truth and validity, in and of itself
>>tend to
>>factor out persons of a conservative persuasion?
>>
>>The answer to the last question is "yes," it seems to me. In a
>>discussion at
>>the ECA Rhetoric and Public Address Conference a dozen years ago, I
>>referred
>>to Burke as "the quintessential liberal," a thinker whose very
>>system itself,
>>if you want to call it that, would tend to select out
>>conservatives, who tend
>>to take an absolutist epistemological position, I do believe. (How
>>did
>>Robert Frost, himself very much a conservative, define a liberal?
>>Thusly:
>>Somebody who won't take his or her own side in a fight.)
>>
>>At the 1990 Burke Conference in New Harmony, I had the pleasure of
>>dining
>>with two professors from the Southern Baptist Seminary in
>>Louisville. Like
>>an idiot, I asked whether they were Fundamentalists. (I had
>>momentarily
>>forgotten from my Church and Society class at seminary that there
>>are more
>>liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention than in the United
>>Church of
>>Christ, the most far-left denomination in Mainline Protestantism.
>>Reason:
>>There are so many more Southern Baptists.) One of the two scholars
>>half
>>ridiculed me for asking such a stupid question. How could one be
>>in any way
>>a Burkean and still be a Fundamentalist? he chided. Is it just as
>>absurd to
>>ask, are there any fire-breathing, redneck, full-moon political
>>conservatives
>>lurking on this list?
>>
>>I myself certainly hold some conservative positions. I almost got
>>run off
>>this list on a rail last August for articulating one of them. My
>>internal
>>ideological dialogue makes me, therefore, to some extent, a
>>dialectician
>>conversing across the political and social abyss that divides.
>>
>>Speak up, conservatives, wherever and whoever you may happen to be!
>> I
>>remember receiving a personal e-mail last spring from a subscriber
>>who was
>>ostensibly taken aback by my screeds against Charlton Heston and
>>the gun
>>lobby. She indignantly inquired how she could get off this
>>offensive list,
>>thoughtfully hurling back at me my repugnant notions. I responded
>>by
>>thanking her for reading my piece, and by suggest that she simply
>>get onto
>>the list herself and ANSWER ME. I never heard from her again.
>>
>>Somewhere in Chapter 5 of his book Kenneth Burke and the
>>Conversation After
>>Philosophy, Tim Crusius avers that there exist some notions, ideas,
>>and
>>ideological tenets that Burke would give virtually no credence to
>>whatsoever,
>>that his project of rescuing and rephrasing via the "discount" does
>>not mean
>>a wholesale embrace, no matter how undemonstrative, of any and
>>every patently
>>unjust and destructive opinion under the sun. Remember: Pay some
>>heed to
>>"the collective revelation of testing and discussion" (PLF).
>>
>>Bottom line: Let's hear it for Bush, Katherine Harris, Rube
>>Goldberg voting
>>devices in Palm Beach County, and the sublime wisdom of the
>>Rehnquist Court,
>>if you are of a mind to make a case on their behalf.
>>
>>One more thing. Maybe "dionysus" did fairly accurately label me in
>>the
>>vulgar post he tried to get on kb. He's a gutless coward for not
>>signing his
>>name, but he may still have a point. I apologize to Robert for my
>>possibly
>>rudely ironic "complementary" close yesterday. He has a right to
>>vote for
>>Nader if he so desires. I surely would have done so myself--if
>>Nader had
>>been a major-party candidate. Besides, Oregon went for Bush in any
>>case.
>>Robert's vote did not bring us the Presidency of Butterfly Bush.
>>
>>Also, I apologize to Jack for maybe too snidely suggesting he needs
>>to
>>redraft his two-party/multiparty post so that we senile old folks
>>can fathom
>>it.
>>
>>I don't say I won't be snide, rude, or bigoted again in later
>>posts. I'm
>>just saying I apologize.
>>
>>
>>
>>Ed
>
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From VM Mon Dec 18 23:32:25 2000 Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 23:32:25 -0600 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 217 KB did not try to tell the NAZI story in a fair and balanced way. All the chicanery was on the side of Hitlerites, all the virtue on the side of the American left. When was the decision made to say that *Mein Kampf* is a sick big book written by an underestimated sick smart man? Maybe before reading the book? I doubt it, but so what? KB's essay was a *performance* by a maestro. Nothing on this list about the election rises close to such a standard, but I think it is of the same stuff. The President of the United States was named by five U.S. Supreme Court Justices who were appointed to their positions by Republican Presidents, some by Dubya's father. It may be that one can tease the texts and the situation to see virtue in the delaying tactics of the Republican Party. I am positive that something deserving the name "chicanery" can be attached to the late-inning political strategies of the Democrat Party. But on balance, if James Bateman and Willim Kraemer are looking for "equal time" fairness in the performances of Burkeian critics, they will surely remain disappointed. Burkeian critics typically do not write about texts or subjects where "doing the right thing" is a mystery. Neither did KB. I did profit greatly from watching television's coverage of the recent coup d'etat, however. I have read the pleadings of Cicero and studied the texts, listened to recordings, of the pleading of Clarence Darrow, and studied some jurisprudential rhetoric in-between and since. But I have never heard a better litigator, a better forensic advocate, than David Boies. David Boies, for my money, is the Michael Jordan of American forensic rhetoric. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. 970 Applewood Court #3 Coralville, IA 52241 FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 mailto:michael@mcgees.net "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin From VM Tue Dec 19 08:59:24 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 08:59:24 -0500 (EST) From: David Langston Subject: RE: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 218 On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, Michael Calvin McGee wrote: > The President of the United States was named by five U.S. Supreme Court > Justices who were appointed to their positions by Republican Presidents, > some by Dubya's father. Souter and Thomas are the Bush appointees, and they split on the decision. On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, Michael Calvin McGee also wrote: > I am positive that something deserving the name "chicanery" can be > attached to the late-inning political strategies of the Democrat > Party. Say more: which incidents deserve the title, "chicanery"? On a more general note, it seems to me that aligning the contemporary popular usage of the titles, "liberal" and "conservative," with Burke's interpretive strategies is a beguiling but somewhat dubious enterprise. The public usage (as distinct from scholarly usage) of those terms have been altered substantially in the past quarter century, and saying that contemporary liberals will find Burke's positions congenial and contemporary conservatives will find them repugnant is a lighthearted gibe, but I doubt it would stand up under close inspection. For instance, Ed Appel's distinction between the comic frame of dramatism and the tragic frame of logology works, up to a point. But "terministic catharsis" in Burke's various analytical essays seems to me just another step toward the inevitable phase, becoming "rotten with perfection." Whatever local effects of comic dramatism Burke finds, those seldom, if ever, escape the inevitable work of the termites of perfectionism working their way through every intellectual superstructure. (This is, of course, an invitation for Ed to supply us with more of those amusing, tongue-in-cheek, riffs on Burke's own work.) I can imagine contemporary conservatives (whose positions often resemble those of liberals from the past) finding Burke congenial; I can imagine contemporary liberals (whose positions copy conservative positions in the past) finding Burke somewhat troubling and inconvenient. One last point: "fundamentalist" and "conservative" are not synonyms, in my view. Contemporary fundamentalists may happen to be "conservative" on many issues, such as abortion rights, but fundamentalists more often hold that conserving the boundary conditions in human experience is anathema, as the Taliban and Shiites have demonstrated. American Protestant fundamentalists detest the civic codes and boundaries that demarcate American life; they long ago voiced their disagreement with the Robert Frost's farmer who thinks "good fences make good neighbors." David Langston From VM Tue Dec 19 10:34:16 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 10:34:16 -0500 From: lindsays@purdue.edu Subject: A Religious Conservative Side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 219 David Langston wrote: "On a more general note, it seems to me that aligning the contemporary popular usage of the titles, 'liberal' and 'conservative,' with Burke's interpretive strategies is a beguiling but somewhat dubious enterprise. The public usage (as distinct from scholarly usage) of those terms have been altered substantially in the past quarter century, and saying that contemporary liberals will find Burke's positions congenial and contemporary conservatives will find them repugnant is a lighthearted gibe, but I doubt it would stand up under close inspection." No one would suggest that the Marxian Kenneth Burke would feel comfortable with the economic philosophy of capitalist conservatives, but David is right. A case in point is the current trend in postings discussing religious conservatives. Kenneth Burke did indeed have a religious conservative side--if we define a religious conservative as one who believes in the existence of God, heaven, and hell, and who studies a text to discover its original meaning. DON'T GET ME WRONG. I'm not arguing that Burke WAS a religious conservative. As everyone knows, Burke was an agnostic (Complete White Oxen 266-267). But there IS a religious conservative side to every agnostic. The perspectivist Burke argues, "Atheism (and, in keeping, a categorical denial of immortality) is a statement of faith that necessarily cannot be substantiated by a 'weighing of all the evidence'" (Attitudes 52). In the continuation of his remarks at that location, Burke even suggests that there is a religious conservative side to every atheist. S/he seems to be arguing with his/her inner fears that there really is a God, heaven, and hell, and s/he fears going to the latter destination. The more clearly religious conservative is the believer. Yet, I suspect in every conservative believer there is also that nagging "liberal" side arguing that there is no God, heaven, or hell. As Burke suggests one's religious position (believer, atheist, or agnostic) is a statement of faith. This allows for multiple perspectives and dialectic in the intrapersonal grapplings of the individual. Assuming, however, that one's inner dialectic inclines one to believe in God, Burke's definition of [hu]man supplies a Judeo-Christian conservative with a definition of God, as well. If man is the symbol-using animal, God may be the symbol-using non-animal. (Man is made in his image, after all.) If God is a symbol- user, he must have some inclination to communicate with other symbol-users. Hence, the notion of an inspired text becomes credible. Then, Burke's statistical method can be used to enlighten us as to the symbol system of the author of that text. At the risk of giving only abridged arguments in my postings, I'll stop here, with two exceptions. 1. I presented a Burkean analysis of the Book of Revelation last month at the national convention of the Society of Biblical Literature. 2. Lehigh University Press will soon be publishing my book, Revelation: The Human Drama, which is a fuller Burkean analysis of Revelation. Amazingly, Burkean method produces what most biblical scholars would consider rather conservative results. Stan Lindsay Dept. of English Purdue University lindsays@purdue.edu From VM Tue Dec 19 10:59:52 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 10:59:52 EST From: JessEcoh@cs.com Subject: Re: A Religious Conservative Side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 220 In a message dated 12/19/00 9:35:16 AM Central Standard Time, lindsays@purdue.edu writes: > Kenneth Burke did indeed have > a religious conservative side--if we define a religious > conservative as one who believes in the existence of > God, heaven, and hell, and who studies a text to > discover its original meaning. wait a minute -- now, burke certainly does have a "religious" side in the sense that his "definition of man" specifies us as fallen (violent) creatures in need of a redemption which we are perhaps incapable of reaching in and through ourselves. however -- what's this about the "original meaning" of a text?? i don't see burke as being committed to "original meanings" (however that is defined -- is the "original meaning" you are talking about the meaning it had for the author? for the original audiences of the text?) -- wasn't someone just talking here, from a burkean perspective, about the "multiple enactments" that any text makes possible? or have i missed something big about burke? (or am i misunderstanding you?) seriously, enlighten me. --jesse. From VM Tue Dec 19 11:42:55 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:42:55 -0500 (EST) From: David Langston Subject: Re: A Religious Conservative Side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 221 On Tue, 19 Dec 2000 lindsays@purdue.edu wrote: > But there IS a religious conservative side to every agnostic. The > perspectivist Burke argues, "Atheism (and, in keeping, a categorical > denial of immortality) is a statement of faith that necessarily cannot > be substantiated by a 'weighing of all the evidence'" (Attitudes 52). To be fair, I think Burke's position here is very closely aligned with that of Paul Tillich, Karl Jaspers and other religious existentialists who hold that atheism is just another form of belief. He may be talking about religious topics, but I'm not sure that makes him "conservatively" religious. In fact, one elaboration of Burke's position is the "Christian atheism" of Bishop Robinson and Thomas Altizer. And I would agree with Jesse that Burke's interpretive scheme has little interest in recovering the "original meaning of the text" (of course, those terms are capable of re-definition...and that is a game everyone can play). Because of Burke's emphasis on "logology" (using theological terms to understand semiotics) and terministic "perfectionism," I would place him closer to Wallace Stevens (god is a supreme fiction) or to Paul Tillich (god is a cracked symbol) than to any recognizably conservative position in the twentieth century. In fact, based on my reading of _Rhetoric of Religion_ and "What are the Signs of What," I think Burke's notion of god as the "arche-term" in a discourse comes closest to the mathematician Goedel's notion that all subsystems are incoherent and derive their authority and coherence from a fictional "plug" that resolves contradictions and takes the mathematical system to another level. It is a mathematician's version of "terministic catharsis." In Burke's case, the resolution of sub-system incoherence by terministic catharsis builds a discursive Tower of Babel that eventually collapses of its own weight. The god-term disappears in a cloud of rubble/babble, and we start all over again in the discursive rag and bone-shop of the heart (another way to say that Burke trumps Willy Yeats's gyres of history in the bargain). I am intrigued and looking forward to seeing Stan Lindsay's Burkean reading of _Revelation_. I am teaching a "Bible as Literature" course next term, and one genre we will look at is Apocalypse. If Stan feels like sharing, or has a website where his manuscript is viewable, I feel like reading. Cheers, David Langston From VM Tue Dec 19 17:33:43 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 17:33:43 -0000 From: "Sean Phelan" Subject: Conservatives Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 222 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_00EC_01C069E1.D555C520 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I would agree with David's last point that Conservative and = Fundamentalist should not be looked on as synonyms. I have only read A = Grammar of Motives so I am far from an authority on Burke. But I did = find it interesting that so many of the posts seem to be assuming (or at = least not questioning) the crude linking of Conservatism and = Fundamentalism - an assumption that shows little regard for Burke's = stress on the ambiguities of substance. The Liberal/Conservative frame = is an increasingly worthless dichotomy to use in any fruitful discussion = of anything, if you ask me - the type of lazy discursive clich=E9 that = narrows our "circumference" of the politically possible, the politically = imaginable, at source. This has been particularly clear since the 1980s, = when "Conservatives" dominated Anglo-American politics on the back of a = liberal ideology (albeit, an economic Liberalism). These dichotomies = may be helpful in some respects, but shouldn't we be at least trying to = invent new ones? As some English writer said in a retort to Blair (an = echo of an earlier post by Camille), why does there have to be only a = "Third way"? Why can't there be a fourth, a fifth....a myriad of ways?. = As aspirant dialecticians, aren't these the ways we should be exploring? = - not building our arguments on crude dichotomies, that, as someone else = suggested, are partly the discursive product of the dominance of media = culture. Isn't it time to embrace the spirit of rhetorical bi-partisanship? = (oops...sorry!, shouldn't that be poly-partisan?) =20 Sean Phelan Research Student, School of Communications, Dublin City University, Ireland =20 ------=_NextPart_000_00EC_01C069E1.D555C520 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
I would agree with David's last point that Conservative and=20 Fundamentalist  should not be looked on as synonyms. I = have only=20 read A Grammar of Motives so I am far from an authority on Burke. But = I did=20 find it interesting that so many of the posts seem to be assuming (or at = least=20 not questioning) the crude linking of Conservatism and = Fundamentalism - an=20 assumption that shows little regard for = Burke's stress on=20 the ambiguities of substance. The Liberal/Conservative frame is an=20 increasingly worthless dichotomy to use in any fruitful discussion = of =20 anything, if you ask me - the type of lazy discursive clich=E9 = that=20 narrows our "circumference" of the politically = possible, the=20 politically imaginable, at source. This has been particularly clear = since the 1980s, when  "Conservatives" dominated = Anglo-American=20 politics on the back of a liberal ideology (albeit, an economic=20 Liberalism).  These dichotomies may be helpful in some = respects, but=20 shouldn't we be at least trying to invent new ones? As some=20 English writer said in a retort to Blair (an echo of an = earlier=20 post by Camille), why does there have to be only a  "Third = way"? Why=20 can't there be a fourth, a fifth....a myriad of ways?. As aspirant=20 dialecticians, aren't these the ways we should be exploring?=20 - not building our arguments on crude dichotomies, that, as=20 someone else suggested, are partly the discursive product = of  the=20 dominance of media culture.
 
Isn't it time to embrace the spirit of rhetorical=20 bi-partisanship? (oops...sorry!, shouldn't that be=20 poly-partisan?)   
 
Sean Phelan
 
Research Student,
School of Communications,
Dublin City University,
Ireland

 
 
------=_NextPart_000_00EC_01C069E1.D555C520-- From VM Tue Dec 19 12:38:41 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 12:38:41 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Where Have All the Conservatives Gone (Long Time Passing)? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 223 First, in response to Scott and William, if you're not satisfied with the topics being discussed on this list, please introduce subjects you think would be more worthy of "all these people with advanced degrees" parading their supposed triviality and banality. If you don't have time to develop your thoughts as fully as you'd like, at least suggest a trajectory of thought you'd like examined. I won't say there's a precise analogy between you and citizens that don't vote, but complain about the election results after the fact. However, that comparison does come to mind. When I first got on this list a bit over three years ago, David B. had a schedule of books by Burke we were supposed to take up in serial fashion. Nobody paid any attention to it, so that notion dissipated. As a result, you'll just have to put up with our crochets and foibles, rise up and steer the debate in directions you'd like them to take, or tune the whole thing out. I hope you take the "bull" by the horns, pun intended. In response to Michael, I find interesting what he said about the possible "chicanery" of Democrats in glossing over the electoral outrage we've just witnessed. Last night on Geraldo, Tavis Smiley of BET said that what upsets him most about this whole business is the non-response of Democratic leaders to Al Gore's travail. I've felt this way all along. I almost want to move to New Jersey so I can vote against Robert Torricelli in his next Senatorial election. The guy was crying tears about Gore's unwillingness to lie down and die only a few days after November 7. Lieberman is another passive onlooker, strange to say. He, Torricelli, and their ilk act like the apartment dwellers that stared dumbly out their windows and watched Kitty Genovese bleed to death. What's wrong with them? We got a good idea what went wrong with the canvassing board in Miami-Dade, the one that stopped the recount in the face of a Republican mob banging on their door and shouting slogans eighteen floors up. The NYT found that Republicans in the Florida legislature had gotten to the ambitious Democratic mayor of Miami with hints about redistricting sugar plums that might make him a U. S. Congressman in the near future. He withdrew his support of a recount. What other chicanery MIGHT be behind all this I'd like to know, too.l Many in the African-American community in Florida and around the country seem to feel betrayed by the Democratic Party. I think they're right. In response to David L., a technical point of demurrer: You seem to suggest that "dramatism" goes with, or relates to, comedy, and "logology" goes with, or relates to, tragedy. I think there's a sense in which that may be the case, but it tends to dichotomize Burke's later period from his earlier period in a way that, I believe, misinterprets his development. "Logology" does focus on tragic drama as the epitome or most useful and revealing exemplar of symbolic action, true. Remember, though, Burke's last codicil in his definition of human, articulated in his late period: Symbol-users are "rotten with perfection," perfection of the various moments of drama being the very essence of tragedy (See Rueckert, 1982). As Burke admonished me once in private correspondence, logology uses the term "perfection" "ironically" as well as "straight." Logology is dramatism worked out to "the end of the line," not a sudden or radical shift in emphasis, not as I see it. In Response to Stan, let me say I have difficulty going along with your notion of God as a "symbol-using nonanimal." In my essay on Burke and the negative (CQ, 1993, pp. 60-62) and somewhere, also, I do believe, in my piece on Burke as theologian (JCR, 1993), I conjecture that symbol-using arises out of the dialectical juncture of a being with intuition of the infinite-negative finitely embedded in a material scene. God can be conceived as the "Ground" of that infinite-negative intuition out of which symbols are generated (Burke does that very thing in the Pure Persuasion section of RM), but it seems to me to be a bit too anthropomorphic to bring God in His transcendence, anyway, into that kind of dialectical embeddedness. We're symbol-users, symbol-makers, symbol-misusers, but God, in some mysterious way, is "above" all that. I won't bore everybody with quotes from my explanation as to why. "Language breaks down" in descriptions and characterizations of God, as many theologians have said. That's why, ultimately, they've had recourse only to negative descriptives: Infinite, Immortal, Eternal, Invisible, Impassable, Unchanging, All Mighty, All Knowing, Omnipresent. In other words, whatever is finite, limited, embedded, that's what God is not. They have recourse, then also, to plainly metaphorical language, e.g., God as the Rock of our salvation, etc. I've already said I believe Fundamentalist religion is tragic-frame, suffused with perfectionistic impulses. I indicated some ways it is so suffused. I think political conservatism, as now conceived in the U. S. of A., is tragically perfectionistic, too, more so, at any rate, than contemporary liberalism. I may return to rant and expostulate on that topic later. Your Irrepressible Carnival Barker, a. k. a. Liliom, a. k. a. Billy Bigelow, a. k. a. Ed From VM Tue Dec 19 14:43:58 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 14:43:58 -0500 From: lindsays@purdue.edu Subject: A Religious Conservative Side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 224 I'm curious. Did anyone bother to read the words I put in caps in my previous post? "DON'T GET ME WRONG. I'm not arguing that Burke WAS a religious conservative. As everyone knows, Burke was an agnostic (Complete White Oxen 266-267)." Did anyone bother to read my subject line: "A Religious Conservative Side of Burke"? David responded: "[Burke] may be talking about religious topics, but I'm not sure that makes him 'conservatively' religious." Read my post again. That was not my claim. The question (as I took it) was not, "Is Burke a conservative?" The question was "Can a conservative be a Burkean?" David had written: "The public usage (as distinct from scholarly usage) of those terms have been altered substantially in the past quarter century, and saying that contemporary liberals will find Burke's positions congenial and contemporary conservatives will find them repugnant is a lighthearted gibe, but I doubt it would stand up under close inspection." So, let me clarify (though it is beyond me why clarification is necessary). My point was that, however minor a consideration it may have been, textual evidence suggests that Burke at least entertained the possibility of the existence of God; hence, that was "a" side of Burke. To what textual evidence do I refer? The one I referenced after the statement (CWO 266-67). Herone Liddell is understood by many to be a somewhat autobiographical character for Burke. Even if he is not taken to be autobiographical, the text shows that Burke grappled with a religious conservative view: "Though essentially an agnostic, Herone roundabout resembled a believer--for his distrust of pronouncements about the supernatural extended also to a distrust of the naturalistic critique of supernaturalism. Sensitive above all to ingenuities of dialectic, he knew that one need not believe in God to love theology." While I do not disagree with the discussion of Burke's position as David and/or Ed present it, Burke's route to that position apparently included at least grappling with a religious conservative view. Even if Burke can be said to be a billion-sided individual, ONE side of him is, I think, represented by a religious conservative perspective. Jesse wrote and David later agreed: "what's this about the 'original meaning' of a text?? i don't see burke as being committed to 'original meanings' (however that is defined -- is the 'original meaning' you are talking about the meaning it had for the author? for the original audiences of the text?)" This terminology, I agree, needs further clarification and Jesse points to two possible interpretations for religious conservatives. The terminology, if you recall, was in my working definition of a religious conservative. Admittedly, Burke can approach a text from the perspective of the author (What does John, the author of Revelation, do for John?). Burke can also approach the text from the perspective of his intended audience (What does John do the seven churches of Asia Minor?). Burke can also approach the text from the perspective of an infinite number of individual readers (How does the Symbol appeal to John Doe in Nantucket?) That a religious conservative may have asked the wrong question does not mean that however s/he understands her/his question, s/he will not find in Burke appropriate methods for answering his/her question. That's enough for now. Fire back and I'll try to respond. Incidentally, David, I would be happy to provide some email attachments of parts of my work on Bush and Revelation to anyone who may be interested. For that matter, I could send the entire text as an attachment to anyone who may consider using the text in a course. Stan Lindsay Dept. of English Purdue University lindsays@purdue.edu From VM Tue Dec 19 11:45:29 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:45:29 -0800 From: RWess@orst.edu Subject: Warranted outrage? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 225 Now that things have settled down a bit, I can begin thinking about "Bush v. Gore" in Burkean terms. I should have waited until now before imposing on this list, but my passions got the best of me last week. I apologize. About "Bush v. Gore," I'm developing a few lines of Burkean thought. I'll pursue here the one that intersects most directly with a number of recent posts. I'm sure many of you are familiar with how Herb Simons keeps raising the issue of whether Burke allows for "warranted outrage." Maybe "Bush v. Gore" is a good test case. At least some of us are outraged. Can we warrant our outrage in Burkean terms? Some recent posts have discussed fundamentalists. We know they're good at warranted outrage but for Burkean reasons we tend to have problems with their "warrant." Can we come up with a better one? Quite honestly, I'm not sure, but let me propose a few thoughts to begin the discussion if anyone wishes to pursue it. But before doing that, two prefatory points: Point #1: in response to a few recent posts, let me stress that the concern I write about here has to do with what the Court did in "Bush v. Gore," not with the struggle between the Bush and Gore forces in Florida. Making that distinction is the reason I brought up my Nader vote (which I'm ready to defend in Burkean terms, but I'll leave that on the back burner for now). I'm of the school of thought that if Gore had been the one with the small lead in the beginning, Bush would have been the one searching for more votes through manual recounts in Republican counties. Republicans and Democrats would simply have switched roles. Things would have played out differently but for other reasons. For example, if Bush had been the one trying to catch up, Katherine Harris would not have rushed to end the election and Bush wouldn't have had to use the Florida courts the way Gore did. While "Bush v. Gore" will always be tied to the 2000 election, I believe that it will have a history independent of this election as a blow to judicial independence of historic proportions. That's the object of my outrage. Point #2: To see what the Court did, you can't rely on the news media, especially talk media, which now works to provide entertainment rather than information by filtering nearly everything through a "terministic screen" structured around happy talk journalism, Republicans and Democrats putting out their spin, and media commentators spinning this spin. This entertainment machine gets good ratings and it's cheap to produce; instead of paying investigative journalists to do the time­consuming work of digging up new infomation, all you need are reporters who lunch with their "sources" and return to the studio with the latest spin. Now and then a bit of independent journalism appears in the cracks, but it's a drop in the ocean of entertainment and has little effect. One example of the confusion this entertainment machine produces in the present case is the confusion about whether the Supreme Court voted 7-2 or 5-4, a confusion that appeared even in this forum. I heard Olson, the Bush lawyer before the Supreme Court, speak at length on a talk show about the vote being 7-2. No voice of independent journalism challenged him, even though all you have to do is look at the opinion, not read it, to see that Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer each wrote separate dissents. If you read the dissents, it's clear that because of the time constraints, they divided up among themselves the topics each would cover so that each would have a relatively short paper assignment. The dissents range in length from 7 pages (Stevens) to 15 pages (Breyer). Returning to the problem of warranted outrage: Stan (12/16) brought up the point that in "Bush v. Gore" there must be some arguments opposite the ones I gave. That takes us directly to Burke's perspectivism, and of course it's this perspectivism that seems immediately to undercut our outrage. We're mad but that's only because we've privileged one perspective against others and what is the "warrant" for that? On 12/17, Camille asked, why stop with two sides? Wouldn't it be more Burkean to look for more than two? And wouldn't that undercut our outrage even more? Ed asked for someone to produce some arguments on at least one side opposed to my critique. Are there arguments on the other side? Of course there are. That's what lawyers are for (and I don't mean that to be as disrespectful as it sounds; if I could start my life again, I'd probably still choose to be an academic, but I'd give serious consideration to law school, something that never crossed my mind the first time around). Maybe Ed's question can be refined a bit in the context of a grounding for a kind of warranted outrage that is Burkean even if not altogether satisfying. To get beyond the level of competing perspectives, which seems immediately to undercut any outrage, I'd suggest turning to section 5 in "Terministic Screens," "Our Attempt to Avoid Mere Relativism." Prior to this point Burke has used selection, reflection, deflection to theorize different terminological perspectives. We can assume that different sides in the "Bush v. Gore" debate can be distinguished by identifying their different selections, reflections, and deflections. In "Our Attempt," Burke goes beyond this "relativism." Selections are actions: all terminologies are enactments. Therefore, the dramatistic perspective is a perspective of perspectives that merits being called a "philosophic definition" of the symbol-using animal (Lang as Sym Act 52). Where does this step to a perspective of perspectives get us? Well we can say that however badly the Rehnquist court acted, it did act because all terminologies are enactments. And the words we use to express our outrage are words applicable to actions. The court's act outrages us because it's hypocritical­­"bald, brazen, blatant, shameless" (Ed, 12/16)­­both by virtue of being inconsistent with the majority's conservative judicial philosophy (Clarke's 12/15 post touches on dimensions of this philosophy) and by virtue of contortions within the logic of the reasoning in the court's opinion itself. Arriving at the term action, we intersect with Clarke's "Burkean relevance of the Supreme Court" (12/18)," with its identification of "webs of action" as a way to map judicial action. Maybe more can be added to this inquiry from that standpoint. Meanwhile, taking the next step in my line of thought, I'll add that in applying these moralistic judgments to action, maybe we should think of the action as occurring in a drama. Drama fits dramatism, of course, but the main point is that drama allows another distinction. For when we make these moralistic judgments, we don't have, as long as we stay Burkean, the kind of foundation for them that Scripture provides fundamentalists as they express their outrage. Drama makes it easier to think of these judgments as having a more formalistic basis: we fault the Rehnquist court's action for its inconsistencies with its well established philosophy and for its hypocritical Kafkaesque logic in its reasoning. This formalism comes close to defining a Burkean basis for my outrage. If the Court's opinion had been well reasoned and rooted in its conservative philosophy I would at least have respected it however much I would have disagreed with it. There would not have been a blow to judicial independence. I follow the Court's opinions and while I often disagree, it's always interesting even if sometimes scary to see where the Court's conservative philosophy takes it. What ignited my outrage in this case are the various levels of inconsistency in the Court's action this time. Going back to Ed's question, I'd revise it by asking for a justification of the Court's action consistent with a conservative judicial philosophy. If the court's conservative majority couldn't do this, maybe it simply can't be done. True, they were acting under severe time constraints, but these are the high priests of this philosophy. If they can't do it, can anyone? Taking an additional step, one might zero in on some crucial dimensions of the Court's act­­e.g., the equal protection argument applies only to this case and is not to serve as a precedent for any subsequent legal action. Is such an argument consistent with any judicial philosophy? In a word, maybe the Court's act may fairly be called "indefensible." Sure, there's an opinion, but if it's little more than a hodgepodge of arguments designed to perform the face­saving gesture of producing the written ruling one expects from the Court, then the iron fist of raw power shows its hand. That iron fist is the blow to judicial independence. A Court is supposed to be open to argument from the other side. With respect to the Court majority of five, I don't think that that was the case this time. Maybe the ruling in "Bush v. Gore" is still in the "purification of war," but just barely, right at the point where the purification of words just barely keeps us this side of the raw violence of war. There is my Burkean warrant for my outrage. All I can say is better the Rehnquist Court than a general in a tank, but if the Court's action in this case became the norm rather than the exception, then there would be no more judicial independence and we would be in the world of generals and tanks. Having said this, I'm still not altogether comfortable. Formalism, when it gets too pure, always makes me nervous. After all, a Nazi could act with the consistency of a mathematical proof. What do we say then? Can we add additional steps to firm up a warrant for Burkean outrage? From VM Tue Dec 19 11:49:39 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:49:39 -0800 From: RWess@orst.edu Subject: RE: Burkean conservatism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 226 Is the "Prologue in Heaven" in Rhetoric of Religion conservative? Can one square the "Prologue" with the "unending conversation" in The Philosophy of Literary Form? The "Prologue" is a "beginning" from the standpoint of which one can foretell everything in advance. Is that consistent with the vision of the "unending conversation"? ---------- From: Scott McLemee[SMTP:mclemee@igc.org] Sent: Monday, December 18, 2000 12:09 PM To: kb@purdue.edu; Dr. Clarke Rountree Subject: Burkean conservatism Prof. Rountree writes: >To Scott McLemee's concern that we tend to rant on about subjects that >might be of little interest to the whole list, I plead guilty, but suggest >that this such ranting can lead to insights and ponderings we otherwise >might not undertake. For example, we've now raised a serious question about >whether the term "Conservative Burkean" is an oxymoron. Indeed, that's a striking exception. Occasionally there's a signal amidst the noise. Trying to imagine what a "conservative Burkean" might look like is a very suggestive thought experiment--one of the most interesting things to come up on this list in a while. On the most superficial level, such an entity is by definition impossible--given KB's commitments to "dissociation of ideas" and "perspective by incongruity." At the same time, there is a good bit in his work aimed at admonishing "progressive" thinking, as such. His definition of Man as a creature "rotten with perfection" and congenitally prone to a dialectic of violence and order....well, there's a little of the other Burke in that. (Or even, perhaps, de Maistre?) From VM Tue Dec 19 14:51:00 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 14:51:00 -0500 From: "herbert w, simons" Subject: Post-election rhetoric: a legal analysis Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 227 Herb Simons wrote: Following Roundtree and Wess, I'm forwarding this: -------- > > Q: I'm not a lawyer and I don't understand the recent Supreme Court > > decision in Bush v. Gore. Can you explain it to me? > > > > A: Sure. I'm a lawyer. I read it. It says Bush wins, even if Gore got > > the most votes. > > > > Q: But wait a second. The US Supreme Court has to give a reason, right? > > > > A: Right. > > > > Q: So Bush wins because hand-counts are illegal? > > > > A: Oh no. Six of the justices (two-thirds majority) believed the > > hand-counts were legal and should be done. > > > > Q: Oh. So the justices did not believe that the hand-counts would find > > any legal ballots? > > > > A. Nope. The five conservative justices clearly held (and all nine > > justices agreed) "that punch card balloting machines can produce an > >unfortunate > > number of ballots which are not punched in a clean, complete way by the > >voter." > > So there are legal votes that should be counted but can't be. > > > > Q: Oh. Does this have something to do with states' rights? Don't > > conservatives love that? > > > > A: Generally yes. These five justices have held that the federal > > government has no business telling a sovereign state university it can't > >steal trade > > secrets just because such stealing is prohibited by law. Nor does the > > federal government have any business telling a state that it should bar > > guns in schools. Nor can the federal government use the equal protection > >clause to force states to take measures to stop violence against women. > > > > Q: Is there an exception in this case? > > > > A: Yes, the Gore exception. States have no rights to have their own > >state elections when it can result in Gore being elected President. This > > decision is limited to only this situation. > > > > Q: C'mon. The Supremes didn't really say that. You're exaggerating. > > > > A: Nope. They held "Our consideration is limited to the present > > circumstances, or the problem of equal protection in election processes > > generally presents many complexities." > > > > Q: What complexities? > > > > A: They don't say. > > > > Q: I'll bet I know the reason. I heard Jim Baker say this. The votes > > can't be counted because the Florida Supreme Court "changed the rules of > > the election after it was held." Right? > > > > A. Dead wrong. The US Supreme Court made clear that the Florida Supreme > > Court did not change the rules of the election. But the US Supreme Court > > found the failure of the Florida Court to change the rules was wrong. > > > > Q: Huh? > > > > A: The Legislature declared that the only legal standard for counting > >vote is "clear intent of the voter." The Florida Court was condemned for > >not > > adopting a clearer standard. > > > > Q: I thought the Florida Court was not allowed to change the > >Legislature's law after the election. > > > > A: Right. > > > > Q: So what's the problem? > > > > A: They should have. The US Supreme Court said the Florida Supreme > >Court should have "adopt[ed] adequate statewide standards for determining > >what > > is a legal vote" > > > > Q: I thought only the Legislature could "adopt" new law. > > > > A: Right. > > > > Q: So if the Court had adopted new standards, I thought it would have > >been overturned. > > > > A: Right. You're catching on. > > > > Q: If the Court had adopted new standards, it would have been overturned > > for changing the rules. And if it didn't, it's overturned for not > >changing > >the rules. That means that no matter what the Florida Supreme Court did, > >legal votes could never be counted. > > > > A: Right. Next question. > > > > Q: Wait, wait. I thought the problem was "equal protection," that some > > counties counted votes differently from others. Isn't that a problem? > > > > A: It sure is. Across the nation, we vote in a hodgepodge of systems. > > Some, like the optical-scanners in largely Republican-leaning counties > > record 99.7% of the votes. Some, like the punchcard systems in largely > > Democratic-leaning counties record only 97% of the votes. So > >approximately 3% of Democratic votes are thrown in the trash can. > > > > Q: Aha! That's a severe equal-protection problem!!! > > > > A: No it's not. The Supreme Court wasn't worried about the 3% of > > Democratic ballots thrown in the trashcan in Florida. That "complexity" > >was not a > > problem. > > > > Q: Was it the butterfly ballots that violated Florida law and tricked > >more than 20,000 Democrats to vote for Buchanan or Gore and Buchanan. > > > > A: Nope. The Supreme Court has no problem believing that Buchanan got > >his highest, best support in a precinct consisting of a Jewish old age > >home > >with Holocaust survivors, who apparently have changed their mind about > >Hitler. > > > > Q: Yikes. So what was the serious equal protection problem? > > > > A: The problem was neither the butterfly ballot nor the 3% of Democrats > > (largely African-American) disenfranchised. The problem is that somewhat > > less than .005% of the ballots may have been determined under slightly > >different standards because judges sworn to uphold the law and doing > >their best to accomplish the legislative mandate of "clear intent of the > >voter" > >may have a slightly opinion about the voter's intent. > > > > Q: Hmmm. OK, so if those votes are thrown out, you can still count the > > votes where everyone agrees the voter's intent is clear? > > > > A: Nope. > > > > Q: Why not? > > > > A: No time. > > > > Q: No time to count legal votes where everyone, even Republicans, agree > > the intent is clear? Why not? > > > > A: Because December 12 was yesterday. > > > > Q: Is December 12 a deadline for counting votes? > > > > A: No. January 6 is the deadline. In 1960, Hawaii's votes weren't > > counted until January 4. > > > > Q: So why is December 12 important? > > > > A: December 12 is a deadline by which Congress can't challenge the > > results. > > > > Q: What does the Congressional role have to do with the Supreme Court? > > > > A: Nothing. > > > > Q: But I thought --- > > > > A: The Florida Supreme Court had earlier held it would like to complete > > its work by December 12 to make things easier for Congress. The United > >States Supreme Court is trying to help the Florida Supreme Court out by > >forcing > >the Florida court to abide by a deadline that everyone agrees is not > >binding. > > > > Q: But I thought the Florida Court was going to just barely have the > >votes counted by December 12. > > > > A: They would have made it, but the five conservative justices stopped > >the recount last Saturday. > > > > Q: Why? > > > > A: Justice Scalia said some of the counts may not be legal. > > > > Q: So why not separate the votes into piles, indentations for Gore, > > hanging chads for Bush, votes that everyone agrees went to one candidate > >or > >the > > other so that we know exactly how Florida voted before determining who > >won? > > Then, if some ballots (say, indentations) have to be thrown out, the > >American > > people will know right away who won Florida. > > > > A. Great idea! The US Supreme Court rejected it. They held that such > > counts would likely to produce election results showing Gore won and > >Gore's winning would cause "public acceptance" and that would "cast[] a > >cloud" > > over Bush's "legitimacy" that would harm "democratic stability." > > > > Q: In other words, if America knows the truth that Gore won, they won't > > accept the US Supreme Court overturning Gore's victory? > > > > A: Yes. > > > > Q: Is that a legal reason to stop recounts? or a political one? > > > > A: Let's just say in all of American history and all of American law, > >this reason has no basis in law. But that doesn't stop the five > >conservatives > >from creating new law out of thin air. > > > > Q: Aren't these conservative justices against judicial activism? > > > > A: Yes, when liberal judges are perceived to have done it. > > > > Q: Well, if the December 12 deadline is not binding, why not count the > > votes? > > > > A: The US Supreme Court, after admitting the December 12 deadline is not > > binding, set December 12 as a binding deadline at 10 p.m. on December 12. > > > > Q: Didn't the US Supreme Court condemn the Florida Supreme Court for > > arbitrarily setting a deadline? > > > > A: Yes. > > > > Q: But, but -- > > > > A: Not to worry. The US Supreme Court does not have to follow laws it > > sets for other courts. > > > > Q: So who caused Florida to miss the December 12 deadline? > > > > A: The Bush lawyers who first went to court to stop the recount, the > > rent-a-mob in Miami that got paid Florida vacations for intimidating > > officials, and the US Supreme Court for stopping the recount > > > > Q: So who is punished for this behavior? > > > > A: Gore, of course. > > > > Q: Tell me this Florida's laws are unconstitutional? > > > > A: Yes > > > > Q: And the laws of 50 states that allow votes to be cast or counted > > differently are unconstitutional? > > > > A: Yes. And 33 states have the "clear intent of the voter" standard > >that the US Supreme Court found was illegal in Florida > > > > Q: Then why aren't the results of 33 states thrown out? > > > > A: Um. Becauseâ?¦umâ?¦..the Supreme Court doesn't sayâ?¦ > > > > Q: But if Florida's certification includes counts expressly declared by > > the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, we don't know who really won > >the > > election there, right? > > > > A: Right. Though a careful analysis by the Miami Herald shows Gore won > > Florida by about 20,000 votes (excluding the butterfly ballot errors) > > > > Q: So, what do we do, have a re-vote? throw out the entire state? > >count under a single uniform standard? > > > > A: No. We just don't count the votes that favor Gore. > > > > Q: That's completely bizarre! That sounds like rank political > >favoritism! Did the justices have any financial interest in the case? > > > > A: Scalia's two sons are both lawyers working for Bush. Thomas's wife > >is collecting applications for people who want to work in the Bush > >administration. > > > > Q: Why didn't they recuse themselves? > > > > A: If either had recused himself, the vote would be 4-4, and the Florida > > Supreme Court decision allowing recounts would have been affirmed. > > > > Q: I can't believe the justices acted in such a blatantly political way. > > > > A: Read the opinions for yourself: > > http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/supremecourt/00-949_dec12.fdf > > (December stay stopping the recount) > > http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/00pdf/00-949.pdf > >(December 12 opinion) > > > > Q: So what are the consequences of this? > > > > A: The guy who got the most votes in the US and in Florida and under our > >Constitution (Al Gore) will lose to America's second choice who won the > >all important 5-4 Supreme Court vote. > > > > Q: I thought in a democracy, the guy with the most votes wins. > > > > A: True, in a democracy. But America is not a democracy. In America in > > 2000, the guy with the most US Supreme Court votes wins. > > > > Q: So what will happen to the Supreme Court when Bush becomes President. > > > > A: He will appoint more justices in the mode of Thomas and Scalia to > > ensure that the will of the people is less and less respected. Soon > >lawless > > justices may constitute 6-3 or even 7-2 on the court. > > > > Q: Is there any way to stop this? > > > > A: YES. No federal judge can be confirmed without a vote in the Senate. > > It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. If only 41 of the 50 Democratic > > Senators stand up to Bush and his Supremes and say that they will not > > approve a single judge appointed by him until a President can be > >democratically > > elected in 2004, the judicial reign of terror can endâ?¦.and one day we > >can hope to return to the rule of law. > > > > Q: What do I do now? > > > > A: Email this to everyone you know, and write or call your senator, > > reminding him that Gore beat Bush by several hundred thousand votes > >(three times Kennedy's margin over Nixon) and that you believe that VOTERS > >rather than JUDGES should determine who wins an election by counting every > >vote. > > And to protect our judiciary from overturning the will of the people, you > > want them to confirm NO NEW JUDGES until 2004 when a president is finally > > chosen by most of the American people. > > > > > > Mark H. Levine > > Attorney at Law > > > _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From VM Tue Dec 19 15:57:45 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 15:57:45 -0500 From: Dan Smith Subject: Re: Warranted outrage? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 228 Robert Wess wrote: [. . .] >Can we add additional steps to firm up a warrant for Burkean outrage? I'm not so sure that consistency can be invoked as a rationale for "Burkean moral outrage." I say this b/c, if memory serves, doesn't Burke suggest in CS that an ideology is (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) an 'aggregate of beliefs sufficently at odds with each other to justify contradictory actions'? Might we think of the majority opinion of the court as nothing more than an exceptionally obvious instance of the contradictory (and hence inconsistent) nature of ideologies in general (not just conservative ideology)? Couldn't one suggest that, for Burke, inconsistency is part of what enables the 'ambiguity' at the root of transcendence/transformation? As for forming a Burkean warrant for outrage, it seems to me that if such a thing as "Burkean moral outrage" is possible, it would be directed toward the social relations that enable contemporary discourse and politics writ large to operate as it does. Why is this recent instance involving the supreme court more deserving of an expression of moral outrage than things that go on everyday in legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government? Was it not a symptomatic, albeit spectacular, expression of the status quo? Genuinely curious, Dan Smith From VM Tue Dec 19 15:40:01 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 15:40:01 -0500 From: "herbert w, simons" Subject: Re: Warranted outrage? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 229 HWS wrote: To KBS and to Robert Wess in particular: I've been thinking along similar lines about Florida and warrantable outrage. I'm torn between the impulse to respond to your call for further warrants and the counterstatement in ATH: not vicious but mistaken. Burke's ultimate comic corrective, that we are all fools, can also be applied to Florida. Examples: Were not the strict constructionists in Gore vs.Bush inconsistent with their general inclination toward judicial activism? Aren't we all hypocrites, as KB suggests, citing Rochefoucauld, in RoM? And can't something be said for hypocrisy's ironic, if implicit, tribute to virtue? Don't we all use rhetoric as the Supreme Court Five did: as mystification; as the competitive use of the cooperative? Re vote-counting, isn't Florida's dispute over machine counts versus hand counts much like the debate in educational circles over objective tests versus essay tests? Are we faculty in any better a position to divine the intent of our essay-writers, let alone to grade their papers, than the vote-counters of West Palm Beach? Robert: I haven't given up on the warrantable outrage issue by any means, and would welcome your response to what I've written thus far. RWess@orst.edu wrote: > Now that things have settled down a bit, I can begin thinking about "Bush v. > Gore" in Burkean terms. I should have waited until now before imposing on > this list, but my passions got the best of me last week. I apologize. > > About "Bush v. Gore," I'm developing a few lines of Burkean thought. I'll > pursue here the one that intersects most directly with a number of recent > posts. > > I'm sure many of you are familiar with how Herb Simons keeps raising the > issue of whether Burke allows for "warranted outrage." Maybe "Bush v. Gore" > is a good test case. At least some of us are outraged. Can we warrant our > outrage in Burkean terms? Some recent posts have discussed fundamentalists. > We know they're good at warranted outrage but for Burkean reasons we tend to > have problems with their "warrant." Can we come up with a better one? > Quite honestly, I'm not sure, but let me propose a few thoughts to begin the > discussion if anyone wishes to pursue it. But before doing that, two > prefatory points: > > Point #1: in response to a few recent posts, let me stress that the concern > I write about here has to do with what the Court did in "Bush v. Gore," not > with the struggle between the Bush and Gore forces in Florida. Making that > distinction is the reason I brought up my Nader vote (which I'm ready to > defend in Burkean terms, but I'll leave that on the back burner for now). > I'm of the school of thought that if Gore had been the one with the small > lead in the beginning, Bush would have been the one searching for more votes > through manual recounts in Republican counties. Republicans and Democrats > would simply have switched roles. Things would have played out differently > but for other reasons. For example, if Bush had been the one trying to > catch up, Katherine Harris would not have rushed to end the election and > Bush wouldn't have had to use the Florida courts the way Gore did. While > "Bush v. Gore" will always be tied to the 2000 election, I believe that it > will have a history independent of this election as a blow to judicial > independence of historic proportions. That's the object of my outrage. > > Point #2: To see what the Court did, you can't rely on the news media, > especially talk media, which now works to provide entertainment rather than > information by filtering nearly everything through a "terministic screen" > structured around happy talk journalism, Republicans and Democrats putting > out their spin, and media commentators spinning this spin. This > entertainment machine gets good ratings and it's cheap to produce; instead > of paying investigative journalists to do the time­consuming work of digging > up new infomation, all you need are reporters who lunch with their "sources" > and return to the studio with the latest spin. Now and then a bit of > independent journalism appears in the cracks, but it's a drop in the ocean > of entertainment and has little effect. One example of the confusion this > entertainment machine produces in the present case is the confusion about > whether the Supreme Court voted 7-2 or 5-4, a confusion that appeared even > in this forum. I heard Olson, the Bush lawyer before the Supreme Court, > speak at length on a talk show about the vote being 7-2. No voice of > independent journalism challenged him, even though all you have to do is > look at the opinion, not read it, to see that Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and > Breyer each wrote separate dissents. If you read the dissents, it's clear > that because of the time constraints, they divided up among themselves the > topics each would cover so that each would have a relatively short paper > assignment. The dissents range in length from 7 pages (Stevens) to 15 pages > (Breyer). > > Returning to the problem of warranted outrage: Stan (12/16) brought up the > point that in "Bush v. Gore" there must be some arguments opposite the ones > I gave. That takes us directly to Burke's perspectivism, and of course it's > this perspectivism that seems immediately to undercut our outrage. We're > mad but that's only because we've privileged one perspective against others > and what is the "warrant" for that? On 12/17, Camille asked, why stop with > two sides? Wouldn't it be more Burkean to look for more than two? And > wouldn't that undercut our outrage even more? > > Ed asked for someone to produce some arguments on at least one side opposed > to my critique. Are there arguments on the other side? Of course there > are. That's what lawyers are for (and I don't mean that to be as > disrespectful as it sounds; if I could start my life again, I'd probably > still choose to be an academic, but I'd give serious consideration to law > school, something that never crossed my mind the first time around). Maybe > Ed's question can be refined a bit in the context of a grounding for a kind > of warranted outrage that is Burkean even if not altogether satisfying. > > To get beyond the level of competing perspectives, which seems immediately > to undercut any outrage, I'd suggest turning to section 5 in "Terministic > Screens," "Our Attempt to Avoid Mere Relativism." Prior to this point Burke > has used selection, reflection, deflection to theorize different > terminological perspectives. We can assume that different sides in the > "Bush v. Gore" debate can be distinguished by identifying their different > selections, reflections, and deflections. In "Our Attempt," Burke goes > beyond this "relativism." Selections are actions: all terminologies are > enactments. Therefore, the dramatistic perspective is a perspective of > perspectives that merits being called a "philosophic definition" of the > symbol-using animal (Lang as Sym Act 52). > > Where does this step to a perspective of perspectives get us? Well we can > say that however badly the Rehnquist court acted, it did act because all > terminologies are enactments. And the words we use to express our outrage > are words applicable to actions. The court's act outrages us because it's > hypocritical­­"bald, brazen, blatant, shameless" (Ed, 12/16)­­both by virtue > of being inconsistent with the majority's conservative judicial philosophy > (Clarke's 12/15 post touches on dimensions of this philosophy) and by virtue > of contortions within the logic of the reasoning in the court's opinion > itself. > > Arriving at the term action, we intersect with Clarke's "Burkean relevance > of the Supreme Court" (12/18)," with its identification of "webs of action" > as a way to map judicial action. Maybe more can be added to this inquiry > from that standpoint. > > Meanwhile, taking the next step in my line of thought, I'll add that in > applying these moralistic judgments to action, maybe we should think of the > action as occurring in a drama. Drama fits dramatism, of course, but the > main point is that drama allows another distinction. For when we make these > moralistic judgments, we don't have, as long as we stay Burkean, the kind of > foundation for them that Scripture provides fundamentalists as they express > their outrage. Drama makes it easier to think of these judgments as having > a more formalistic basis: we fault the Rehnquist court's action for its > inconsistencies with its well established philosophy and for its > hypocritical Kafkaesque logic in its reasoning. > > This formalism comes close to defining a Burkean basis for my outrage. If > the Court's opinion had been well reasoned and rooted in its conservative > philosophy I would at least have respected it however much I would have > disagreed with it. There would not have been a blow to judicial > independence. I follow the Court's opinions and while I often disagree, > it's always interesting even if sometimes scary to see where the Court's > conservative philosophy takes it. What ignited my outrage in this case are > the various levels of inconsistency in the Court's action this time. > > Going back to Ed's question, I'd revise it by asking for a justification of > the Court's action consistent with a conservative judicial philosophy. If > the court's conservative majority couldn't do this, maybe it simply can't be > done. True, they were acting under severe time constraints, but these are > the high priests of this philosophy. If they can't do it, can anyone? > > Taking an additional step, one might zero in on some crucial dimensions of > the Court's act­­e.g., the equal protection argument applies only to this > case and is not to serve as a precedent for any subsequent legal action. Is > such an argument consistent with any judicial philosophy? > > In a word, maybe the Court's act may fairly be called "indefensible." Sure, > there's an opinion, but if it's little more than a hodgepodge of arguments > designed to perform the face­saving gesture of producing the written ruling > one expects from the Court, then the iron fist of raw power shows its hand. > That iron fist is the blow to judicial independence. A Court is supposed to > be open to argument from the other side. With respect to the Court majority > of five, I don't think that that was the case this time. Maybe the ruling > in "Bush v. Gore" is still in the "purification of war," but just barely, > right at the point where the purification of words just barely keeps us this > side of the raw violence of war. There is my Burkean warrant for my > outrage. All I can say is better the Rehnquist Court than a general in a > tank, but if the Court's action in this case became the norm rather than the > exception, then there would be no more judicial independence and we would be > in the world of generals and tanks. > > Having said this, I'm still not altogether comfortable. Formalism, when it > gets too pure, always makes me nervous. After all, a Nazi could act with > the consistency of a mathematical proof. What do we say then? > > Can we add additional steps to firm up a warrant for Burkean outrage? From VM Tue Dec 19 16:43:21 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:43:21 -0500 From: Dan Smith Subject: Re: Warranted outrage? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 230 I realized two things after sending my previous post. First, that I added the term moral to outrage. Though I don't think it alters the status of my queries, I wanted to note my addition. Second, a couple of questions: What constitutes outrage? I'm not saying such a thing doesn't exist; rather, I'm curious what the markers of outrage are. Is Burke's work devoid of this mode of expression, whatever it may be? Cheers, Dan Smith From VM Tue Dec 19 16:59:46 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:59:46 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Warranted Outrage? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 231 Thanks to Robert for another brilliant post. He puts his finger on the two grossest absurdities of the Bush vs. Gore ruling: It's patent inconsistency with the well-established history of judicial argument by this Supreme Court majority. And its craven, self-serving (in the partisan, political, Republican sense), once-again-I'll-use-the-term shameless withholding of the judgment for universal application puts the icing on this fetid cake. The theory of "truth" or, at least, some measure of rhetorical validity, Robert is employing here is one of "coherence," right? How does such a standard, if I have labeled it correctly, fit in with notions of "serviceability" (P&C), "satisfaction" (P&C and other works), "aesthetic propriety" (CS), "collective perceptions" (PLF), "eloquence" (CS), "scenic articulation" (GM), and/or other statements of Burke's dramatistic gauge of "truth," as Burke might use the term Coherence or consistency sounds like a worthy touchstone by which to assess a piece of rhetoric, up to a point. How "dramatistic" is it? Would we say that the "context of situation" we would place this enactment in is the history of the Rehnquist Court itself? How valid would that scene-act ratio make the decision and the argument supporting it--for you and me? It would render it less absurd, less incredible, for certain. It surely would have kept the hands of the Supreme Court off of Florida, if the Court had stayed in character. I'm just hurling into the air a Burke-related question, that's all. I totally agree that the incongruity of the ruling is one of its most inane features. I'm pleased that Robert became outraged. His anger has helped us all untangle and unpack what has happened with great clarity and depth. Again, I hope both he and Clarke write and publish on this legal event in venues that will give their constructions lasting impact. Ed From VM Tue Dec 19 16:52:32 2000 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 16:52:32 -0600 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Warranted outrage? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 232 -----Original Message----- From: RWess@orst.edu Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 1:45 PM I don't think you should apologize for your passion, Robert, and I think you should consider your own motives for seeking to rationalize. That's what we're talking about, rationalization and not reason, for outrage IS a passion and part of the rhetoric of desire (Isocrates) and not the rhetoric of reason (Aristotle). "Warrantable" puts the case in Toulmin's system, meaning can you give evidence? This evidence need not be the sort of evidence one cites in scholarship or a debate. It can be, and perhaps in the case of outrage ought to be, the same sort of evidence a Christian cites in "witnessing." Like holocaust survivors were "there to witness" the Crime without a Name, we were all "there" when the U. S. Supreme Court accomplished a coup d'etat, violating the Constitution they were sworn to uphold by making it impossible to determine the Will of the People of Florida. In both philosophy and rhetoric from then until now there has been "warrant" for Ulysses to stride boldly forward to grab Agamemnon's Staff of Kingship as a weapon to beat the glib Thersites out of the camp and company of Greeks. Ulysses acted *in silence* because the best evidence to "warrant" outrage was the outrage itself. The Court's opinion is self-evidently outrageous, as Justice Stephens pointed out in his magnificent dissent. I do not DISagree with your new analysis, at least not now, not on its surface, for one can find in history a number of cases where claims of self-evidence are dubious. The Declaration of Independence, for instance, consists in part of a bill of indictments against George III that were portrayed as "self-evident," and we know that the situation from the other side of the Atlantic was perceived as much more complicated. So it might be a good exercise to get beyond relativism, if that's important to you, to adduce post hoc "warrants" that make your indignation seem "reasonable." My point here is that such a move is JUST an exercise, and that it is an exercise in service to the prevailing academic ideology that refuses to entertain the possibility that what we call "relativism" may be nearer the truth than its opposites. In fact, your second analysis masks the truth and diminishes the legitimacy of your own desire, the desire that inspired you to speak out forcefully, to beat "Thersites" hip and thigh. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. 970 Applewood Court #3 Coralville, IA 52241 FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 mailto:michael@mcgees.net "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin From VM Wed Dec 20 08:04:28 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 08:04:28 -0500 (EST) From: David Langston Subject: Re: A Religious Conservative Side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 233 On Tue, 19 Dec 2000 lindsays@purdue.edu wrote: > I'm curious. Did anyone bother to read the words I put in caps in my > previous post? "DON'T GET ME WRONG. I'm not arguing that Burke WAS a > religious conservative. The difference between "being" a religious conservative and "having" a religious conservative side didn't seem very large, especially when I consider Burke's rhetorical theory to be consonant with religious existentialism without any conservative side whatsoever. Rather than having a tint of conservatism, Burke's position resembles the foremost theological liberalism of his day. Like other religious existentialists, he is more concerned with the character of belief than with questions about the existence or non-existence of God (the "agnosticism" Stan points toward). The quotation Stan includes helps make the point: "Sensitive above all to ingenuities of dialectic, he knew that one need not believe in God to love theology." Stan may be accurate in arguing that Burke came to his position from a more fideistic standpoint; I don't remember enough about Burke's intellectual biography to say one way or another. As for the question Stan addresses, "Can a conservative be a Burkean?": it certainly seems intellectually possible. I am, however, hard pressed to identify intellectual conservatives who find Kenneth Burke's methods either persuasive or even interesting. (Denis Donoghue might be an exception; he is mostly laudatory of Burke in _Ferocious Alphabets_, but I lost interest in DD' intellectual projects years ago, so I don't know if he has maintained that attitude.) Most intellectual conservatives I know are petrified by their fear that the God of Reason has been dethroned in the academy and replaced by fashion statements. (In this week's NYRB, Fred Crews offers another _mea culpa_ on his Freudian errors and delivers yet another broadside against the "theory factories.") One way to test the hypothesis (are there "Conservatives for Burke"?) would be to survey major journals to see where Kenneth Burke's name or influence appears. It would be interesting, for instance, to know, if presentations at the ALSC have ever adopted a Burkean analysis of a text. Knowing the intellectual commitments of a few prominent ALSC personalities, I can see them possibly using Burkean analysis, but I would be a little surprised -- no, more than a little surprised -- if it had ever occurred. Cheers, David Langston From VM Wed Dec 20 10:10:50 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 10:10:50 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: A Religious Conservative Side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 234 For David Langston: What is the ALSC? Being as brief as I can possibly be, Ed From VM Wed Dec 20 10:28:20 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 10:28:20 -0500 (EST) From: David Langston Subject: Re: A Religious Conservative Side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 235 On Wed, 20 Dec 2000 Edappel8@cs.com wrote: > For David Langston: What is the ALSC? > Being as brief as I can possibly be, ...wow, Ed, that is a record. Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, begun in 1994 or 1995 because its founders thought the value of literature was being lost in the flood of jargon-ridden, theory-top-heavy scholarship characterizing the Modern Language Association. I share their irritation at directions taken by some literary scholarship, and there are emphases of ALSC I admire....but the proceedings of the Assoc. are often a "backward glance over well-traveled roads," to paraphrase Whitman....and the paper titles read like the paper titles given at MLA when the ALSC members were young Turks. With notable exceptions, they have been defensive toward most brands of "literary theory" except for historicism, which seems to be the drug of choice for its members. The enthusiasm for Yvor Winters and his "defense of reason" displayed by some of its more outspoken advocates have been philosophically naive, to put the matter politely. For a periscope into the concerns of the organization, check out their website and look at the titles of books written by the membership: http://www.scoliast.com/ALSC/reading_room.html That is somewhat longer than "as brief as I can be," but I thought inquiring minds might want to know. Best, David L. From VM Wed Dec 20 12:55:12 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 12:55:12 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: A Religious Conservative Side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 236 I thank David for his reply. I will be checking out that website. I also wish to thank C. J. Jeney for information she send me privately late last week, about how I can get in touch with the author of that marvelous "legal" analysis of what now passes for "Supreme logic." I've tried to get back to you, C. J., a couple of times, but the post master keeps returning my mail. I therefore send you thanks via kb. Best wishes to you both, and to you all. Ed From VM Wed Dec 20 12:57:54 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 12:57:54 -0600 From: dave klope Subject: A religious conservative side of Burke Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 237 --------------73803745DD2F7A3059AAB58D Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Can a conservative be a Burkean?" Forgive my curmudgeonly response--perhaps I've graded one too many student papers. But the question is absurd and unanswerable. Or, to put it more precisely, it is unanswerable in any sort of useful way. To pursue the question requires that one essentialize, pigeonhole, the two key terms, as if, in practice, "conservative" and even "Burkean" have some sort of single, undifferentiated meaning. To approach the question from the angle of this list, what is a "Burkean"? Beyond those few who write about nothing but Burke, who is a "Burkean"? Could one generate anything approaching some sort of consensus among the members of this list regarding a definition of the term? Now, one can sit in their office and cognitively reify a concept of "Burkean," and then, in a tautological fashion, look around and pick and choose items that fit in the neat box, but how useful is that? It does not sound like an approach emanating from the spirit of Burke's corpus. As it is for the term "Burkean," so it is for the term "religious conservative." Dave Klope Trinity Christian College P.S. part of the problem may be that, as it is for "Burkeans," there is no uniform approach by which "religious conservatives" translate their worldview into their scholarship (perhaps because of the many voices contesting within the term "religious conservative," to take a Bakhtinian approach) --------------73803745DD2F7A3059AAB58D Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Can a conservative be a Burkean?"
Forgive my curmudgeonly response--perhaps I've graded one too many student papers. But the question is absurd and unanswerable. Or, to put it more precisely, it is unanswerable in any sort of useful way. To pursue the question requires that one essentialize, pigeonhole, the two key terms, as if, in practice, "conservative" and even "Burkean" have some sort of single, undifferentiated meaning.
To approach the question from the angle of this list, what is a "Burkean"? Beyond those few who write about nothing but Burke, who is a "Burkean"? Could one generate anything approaching some sort of consensus among the members of this list regarding a definition of the term? Now, one can sit in their office and cognitively reify a concept of "Burkean," and then, in a tautological fashion, look around and pick and choose items that fit in the neat box, but how useful is that? It does not sound like an approach emanating from the spirit of Burke's corpus.
As it is for the term "Burkean," so it is for the term "religious conservative."
Dave Klope
Trinity Christian College
P.S. part of the problem may be that, as it is for "Burkeans," there is no uniform approach by which "religious conservatives" translate their worldview into their scholarship (perhaps because of the many voices contesting within the term "religious conservative," to take a Bakhtinian approach)
 
  --------------73803745DD2F7A3059AAB58D-- From VM Wed Dec 20 13:33:16 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 13:33:16 -0600 From: Tony Palmeri Subject: X-Sender: palmeri@uwosh.edu Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 238 Dave Klope writes:

"Can a conservative be a Burkean?"

I don't know how he labeled himself, but I would argue that the late conservative rhetorician Richard Weaver (_Ideas Have Consequences_, _The Ethics of Rhetoric_, etc.) was in many respects a Burkean.    Others on the list may know the details, but I believe that Weaver actually took a seminar with Burke at some point and was quite influenced by him.  Weaver's analysis of "god" and "devil" terms certainly appears to have Burkean roots.

-Tony


Tony Palmeri, Chair                            
Department of Communication            (920) 424-4422 (office)
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh        (920) 235-1116 (home)
Oshkosh, WI 54901                           (920) 424-1279 (FAX)
Palmeri@uwosh.edu
                                
Commentary: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/Comment.htm From VM Wed Dec 20 14:21:24 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 14:21:24 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: Burkean conservatives Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 239 Dave, you disappoint me--let's say the words are impossible to nail down and just chuck the whole question. At least you could throw us a Burkean bone and delve into a few of the delicious ambiguities of these meanings. Tony, as I understand it, Weaver started on the left and moved to the right. (I seem to remember something about him not really enjoying the company of left-leaning colleagues.) Indeed, he may be such a creature. I know several Burkeans (some on this list, no doubt) study both Burke and Weaver. So what of the example? Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Wed Dec 20 15:40:52 2000 Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 15:40:52 -0600 From: dave klope Subject: religious conservatives Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 240 --------------EBE6F97C05B54D0D82EF2F27 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Clarke, Thank you for the push towards clarification; I, grinch-like, may have hyperbolized my case. I am entirely comfortable with "a Burkean bone" of "delicious ambiguities of these meanings," for such a move does not try to monologically narrow the meanings. Dave Klope Trinity Christian College --------------EBE6F97C05B54D0D82EF2F27 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Clarke,
Thank you for the push towards clarification; I, grinch-like, may have hyperbolized my case.
I am entirely comfortable with "a Burkean bone" of  "delicious ambiguities of these meanings," for such a move does not try to monologically narrow the meanings.
Dave Klope
Trinity Christian College
 
  --------------EBE6F97C05B54D0D82EF2F27-- From VM Thu Dec 21 10:29:26 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 10:29:26 -0600 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: A little thunder and lightening please Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 241 You know, I didn't vote, which is why I can't really complain. I don't play the lottery either. Not that I wouldn't like to win a lot of money. I didn't vote because my car had been towed, big deal right? Pretty irresponsible I suppose. When the STASI come busting my door down and put the leather dog mask with the rubber ball on my head I'll probably hear Ed Appel's chuckling voice, "I told you so!" But I'm a Minnesotan and we voted for Gore and there are only so many Electoral Votes....sigh! Back to my books. (fiction, I mean) Politics...pole it tickle...what a grim and serious and petty aspect of our lives. I think Kenneth Burke hated the bottom line as much as any of us do. My father, when he wants to call a halt to a discussion, closes it down with the following three words, "It's about money!" Everything else is spin and rouge. You can't argue with someone who is already convinced they are right. And if they don't read fiction? well, there is just no way to break through their wall of faith. Vintage is vintage; you better drink it down and forget about the price tag. Is anyone enjoying themselves? Ya, the lawyer was hot...good job, very practical, very soothing for all the political losers who know they are right. I laughed out loud at many of the points expressed in the pseudo-dialogue. But such 'bearing of the teeth' was just symbolic vengeance; it was no triumph at all, and it makes none of us "lovable," at most it makes us righteously bitter. Next! Rise above the chicanery, rise above the media, rise above your petty fiduciary or even symbolic concerns. Bummer about your Vouchers! Bummer about Dubya! Bummer about the fundamentalists. Sh_t! lighten up! "Be happy in your work!" (Even if you are retired). Nah! Politics is a closed book; even if you were to open the book, it is barely legible, filled with all sorts of legal run-a-round jargon, but there is no quality, you know that. The literary critic would never, ever stoop to reading from its pages (my turn to bait and blather). (yes, they're coming for me; you can be happy that I escaped not the iron heel). Is there any relief from the agonizing political wrangle over...over...I don't even know what, our money's safe. The artist's maladjustments, his whining, his pain...? How about the Literary Critics's boo hooing and pain? Couldn't we look at the critic's output as an expression of pain and complaint? Did he perhaps use the artist and his neurosis as a point of departure for voicing his own disguised anguish? Is all art appreciation really and truly only political discontent? One thing about a voice, Ed, is that it may remain silent. Wouldn't it be actually insane if all the voices of the dialectic spoke at the same time? And wouldn't it be a nuisance if one bird in paradise never stopped singing? Ah song! Beautiful, beautiful song. Who wouldn't want to listen to it all day long? More than mere message, song warrants repetition because it possesses form or style or eloquence. Without Literary Appeal a rant is little more than the pamphleteering that is only grudgingly adopted by Kenneth Burke in Counter-Statement. On reading Counter-Statement I definitely didn't get the feeling that KB was whining. He was leaning against his contemporaries, he admits, but he didn't whine. (I don't think Kenneth Burke saw himself as antinomian, Camille, WITHIN THE FIELD OF LITERARY CRITICISM, since his ideas are a refinement of literary criticism, but his aesthetics when transferred into the political arena may be a bit antinomian). Even so, Burke's banner read ART PARTY while your banner, Ed, reads #@#&*#*@&#! So we have a bogus democracy which amounts to, for us subjects, little more than "You wait your turn just like everyone else." So, the Cash Party (the Conservatives and Fundamentalists) KO'd the Slave Party in a Judicial Coup, wigs, clip-on microphones and all...on prime-time television. This has surprised no one. We're all above it. We leave it OVER THERE because we are tactful, because we don't want to offend the...well, anyone really, and because the wind is in such and such direction. I think it is almost time for a little break from the dry crack of political economy; all those talking heads with not a wit of eloquence, just prescriptions and information no one can do anything about. Seriously, doesn't Burke put aesthetics above politics? What literary appeal are you going to find in the lowest-common-denominator-judicial-wrangle-over-who-gets-what-material-lawfu lly-and-obeyingly? Where is our crescendo, our repetitive form, and of minor forms how many, and is the major form forever lacking? Is this classic or modern, drama or science? Burke called it the ruin of an austere intellect when Remy, usually Olympian and detached from the trivialities of his times, at the last got sucked into the patriotism and partisanship with his comrades in arms (quite the abandonment of pure aesthetics). Nevertheless, Burke manages to re-establish the status of art as neither a symptom of the times nor as the weakness of an artist's maladjustments but as a legitimate and perhaps the highest calling and, at the very least, as a medium of communication. All this quantity is drying my mouth out. My flirtation with the spotlight last fall was for me an initial madness: the joy of finding a microphone. But I'm afraid that Ed has interpreted my "brief incandesense" as fatal. Perhaps he sees the spotlight as a smart-bug-zapper claiming only fundamentalists, conservatives and poets. But my silence is a form of discretion and respect; I want to learn protocol rather than rattle the bars of a cage. Frankly, I zapped myself; I didn't have much more to say than "Yeehaw!" but it sure was fun saying it. (braying it). Les Where's the lightening strike that will cart off all this spleen? Next! From VM Thu Dec 21 15:46:24 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 15:46:24 -0500 From: "herbert w, simons" Subject: [Fwd: The best example of Burkean analysis...] Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 242 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------4CB87C810AFC831C9CCFFEBF Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Herbert W. Simons wrote: Can anyone help Barnett and his student out? I've never been a fan of pentadic dramatistic analysis, yet I assume this is what they're after. --------------4CB87C810AFC831C9CCFFEBF Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from VM.TEMPLE.EDU (vm.temple.edu [155.247.14.2]) by typhoon.ocis.temple.edu (8.11.0/8.11.0) with SMTP id eBKK73419929 for ; Wed, 20 Dec 2000 15:07:03 -0500 (EST) Received: by VM.TEMPLE.EDU (IBM VM SMTP Level 310) via spool with SMTP id 4685 ; Wed, 20 Dec 2000 15:06:48 EST Received: from TEMPLEVM (NJE origin SMTPI3@TEMPLEVM) by VM.TEMPLE.EDU (LMail V1.2d/1.8d) with BSMTP id 6899 for ; Wed, 20 Dec 2000 15:06:48 -0500 Received: from mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net [204.127.131.47] by VM.TEMPLE.EDU (IBM VM SMTP Level 310) via TCP with SMTP ; Wed, 20 Dec 2000 15:06:48 EST X-Comment: VM.TEMPLE.EDU: Mail was sent by mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net Received: from c106247-b ([12.72.112.252]) by mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net (InterMail vM.4.01.03.10 201-229-121-110) with SMTP id <20001220200721.VYWW5130.mtiwmhc22.worldnet.att.net@c106247-b>; Wed, 20 Dec 2000 20:07:21 +0000 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20001220095902.00919b60@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> X-Sender: wbpearce@postoffice.worldnet.att.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 09:59:02 -0800 To: v5348e@vm.temple.edu, David Nobles From: "W. Barnett Pearce" Subject: The best example of Burkean analysis... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Hi, Herb! I hope this finds you in festive spirits anticipating the holidays! Or perhaps you've already started them, you lucky guy! In addition to the pleasure of your company, even in cyberspace, my excuse for writing is to ask a favor. As you know, I'm working with an exceptional group of men and women in the Fielding Institute, and doing my best not to get in the way of their learning as they earn the PhD degree and do good work in the world. It is a delightful place in many ways, with all the advantages and some of the disadvantages of being a truely interdisiplinary program. David Nobles is beginning to work on his dissertation. Before he retired, he was (I hope he won't mind me putting it this way) a part of the US government's "war on drugs." Now he wants to do an analysis of that "war," focusing on the consequences of the metaphor "war." He is interested in using Burke's dramatistic pentad as a "method" for his study. You know my great respect for Burke, and my recognition that my respect is from a bit of a distance. I have seen some dramatistic analyses that I thought were just great, and some that weren't. I thought it would be good for David to look at a couple of exemplary analyses to see how it is done. And I know that I'm not the right person to make those selections... Nor do I have access to a university library to do a literature review. Would you be willing to email David at the address above and give him the citations of 2 or 3 studies that you think are outstanding? And if you have any other advice or information to give him, you will earn a beer from me the next time we are together if you would take the time to pass it on to him. Thanks, Barnett W. Barnett Pearce, Ph.D. Co-Principal, Pearce Associates - Specialists in Dialogic Communication http://www.pearceassociates.com Consultant, Public Dialogue Consortium http://www.publicdialogue.org Faculty, Human and Organizational Development Program, The Fielding Institute http://www.fielding.edu --------------4CB87C810AFC831C9CCFFEBF-- From VM Thu Dec 21 15:52:03 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 15:52:03 -0600 (CST) From: Edward Schiappa Subject: Re: [Fwd: The best example of Burkean analysis...] Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 243 > Can anyone help Barnett and his student out? I've never been a fan of > pentadic dramatistic analysis, yet I assume this is what they're after. Send your student to: The presidency and the rhetoric of foreign crisis by Denise M. Bostdorff. She uses elements of pentadic analysis quite nicely and with a light touch by discussing certain pentadic ratios in the discourse of "crisis" employed by so many US presidents. Edward Schiappa From VM Thu Dec 21 17:56:56 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 17:56:56 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: A Little Thunder and Lightning Please Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 244 In Response to Les: You've dashed off another wonderfully stylized poetic post, I grant. You seem to one-sidedly privilege, though, the Burke of Counter-Statement, a tome that previews much of what Burke eventually comes to be, but one that does not afford a rounded portrait of his interests. And even in CS, Burke does not come across as only tepidly political, certainly not in the essay "Program." Also, your estimation of our "motives" in waxing so political, those of us Burkoids and those of human beings in general, appears to be a monodimensional caricature. It all boils down to "money," you say to us through the aegis of your father. I won't expand on the defects of that reduction. You're just wrong. Much more is at stake than the "safety" of our money, much more. And Burke, were he alive today, would have appreciated what those other values are. Don't retreat back into silence, however, or into the cold vastnesses of the Minnesota winter. Help keep us all warm by the fire of your crackling lines. One thing more, on another topic. I received in the mail yesterday my crisp new copy of Dramatism and Development, just recently reprinted by the Clark University Press. For any of you on the list unfamiliar with the work, here's what Rueckert has to say about it in his annotated bibliography (in KB and the Drama of Human Relations, 2nd Edition, 1982): "Burke first gave these lectures in 1971. 'Biology, Psychology, Words,' recapitulates his own development along the lines of the title and of 'man [sic] the symbol-using animal.' The second, 'Archetype and Entelechy,' is his most illuminating essay on entelechy and one of the finest from this period. His essays are full of cross-references to each other. This one refers to 'Doing and Saying' (1971) and to the Helhaven project. It is a marvelous piece of work. Their is also a short appendix on entelechy which is very illuminating." That appendix presents Burke's slant on the differences between his use of the term, and that of Aristotle and Leibnitz. Have a holly jolly. Ed From VM Thu Dec 21 19:53:27 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 19:53:27 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 245 For Herb: For exemplary pendadic studies, I would recommend these four: Birdsell's critique of Reagan's speeches on Lebanon and Grenada, QJS, August, 1987. This analysis is cited as examplary in Scott, Brock, and Chesebro's book on rhetorical criticism, 2nd edition. (I think Chesebro is a coauthor of that second volume.) Janice Hocker Rushing on Reagan's "Star Wars" address, QJS, November, 1986. Tonn, Endress, and Diamond on "Hunting and Heritage on Trial," QJS, May, 1993. Barry Brummett's "Pentadic Analysis of Ideologies in Two Gay Rights Controversies," CSSJ, 30, 250-261 (1970). This is a good place to start for someone who has never done a pentadic analysis befrore. Brummett is one of the best at explaning Burke clearly and simply. Happy Holidays. Ed From VM Thu Dec 21 17:25:55 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 17:25:55 -0800 From: RWess@orst.edu Subject: Warranted outrage vs. comic attitude Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 246 HWS brings in the comic attitude from ATH. For me, the comic attitude would work in the normal case in which the Rehnquist Court acts within its conservative judicial philosophy. I see it as "mistaken," apply the comic discount and move on. I realize, of course, that the same judgment can be visited upon me. In a sense, the "unending conversation" is a ship of fools. We can't really retrace the steps from the "beginning" to where we are and we don't know where we're ultimately going. But I can live with this--maybe you'd have to be a really big fool to think otherwise. But I don't think that in this case the Court was "mistaken." The gang of five knew exactly what it was doing and did it anyway. That's why I brought in the "purification of war," envisioning it as a line where at some point words give way to fists. In this context the comic attitude no longer works, at least not for me. Dan asks if the Court's act wasn't just another expression of the status quo. Maybe but I don't really think so. If the Court started doing routinely what it did this week, you'd see the difference, but that won't happen. I take Dan's point, though, that perhaps a Burkean warranted outrage should be framed in the context of "social relations that enable contemporary discourse and politics." I don't have the energy to do that right now, though. If I were to undertake it, I'd probably combine the "purification of war" with the "dramatistic grammar for marxism" in the GRAMMAR, where Burke adapts Spinoza's distinction between adequate and inadequate ideas to set up a framework for judging ideas about social relations. I agree with Ed that there are a lot of things in Burke that could flesh out further the formalistic analysis I sketched. I'd add the point from PC (it's in part 3; I don't have my book with me) that an orientation is in trouble when it begins to fail by its own tests of success. That's a very formalistic kind of evaluation. But I also agree with Ed that such formalism works only "up to a point." ---------- From: herbert w, simons[SMTP:hsimons@astro.ocis.temple.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 12:40 PM To: RWess@orst.edu; KB@purdue.edu Subject: Re: Warranted outrage? HWS wrote: To KBS and to Robert Wess in particular: I've been thinking along similar lines about Florida and warrantable outrage. I'm torn between the impulse to respond to your call for further warrants and the counterstatement in ATH: not vicious but mistaken. Burke's ultimate comic corrective, that we are all fools, can also be applied to Florida. Examples: Were not the strict constructionists in Gore vs.Bush inconsistent with their general inclination toward judicial activism? Aren't we all hypocrites, as KB suggests, citing Rochefoucauld, in RoM? And can't something be said for hypocrisy's ironic, if implicit, tribute to virtue? Don't we all use rhetoric as the Supreme Court Five did: as mystification; as the competitive use of the cooperative? Re vote-counting, isn't Florida's dispute over machine counts versus hand counts much like the debate in educational circles over objective tests versus essay tests? Are we faculty in any better a position to divine the intent of our essay-writers, let alone to grade their papers, than the vote-counters of West Palm Beach? Robert: I haven't given up on the warrantable outrage issue by any means, and would welcome your response to what I've written thus far. RWess@orst.edu wrote: > Now that things have settled down a bit, I can begin thinking about "Bush v. > Gore" in Burkean terms. I should have waited until now before imposing on > this list, but my passions got the best of me last week. I apologize. > > About "Bush v. Gore," I'm developing a few lines of Burkean thought. I'll > pursue here the one that intersects most directly with a number of recent > posts. > > I'm sure many of you are familiar with how Herb Simons keeps raising the > issue of whether Burke allows for "warranted outrage." Maybe "Bush v. Gore" > is a good test case. At least some of us are outraged. Can we warrant our > outrage in Burkean terms? Some recent posts have discussed fundamentalists. > We know they're good at warranted outrage but for Burkean reasons we tend to > have problems with their "warrant." Can we come up with a better one? > Quite honestly, I'm not sure, but let me propose a few thoughts to begin the > discussion if anyone wishes to pursue it. But before doing that, two > prefatory points: > > Point #1: in response to a few recent posts, let me stress that the concern > I write about here has to do with what the Court did in "Bush v. Gore," not > with the struggle between the Bush and Gore forces in Florida. Making that > distinction is the reason I brought up my Nader vote (which I'm ready to > defend in Burkean terms, but I'll leave that on the back burner for now). > I'm of the school of thought that if Gore had been the one with the small > lead in the beginning, Bush would have been the one searching for more votes > through manual recounts in Republican counties. Republicans and Democrats > would simply have switched roles. Things would have played out differently > but for other reasons. For example, if Bush had been the one trying to > catch up, Katherine Harris would not have rushed to end the election and > Bush wouldn't have had to use the Florida courts the way Gore did. While > "Bush v. Gore" will always be tied to the 2000 election, I believe that it > will have a history independent of this election as a blow to judicial > independence of historic proportions. That's the object of my outrage. > > Point #2: To see what the Court did, you can't rely on the news media, > especially talk media, which now works to provide entertainment rather than > information by filtering nearly everything through a "terministic screen" > structured around happy talk journalism, Republicans and Democrats putting > out their spin, and media commentators spinning this spin. This > entertainment machine gets good ratings and it's cheap to produce; instead > of paying investigative journalists to do the time­consuming work of digging > up new infomation, all you need are reporters who lunch with their "sources" > and return to the studio with the latest spin. Now and then a bit of > independent journalism appears in the cracks, but it's a drop in the ocean > of entertainment and has little effect. One example of the confusion this > entertainment machine produces in the present case is the confusion about > whether the Supreme Court voted 7-2 or 5-4, a confusion that appeared even > in this forum. I heard Olson, the Bush lawyer before the Supreme Court, > speak at length on a talk show about the vote being 7-2. No voice of > independent journalism challenged him, even though all you have to do is > look at the opinion, not read it, to see that Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and > Breyer each wrote separate dissents. If you read the dissents, it's clear > that because of the time constraints, they divided up among themselves the > topics each would cover so that each would have a relatively short paper > assignment. The dissents range in length from 7 pages (Stevens) to 15 pages > (Breyer). > > Returning to the problem of warranted outrage: Stan (12/16) brought up the > point that in "Bush v. Gore" there must be some arguments opposite the ones > I gave. That takes us directly to Burke's perspectivism, and of course it's > this perspectivism that seems immediately to undercut our outrage. We're > mad but that's only because we've privileged one perspective against others > and what is the "warrant" for that? On 12/17, Camille asked, why stop with > two sides? Wouldn't it be more Burkean to look for more than two? And > wouldn't that undercut our outrage even more? > > Ed asked for someone to produce some arguments on at least one side opposed > to my critique. Are there arguments on the other side? Of course there > are. That's what lawyers are for (and I don't mean that to be as > disrespectful as it sounds; if I could start my life again, I'd probably > still choose to be an academic, but I'd give serious consideration to law > school, something that never crossed my mind the first time around). Maybe > Ed's question can be refined a bit in the context of a grounding for a kind > of warranted outrage that is Burkean even if not altogether satisfying. > > To get beyond the level of competing perspectives, which seems immediately > to undercut any outrage, I'd suggest turning to section 5 in "Terministic > Screens," "Our Attempt to Avoid Mere Relativism." Prior to this point Burke > has used selection, reflection, deflection to theorize different > terminological perspectives. We can assume that different sides in the > "Bush v. Gore" debate can be distinguished by identifying their different > selections, reflections, and deflections. In "Our Attempt," Burke goes > beyond this "relativism." Selections are actions: all terminologies are > enactments. Therefore, the dramatistic perspective is a perspective of > perspectives that merits being called a "philosophic definition" of the > symbol-using animal (Lang as Sym Act 52). > > Where does this step to a perspective of perspectives get us? Well we can > say that however badly the Rehnquist court acted, it did act because all > terminologies are enactments. And the words we use to express our outrage > are words applicable to actions. The court's act outrages us because it's > hypocritical­­"bald, brazen, blatant, shameless" (Ed, 12/16)­­both by virtue > of being inconsistent with the majority's conservative judicial philosophy > (Clarke's 12/15 post touches on dimensions of this philosophy) and by virtue > of contortions within the logic of the reasoning in the court's opinion > itself. > > Arriving at the term action, we intersect with Clarke's "Burkean relevance > of the Supreme Court" (12/18)," with its identification of "webs of action" > as a way to map judicial action. Maybe more can be added to this inquiry > from that standpoint. > > Meanwhile, taking the next step in my line of thought, I'll add that in > applying these moralistic judgments to action, maybe we should think of the > action as occurring in a drama. Drama fits dramatism, of course, but the > main point is that drama allows another distinction. For when we make these > moralistic judgments, we don't have, as long as we stay Burkean, the kind of > foundation for them that Scripture provides fundamentalists as they express > their outrage. Drama makes it easier to think of these judgments as having > a more formalistic basis: we fault the Rehnquist court's action for its > inconsistencies with its well established philosophy and for its > hypocritical Kafkaesque logic in its reasoning. > > This formalism comes close to defining a Burkean basis for my outrage. If > the Court's opinion had been well reasoned and rooted in its conservative > philosophy I would at least have respected it however much I would have > disagreed with it. There would not have been a blow to judicial > independence. I follow the Court's opinions and while I often disagree, > it's always interesting even if sometimes scary to see where the Court's > conservative philosophy takes it. What ignited my outrage in this case are > the various levels of inconsistency in the Court's action this time. > > Going back to Ed's question, I'd revise it by asking for a justification of > the Court's action consistent with a conservative judicial philosophy. If > the court's conservative majority couldn't do this, maybe it simply can't be > done. True, they were acting under severe time constraints, but these are > the high priests of this philosophy. If they can't do it, can anyone? > > Taking an additional step, one might zero in on some crucial dimensions of > the Court's act­­e.g., the equal protection argument applies only to this > case and is not to serve as a precedent for any subsequent legal action. Is > such an argument consistent with any judicial philosophy? > > In a word, maybe the Court's act may fairly be called "indefensible." Sure, > there's an opinion, but if it's little more than a hodgepodge of arguments > designed to perform the face­saving gesture of producing the written ruling > one expects from the Court, then the iron fist of raw power shows its hand. > That iron fist is the blow to judicial independence. A Court is supposed to > be open to argument from the other side. With respect to the Court majority > of five, I don't think that that was the case this time. Maybe the ruling > in "Bush v. Gore" is still in the "purification of war," but just barely, > right at the point where the purification of words just barely keeps us this > side of the raw violence of war. There is my Burkean warrant for my > outrage. All I can say is better the Rehnquist Court than a general in a > tank, but if the Court's action in this case became the norm rather than the > exception, then there would be no more judicial independence and we would be > in the world of generals and tanks. > > Having said this, I'm still not altogether comfortable. Formalism, when it > gets too pure, always makes me nervous. After all, a Nazi could act with > the consistency of a mathematical proof. What do we say then? > > Can we add additional steps to firm up a warrant for Burkean outrage? From VM Thu Dec 21 22:03:25 2000 Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 22:03:25 -0500 (EST) From: Jay Gordon Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 247 Where did Burke get the idea of using a set of key terms in the first place? Was having such a scheme of terms just the way lit crit was done as he was coming along? I'm asking this mainly as a historical/biographical question. - Jay From VM Fri Dec 22 10:40:46 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:40:46 -0600 From: Naomi Erickson Subject: Conservatives dont go, they just fade away.. Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 248 Merry Christman and Happy Holidays! The question of whether or not a conservative can be Burkian, greatly intrigues me. I have watched the posts for some time now, hoping to get a taste of the Burkian philosophy. I have read a little of Burke. I think the defining question to ask in order to answer the question of whether Burke and conservatism can be compatible, is whether Burke would hold that the human language reflects actualities ex re intellectum. Any opinions? -Aquina From VM Fri Dec 22 10:08:38 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:08:38 -0700 (MST) From: Turpin Paul Subject: God and the election Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 249 This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info. ------=_NextPart_000_0008_01C06B90.4AB03B20 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=iso-8859-1 Content-ID: I was thinking about my own reply to the current threads when this came through my mailbox... Paul Turpin +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ Visiting Instructor, Dept. of Communication University of Colorado, Boulder web: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~turpin/Home.html ------------------------------------------------- Subject: In case you didn't hear this BREAKING NEWS: GOD OVERRULES SUPREME COURT VERDICT Bush to be smitten later today In a stunning development this morning, God invoked the "one nation, under God" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance to overrule last night's Supreme Court decision that handed the White House to George Bush. "I'm not sure where the Supreme Court gets off," God said this morning on a rare Today Show appearance, "but I'm sure as hell not going to lie back and let Bush get away with this bullshit." "I've watched analysts argue for weeks now that the exact vote count in Florida 'will never be known.' Well, I'm God and I DO know exactly who voted for whom. Let's cut to the chase: Gore won Florida by exactly 20,219 votes." Shocking political analysts and pundits, God's unexpected verdict overrules the official Electoral College tally and awards Florida to Al Gore, giving him a 289-246 victory. The Bush campaign is analyzing God's Word for possible grounds for appeal. "God's ruling is a classic over-reach," argued Bush campaign strategist Jim Baker. "Clearly, a divine intervention in a U.S. Presidential Election is unprecedented, unjust, and goes against the constitution of the state of Florida." "Jim Baker's a jackass," God responded. "He's got some surprises ahead of him, let me tell you. HOT ones, if you know what I mean." God, who provided the exact vote counts for every Florida precinct, explained that bad balloting machinery and voter confusion were no grounds to give the White House to "a friggin' idiot." "Look, only 612 people in Palm Beach County voted for Buchanan. Get real! The rest meant to vote for Gore. Don't believe me? I'll name them: Anderson, Pete; Anderson, Sam, Jr.; Arthur, James; Barnhardt, Ron..." Our Lord then went on to note that he was displeased with George W. Bush's prideful ways and announced that he would officially smite him today. In an act of wrath unlike any reported since the Book of Job, God has taken all of Bush's goats and livestock, stripped him of his wealth and possessions, sold his family into slavery, forced the former presidential candidate into hard labor in a salt mine, and afflicted him with deep boils. Dick Cheney will reportedly receive leprosy. ------=_NextPart_000_0008_01C06B90.4AB03B20-- From VM Fri Dec 22 12:38:33 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 12:38:33 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Warranted Outrage vs. Comic Attitude Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 250 First, in a response to Jay: Early in GM, Burke gives pretty good indication where he got the five terms of the Pentad. They are implicit in Aristotle's "four causes" (see a good essay on this relationship by Vito Signorile in Simons & Melia, The Legacy of Kenneth Burke, 1989); at least four of them are explicit in Aristotle's Nichomakian Ethics; the five of them, plus "attititude," are inherent in the seven questions the Medieval Schoolmen asked for analytical purposes. Burke doesn't go into English grammar, but they are, in fact, embodied in the definitions of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, the content parts of speech that comprise the subjects and predicates of sentences. Language structures our thought in terms of actor or receiver of action, or a noun subject identified, classified, or given an attribute; action statement or being statement; purpose, means, manner, and scene. The Pentad or Hexad is not an original discovery on Burke's part. It's what Burke did with these "basic forms of thought" that distinguishes dramatism. The "ratios," combined with the motive of perfection inherent in what Burke calls the "entelechial" dimension of symbols (see the "Five Dogs" passage in LASA), afford a systematic way of assessing the "philosophic" cast of a message, the way it "selects," "reflects," and highlights one source of motivation, while it "deflects," neglects, draws attention away from, another or others. Whether such "systematization" was in the air in mid-century, more so than today, I'd say probabloy yes. Not that Burke is, overall, that systematic. He's not. As Chesebro once said to me, Burke provides a cornucopia of ideas; you provide the paradigm. You do the systematization yourself. On the question of "warranted outrage" or "comic charitableness" toward what the Supreme Court did in Bush vs. Gore, I need hardly, at this date, declare where I stand. As Les said in his latest lyric, I've been ***!!#%&****&!!!, and then some, in my oppositon to what the "gang of five" perpetrated. And I'm wondering whether Herb is not virtually retreating from his introduction of the "warranted outrage" demurrer in respect to Burke's philosophy. If what these usurpers handed down in Bush vs. Gore doesn't warrant outrage, what does, short of shooting up a Macdonalds with an automatic weapon? As Robert noted, if the conservative Republican majority on the Court would merely barge ahead, in case after case, with their states rights, hands-off policy toward any and all ridiculous things state legislatures and/or courts might do to curtail civil rights, pollute the environment, gut socially responsible bills to aid the poor and needy--with no sense of nuance at all--they would be "mistaken." They would be worthy of "comic charity," a gentle "slap on the writst" perhaps. but no shrill anathemas from the offended, or their supporters. That would be an appropriate Burkean response. But what this Court did, in such brazen contravention of their settled judicial philosophy, one that generates almost clear-cut expections in a case such as this? And the anfractuous, casuistic "reasoning" that was supposed to give Constitutional weight to their ruling, topped off with a wink and a nod that said, "Don't really take us seriously, folks; we're not going to generalize here; this garbage is only for making George W. Bush President at this time and place"? Forget Burkean comedy. We don't ALL use rhetoric in this way. And the analogy between use of objective tests and essay questions, on the one hand, and machine counting and hand counting of ballots, on the other, is a stretch, it seems to me. An objective test tells you at least something about the knowledge of every student taking the exam. It gives you some glimpse into his or her mind. Depending on how it's designed, it will tell you a great deal, or not as much as you'd like to know about a student's mastery of the course material, but it will tell you SOMETHING. Punch-card ballots like those used in poorer and more urban counties in Florida tell you NOTHING about what a given voter thinks, knows, or intends in 3 percent or more of the cases. Even the manufacturer admits as much. Hand-counting is a time-honored, LAWFUL way of compensating for such insufficiencies in close elections. It may not be perfect, either. But it is BETTER than not hand-counting at all. As Michael Kinsley took note of in a column in the Washington Post a week or so ago, nobody raised the issue of "better" instead of "best" or "perfect." Nobody used the phrasing, "Compared to what?" Tragedy, with its fondness for the categorical, the either/or, was invoked, in lock step, by the Republicans. Comedy, with its willingness to live with a denouement that's "better, not best" (see what Burke has to say about William James in the first chapter of ATH), was not satisfactorily articulated by anybody. That's my two cents for the day. Time for Santa. In Philadelphia and vicinity, we boo him, too. Ed From VM Fri Dec 22 12:40:29 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 12:40:29 -0500 From: Jack Selzer Subject: Re: Conservatism Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 251 --============_-1234615665==_ma============ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" > >"Can a conservative be a Burkean?" It's certainly possible. Let's imagine that everyone in the world came to read Burke carefully and to be led by his ideas. Everyone a Burkean. Then I suppose that you could call such othodoxy "conservative," and we'd all be conservatives. Whatever that means. And as I ride off into the Christmas sunset, I note that Burke was on the side of progressive politics throughout his life. But "conservatism" includes other matters besides politics, and on many things Burke could find common ground with people and issues commonly understood as conservative. I'll save you the for instances, but they aren't hard to find. More important, to me at least, is the fact that Burke could maintain a productive dialogue with just about anyone, regardless of political affiliation: would that everyone could. JS Jack Selzer Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies Penn State University 116 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802 phone: 814-865-0251 or 863-3069; fax 814-863-7285 Jack Selzer http://www.psu.edu/dept/english/Programs/rhetoric/faculty.html#core (department web page) http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/l/jls25/ (personal web page) --============_-1234615665==_ma============ Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii" "Can a conservative be a Burkean?" It's certainly possible. Let's imagine that everyone in the world came to read Burke carefully and to be led by his ideas. Everyone a Burkean. Then I suppose that you could call such othodoxy "conservative," and we'd all be conservatives. Whatever that means. And as I ride off into the Christmas sunset, I note that Burke was on the side of progressive politics throughout his life. But "conservatism" includes other matters besides politics, and on many things Burke could find common ground with people and issues commonly understood as conservative. I'll save you the for instances, but they aren't hard to find. More important, to me at least, is the fact that Burke could maintain a productive dialogue with just about anyone, regardless of political affiliation: would that everyone could. JS Jack Selzer Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies Penn State University 116 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802 phone: 814-865-0251 or 863-3069; fax 814-863-7285 Jack Selzer http://www.psu.edu/dept/english/Programs/rhetoric/faculty.html#core (department web page) http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/l/jls25/ (personal web page) --============_-1234615665==_ma============-- From VM Fri Dec 22 12:53:21 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 12:53:21 -0600 From: Naomi Erickson Subject: Reply to JS Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 252 Thank you for your quick response. Mr. Selzer, Although nothing absolutely impedes the entire world from becoming disciples of Burke, it is improbable. You mentioned that Burke had found common ground with conservatives. Would you be so kind as to mention one instance? As for productive dialogue, the art of conversation is a difficult art to master. -Aquina From VM Fri Dec 22 14:46:40 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 14:46:40 -0600 From: "J. Comas" Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 253 On 12/21/00 at 10:03 PM, Jay Gordon wrote: > Where did Burke get the idea of using a set of key terms in the first > place? Was having such a scheme of terms just the way lit crit was done > as he was coming along? I'm asking this mainly as a > historical/biographical question. In addition to the information that Ed provided regarding the Aristotelian influence, I'll note that Burke characterizes the Motivorum as something of a linguistic Kantianism in the _Grammar_: > Our five terms are "transcendental" rather than formal (and are to > this extent Kantian) in being categories which human thought > necessarily exemplifies. Instead of calling them the necessary "forms > of experience," however, we should call them the necessary "forms of > *talk about* experience." For our concern is primarily with the > analysis of *language* rather than with the analysis of "*reality.*" > (317) Burke's interest in Kant appears as early as a 1924 letter to Cowley: > Plato is the eternal philosopher. If the entire works of Plato were > erased from the documents of the world, they would be rewritten in the > course of time. Kant, had he possessed sufficient grace, could have > rewritten Plato. As it is he very nearly did. My own nebbing in the > matter revolves about the displacement of Plato's universals. As I > have said before, it is simply the talk of "psychological universals" > instead of "metaphysical universals." (20 Nov 1924) The Kantian influence, of course, makes Burke's analysis of Kant's philosophy even more interesting (_Grammar_ 185-97). And regarding the question of where Burke may be placed within a conservative-liberal spectrum, it wouldn't hurt to look at how he takes up the role of freedom in Kant's moral philosophy. Jim -- J. Comas, Assistant Professor Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia ---------------------------------- From VM Fri Dec 22 15:50:37 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 15:50:37 -0500 From: Jack Selzer Subject: Conversation Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 254 >Although nothing absolutely impedes the entire world from becoming disciples >of Burke, it is improbable. of course >You mentioned that Burke had found common ground with conservatives. Would >you be so kind as to mention one instance? The easiest: he was in productive conversation with several of the New Critics. Does John Crowe Ransom count as "conservative"? Cleanth Brooks? >As for productive dialogue, the art of conversation is a difficult art to >master. And that's EXACTLY what KB was a genius at. Best wishes, JS Jack Selzer Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies Penn State University 116 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802 phone: 814-865-0251 or 863-3069; fax 814-863-7285 Jack Selzer http://www.psu.edu/dept/english/Programs/rhetoric/faculty.html#core (department web page) http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/l/jls25/ (personal web page) From VM Fri Dec 22 15:49:28 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 15:49:28 -0600 From: Naomi Erickson Subject: Ransom & Brooks Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 255 Dear JS, Again, thank you for the reply. I knew nothing of Ransom, Brooks or Modern Criticism until today and have just completed a sample of poems and short biographies of each. Based on what I read, I would say both are conservatives relative to what they had criticised because both were seeking to preserve older forms of poetry. Please tell me what Burke accomplished in his conversation with the New Critics (and where to find these conversations) if it would not be too much trouble. Thank you. -Aquina From VM Fri Dec 22 16:49:02 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:49:02 -0600 From: Leslie Bruder Subject: Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:49:02 -0600 Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 256 Thanks Ed for the gentle push. It's appreciated. Of course more is at stake than "our money." I was just giving my Aegis a hard time for being uncritical, a fault that I am probably not free of. We cannot suspend our judgement forever, waiting for the receipts to come in. I try to imagine what America would be like if our worst nightmares came true: I suppose we just wouldn't have any say at all about the government's decisions; the media would be 90% commercials and the rest would be Platonic/Totalitarian social control, i.e., "Touched by an Angel"; our freedom of speech would become a freedom to lodge a complaint once a year; our academies would be commandeered by science-minded commercial conglomerates; perhaps some bogus project like building a pyramid in Death Valley would be "presented" to the "public", etc., etc.. Many of you guys have been monitoring the iron heel with scope and transmitter since the world clash and you're doing an awesome job of it. I'll be on the front line if it ever gets to that point. (I guess it is to that point--all this generalized warfare with the ubiquitous front and the unrecognizable enemy is kind of confusing) Maybe I'll help with the underground railroad. Some morbid and lonely/adventurous side of myself even longs for such a state of emergency. Can you beat that? But I won't wish for the end of time, nor retreat into a pure aesthetic. Personally I would love to see a candidate who wasn't a military man, a business man or a lawyer; a Vaclav Havel, or perhaps a Burkean. I'll join the campaign today. Seriously. My interest in art, admittedly, is as a short circuit to political and economic realities. I'm going to have to rethink my stand on the vote and the monkey wrench--comedy isn't enough. I counted the word jungle four times in Counter-Statement (I probably missed one or two), and he seems to suggest that beyond the social tensions which the playwright tries to resolve for us there are the original jungle tensions, the felids and the hyaenids chasing us homonids up into the welcoming tree of life. Since then we've become such great hunters that we've begun hunting each other with the same enthusiam with which we wiped out the sabertooth tiger (the business ethic seems to have taken nature's efficiency to heart). He uses the word jungle in the preface to the first edition and describes pamphleteering as a biologic weapon for wrestling a living from the jungles of society. And again, in the Program where he characterizes the practical and efficient as a friendly fascist parade of evangelizers, christian soldiers, sales pitchers and cheerleaders waving their flags. I love his line, "...in short, flags and all the jungle vigor that goes with flags." Apparently he felt, and perhaps it is true, that we are still largely primitive and tribal. But enough, it is the season. Happy Holidays Brrrrrrr! Les From VM Fri Dec 22 17:51:42 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 17:51:42 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Warranted Outrage vs. Comic Attitude Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 257 I have egg on my face, I know. It's not the first time for me in this venue, of course, but it's still a bit embarrassing. What's the embarrassment? Taking Herb Simons seriously in his most recent post. I don't mean Herb was not serious on any level in what he had to say about the Supreme Court's argument and machine- vs. hand-counted ballots. He was quite seriously intent on what he was doing. I just didn't "get it" until I was driving home from a Christmas party late this afternoon. I'll make excuses for my naivete by saying I'm distracted by the season of the year, the comings and goings of family members, and by my emotional involvement in the issue we've been discussing. What Herb was doing, and perhaps still is, was conducting a seminar in "persuasion dialogue" or the "ideal conversation." To get from "primal outrage" to "warranted outrage," we have to talk things through, especially with persons who hold different, or diamentrically opposite, viewpoints. One of the disciplines to be practiced in such an ideal exchange is to make the case for THE other, or ANother, side of the coin in the most telling way we can, put the best face on the other side's case. That's what Herb was doing, I'm 98 percent certain. Now, Herb has sounded the challenge. How should I respond? What's the best case I can make for the Republican spin and the Supreme Court decision? Am I smart enough, ingenious enough, AND honest enough to come up with a line of argument that I can post on this web site without gagging or disgracing myself further? I don't know. I'll have to think about it. Sleighbells are ringing. Ed From VM Fri Dec 22 21:17:37 2000 Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 21:17:37 -0700 (MST) From: Turpin Paul Subject: Re: Warranted Outrage vs. Comic Attitude Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 258 I'll take a stab at it. Chiming in late on this thread, I've been unable to muster a sense of outrage about the election/court outcome. Disappointed, but not very surprised. I have mostly been fascinated by the interplay of argument about how to decide the issue, and by the glorious ironies. My favorite irony is the infamous charge that Gore was trying to have a court elect him president; we all know how that turned out. My second-favorite irony is that the Green party is going to change national politics. My reaction to the Supremes' decision (what a great terministic screen that title has become!) is that they stepped in it. For all their care and tortuous reasoning--including the suggestion that no one should take their decision as a precedent for other election decisions(!)--they stepped in the do-do, and everyone can smell it. From where I sit, that has comic frame written all over it. (mixed my metaphors, there) Interestingly enough, I don't find the argument that the Supreme Court contravened their states' rights orientation very persuasive. They did violate it, of course, but almost by backing into it. I have viewed the conservative position on states' rights all along as an argument about state *legislation*, and the conservative argument in general as interpreting "the will of the people" as what lawmakers draft into law. The problem is, that ignores the role a court is supposed to play in finding remedies for problems; this is where I think the Supreme Court made its biggest mistake. The argument I find *very* persuasive is that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision--that the Florida Supreme Court should have set out a defined and uniform standard for determining voter intent--would have put the Florida court in the position of "creating new law," which was precisely the initial criticism leveled against the Florida court. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. That's the part that smells, especially since the so-called swing votes in the U.S. court specifically cited as a concern the Florida court's failure to respond to the earlier vacating of their decision to extend the deadline for certifying the election. I was not surprised by Scalia 'reminding' the Republican attorney (Olsen?) that his central argument was that "voter error"--i.e., failure to follow posted instructions in the polling place--did not constitute a harm, and therefore did not require a remedy. I expect that kind of reasoning from Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. I didn't expect it from the others. And then, oh--the court said--look, the clock ran out while we were trying to decide this in an equitable way. Now, this, too, is consistent with states-rights being interpreted as *legislative* rights--i.e., since the Florida legislature set 12/12 as its safe harbor day, the courts cannot run past that deadline. Likewise, Bush's complaint that a hand-recount would do him harm fits with a legislative/republican orientation, because by that standard, as simple-minded as it might be, *he was already the winner,* properly declared so under Florida law. What this ignores, of course, is the very structure, also in Florida law, of conducting protests and contests of elections, and the roles the Florida courts should have in overseeing them and providing remedies as appropriate. I did think that, for all the maneuvering that went on in both camps, their arguments about the basic principles involved stayed remarkably consistent: on the Bush side, the central argument was that a "vote" had a specific legal definition--e.g., a cleanly-punched-out, chad-less, machine-countable ballot--and the election process itself had statutorily defined processes, like the certification of the election by the Florida secretary of state, etc. On the Gore side, the emphasis on the limitations of machine-counting and the need to determine voter intent was consistent, with some exceptions like the postmark-less absentee ballots. Of course, those same absentee ballots, despite their clear non-compliance with state law, got the benefit of the doubt--read "voter intent"--in the Republican arguments. I even thought it was reasonable to count them; I was just annoyed at the sliding from a strict statutory position to an intent-of-the-voter position. In that respect, I have to give Gore the consistency of argument victory: count all the votes. The respective positions were remarkably republican and democratic (lower case) for the most part. The republican argument about representative government is that citizen participation has to conform to the specific form defined by legislative statute as backed by constitutional warrant--hence the "government of laws" arguments, and the "they changed the rules" arguments. The democratic emphasis has typically been oriented more towards enfranchisement and broadening the voting population. Hence we got "voter error" opposed to "counting error." Terministic screens with a vengeance. I guess we do have a case of tragic vs. comic frames, since voter error, almost by definition, or statute, is uncorrectable, whereas counting error offers at least a potential way out. Oh dear, went on too long again. That's what I get for waiting so long to reply. Paul Turpin +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ Visiting Instructor, Dept. of Communication University of Colorado, Boulder web: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~turpin/Home.html From VM Tue Jan 02 14:09:00 2001 Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 14:09:00 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 259 Burke claims that he didn't invent the pentad, but simply reiterates what scholars from Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) to medieval scholars to contemporary writers have said. (Some of this is covered in the Grammar.) He said in the Iowa interviews that, given the lack of originality in the pentad, he would go down in history as one of the greatest platitudinarians. Clarke >Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 22:03:25 -0500 (EST) >From: Jay Gordon >To: kb@purdue.edu >Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis >Cc: Edappel8@cs.com >Sender: owner-kb@purdue.edu >Precedence: bulk >Status: > > >Where did Burke get the idea of using a set of key terms in the first >place? Was having such a scheme of terms just the way lit crit was done >as he was coming along? I'm asking this mainly as a >historical/biographical question. > >- Jay Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Wed Jan 03 12:24:05 2001 Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 12:24:05 -0500 From: mark.larocca.pitts@duke.edu Subject: Re: [Fwd: The best example of Burkean analysis...] Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 260 "David Nobles is beginning to work on his dissertation. Before he retired, he was (I hope he won't mind me putting it this way) a part of the US government's "war on drugs." Now he wants to do an analysis of that "war," focusing on the consequences of the metaphor "war." He is interested in using Burke's dramatistic pentad as a "method" for his study." Depending on how thorough David wishes to be, and not to blow my own horn (though as a long-time lurker on this list, this is my chance), he might want to look at my dissertation, "The Day of Yahweh as Rhetorical Strategy Among the Hebrew Prophets" (Harvard, 2000). I perform extended pentadic analyses on 16 Hebrew Bible passages that specifically treat the Day of Yahweh (i.e., "The Day of the Lord"). Of interest to David may also be my critique of von Rad and others who understand the Day of Yahweh as "a day of battle/war." That is, how has labeling this Day as one of "battle/war" affected our reading of it? Respectfully, Mark LaRocca-Pitts From VM Wed Jan 03 12:44:41 2001 Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 12:44:41 -0700 (MST) From: Turpin Paul Subject: Re: [Fwd: The best example of Burkean analysis...] Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 261 Stephen O'Leary's _Arguing the Apocalypse_ combines elements of argumentation theory with Burke's idea of tragic frame. He goes about analyzing (primarily) American apocalyptic texts along the dual axes of argumentative topoi, which he identifies as time, evil, and authority, and dramatic mythic narrative, which he claims is "rooted in the 'tragic frame'" (16). You can find this in his first chapter, "Toward a Rhetorical Theory of Apocalypse." Paul Turpin +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ Visiting Instructor, Dept. of Communication University of Colorado, Boulder web: http://stripe.colorado.edu/~turpin/Home.html From VM Wed Jan 03 23:58:28 2001 Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 23:58:28 -0800 From: "Hugh Ellis" Subject: RE: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 262 Dear Dr. Clarke and the quasi-Burkean community: The originality of Burke was not that he invented the Pentad, since it is already there buried in our ability to act symbolically, and is inherent in our grammar. (Not the grammar of motives.) I am pretty sure it is the "grammar of grammar" for all languages, since every language must be based upon the motive to influence others and redefine relationships. Burke's gift was the ability to bring it to the surface and put it to work as an alternative to the scientistic reductionism that has pervaded social sciences (and literary criticism too, I am afraid). Chomsky liked to think that language was based on a deep structure, perhaps genetic in origin, and that sentences ought to be viewed like "found objects" as if they were lying in the sand somewhere, waiting for us to find them and figure out what they were for. I think the more likely story is that the forms of language emerged necessarily from the fact that we were making sounds for a purpose, and I doubt that the purpose was to transmit information. (That would be the "scientistic" idea of communication, that we were transmitting information to one another for God knows what purpose.) The archetypal sentence, therefore, would not likely be something like "The sky is blue" but "Help!" There you have it: symbolic action, with a purpose, yet. Hugh Ellis Lapsed pseudo-Burkian scholar And practitioner of symbolic action up the kazoo -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Dr. Clarke Rountree Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 11:09 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis Burke claims that he didn't invent the pentad, but simply reiterates what scholars from Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) to medieval scholars to contemporary writers have said. (Some of this is covered in the Grammar.) He said in the Iowa interviews that, given the lack of originality in the pentad, he would go down in history as one of the greatest platitudinarians. Clarke >Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 22:03:25 -0500 (EST) >From: Jay Gordon >To: kb@purdue.edu >Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis >Cc: Edappel8@cs.com >Sender: owner-kb@purdue.edu >Precedence: bulk >Status: > > >Where did Burke get the idea of using a set of key terms in the first >place? Was having such a scheme of terms just the way lit crit was done >as he was coming along? I'm asking this mainly as a >historical/biographical question. > >- Jay Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Thu Jan 04 12:25:37 2001 Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 12:25:37 -0500 (EST) From: Jay Gordon Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 263 Excerpts from mail: 3-Jan-101 RE: Pentadic Dramatistic An.. by "Hugh Ellis"@teleport.co > The originality of Burke was not that he invented the Pentad, since it is > already there buried in our ability to act symbolically, and is inherent in > our grammar. Ok, but to follow Clinton's example, this depends on what your definition of "is" is. Your "is" here seems highly metaphorical and literary. I was asking where he might have gotten the idea to interpret human behavior in terms of a canon of 5 principles. The suggestion that he was influenced by Aristotle's 4 causes makes sense, if by "is" we mean something more literal and historical. I was interested in the general question of why philosophers have tendency to "schematize" human action-- and if its possible to work away from or against this geometrization in our thinking about human behavior. From VM Thu Jan 04 17:03:03 2001 Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2001 17:03:03 -0800 From: "Jim Moore" Subject: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 264 Huge Ellis wrote: I think the more likely story is that the forms of language emerged necessarily from the fact that we were making sounds for a purpose, and I doubt that the purpose was to transmit information. (That would be the "scientistic" idea of communication, that we were transmitting information to one another for God knows what purpose.) The archetypal sentence, therefore, would not likely be something like "The sky is blue" but "Help!" There you have it: symbolic action, with a purpose, yet. Jim Moore responds: This isn't an either/or between 'symbolic action' or 'transmission of information'. The Burkean perspective emphasizes the 'symbolic action' of language, which is, in part, as I understand it, the effort of language users to use language to induce actions in other language users. One pitfall of the Burkean influence, I believe, is the potential to become a dysfunctional communicator in situations where the 'transmission of information' is equally or more important than the 'symbolic action'. When someone yells 'help!', yes, they are trying to induce action, but they are also trying to transmit information, for example, during a fire: "I'm in here--oh, God! I don't want to die of smoke inhalation! There's a fire! Have you noticed?!!" In that kind of situation, the Burkean isn't going to look excessively deeply at motives . . . he or she will see the necessity of action (can I scientistically say 'exigence'?) in the situation and hopefully do something. However, in a situation where a person is not necessarily in a fire but feels under siege for psychological reasons and that person says, "Help! I don't feel safe here! What the hell am I supposed to do?", a Burkean might make the fatal error of analyzing motives too deeply (looking at the symbolic action--what the words 'do' rather than what they 'say') and ignoring the transmission of information. (i.e., "I feel in physical danger in this situation. I don't know what is going on. I don't why is this happening. I am transmitting this information not because of my relationship with my father, not because I am a co-dependent but because I am confused, frightened and feel stalked and you clearly are have information that I do not." The symbolic action is still there. The person is trying to motivate someone to abandon complicity and duplicity, but the transmission of information should not be ignored either--if it is, the Burkean will be lost in the miasma of analysis and imposition rather than found in the compromise of negotiated truth. This may be more abstract than it should be--or perhaps more concrete--but I can't elaborate without unnecessarily revealing more about a situation than I should. But I feel inclined to post this anyway and it doesn't seem irrelevant to the study of Kenneth Burke. I won't elaborate or bother you further. Jim >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Dr. >Clarke Rountree >Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 11:09 AM >To: kb@purdue.edu >Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis > >Burke claims that he didn't invent the pentad, but simply reiterates what >scholars from Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) to medieval scholars to >contemporary writers have said. (Some of this is covered in the Grammar.) >He said in the Iowa interviews that, given the lack of originality in the >pentad, he would go down in history as one of the greatest >platitudinarians. > >Clarke > > >Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 22:03:25 -0500 (EST) > >From: Jay Gordon > >To: kb@purdue.edu > >Subject: Re: Pentadic Dramatistic Analysis > >Cc: Edappel8@cs.com > >Sender: owner-kb@purdue.edu > >Precedence: bulk > >Status: > > > > > >Where did Burke get the idea of using a set of key terms in the first > >place? Was having such a scheme of terms just the way lit crit was done > >as he was coming along? I'm asking this mainly as a > >historical/biographical question. > > > >- Jay > >Dr. Clarke Rountree >Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts >Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program >342 Morton Hall >University of Alabama in Huntsville >Huntsville, AL 35899 >(256)-824-6646 >rountrj@email.uah.edu > _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From VM Fri Jan 05 03:03:36 2001 Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 03:03:36 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 265 In Response to Jim: I don't think the dramatistic slant on language as a means of communication of information is one that makes us go either/or. The questions we need to address are: what is primary in language and how does the information we derive from language-use come to us. Elaborating on Burke's Merriam-Webster definition, we might say: Dramatism is a critique of language or philosophy of language that posits that language is primarily a mode of interested, tendentious, value-laden, purposeful moral action, and a call to purposeful moral action as physical enterprise, rather than a means of transmitting disinterested, objective, value-free information. Language primarily expresses an attitude, creates an orientation toward certain pathways of action, gives cues to action and a command to follow those cues, rather than objectively describes and gives information. Language does give information, but it does so in its own incomplete, distorted, selective, deflective, prismatic, refractive, concealing as well as revealing, tunnel-vision, funhouse-mirror way. Thus, dramatism is an epistemology of a kind, a philosophy of knowledge, a description of the way humans come to "know" the world. It is, though, it seems to me, an epistemology that emphasizes the way language creatively superimposes on the "object world" motivational concepts that do not necessarily inhere in it. It synthesizes and organizes phenomena in reference to mental schema that ineluctably dramatize, charge the blind motions of nature with hints, or, in more archaic cultures, picturesque myths of moral conflict. Language, for Burke, seems to operate on human thought forms much like Kant's transcendental ego, with its a priori categories of understanding. (Jim Comas recently called attention to the analogy betweern Burke and Kant.) Dramatism would therefore strongly suggest that, with respect to "information" about "things in themselves" out there in the natural world, language obfuscates as well as illuminates, serves as an obstacle to acquistion of "true knowledge," as it were, as well as vehicle of transmission of useful information. It's not just an obstacle or such a vehicle. There's no either/or. It is both/and. Burke calls his philosophy looked at as an epistemology "logology," the study of words as such, the study of the way language presents the world to human beings. Burke's great logological emphasis is that, when we view the world through the creative optics of language, we are "seeing" that world not only through the refractive lens of drama, but more particularly through the shaping contours of the ultimate drama of theology. Most particularly, "logology" is "the systematic study of theological terms for the light they might throw on the forms of language" ("Termistic Screens, LASA), theological terms being the most thoroughgoing, far-reaching, ultimate terms in language. Studying theological terms is like studying language in terms of its biggest picture, its most sharply defined relief map. "Logology" can also be defined as tracking down the implications of words in terms of the way in which they do our thinking for us, via the kinds of "common sense" observations and discriminations they imply. It is examining how humans view the world through the lens of language, particularly the way the positives of nature are seen through the eyes of moral negativity or infinite-negative perfection. Never underestimate the subtle operations of the "theological motive of perfection" even in "language used trivially." Thus, logology, Burke style, emphasizes the way language moralizes things; infinitizes things; absolutizes things; schematizes things by way of pristinely pure categories of being arranged vertically and horizontally in pyramidal fashion; simplifies things where complexity reigns; socializes things by way of associative and dissociative points of identification that knit tribes, clans, nations, and orientations together; polarizes things in terms of dialectical oppositions; partializes things while treating those parts as perfected wholes; dramatizes things via conflicting principles of right and wrong, truth and error, good guys/bad guys, that do battle throughout a discourse unto some sort of morally satisfactory resolution at the end; perfects things; theologizes things; discriminates things hierarchally, one up, one down; treats things that in "reality" may be very finely shaded in all-or-none, either/or terms; addresses individual entities "tautologically," as members of a larger, more abstract classification of being, at least by implication; "entelechially" abstracts and classifies phenomena via symbols in a way that ideally and utterly transcends the "sheer brute materials of the world as it is," deflects attention away from their separate and individual attributes; teleologizes things by way of an overarching title that connotes a moral purpose more than it conjures up a specific image; draws attention to "wrongdoing" and "error"; points the finger of blame at persons, groups, and/or environing conditions for those rule violations; exacts a payment, penalty, or punishment, a compensatory "pound of flesh," for the moral turpitude; and then conjures up a vision of a redeemed sense of justice, redeemed understanding, redeemed relationships, redeemed identity, or redeemed conditions--often even when dealing with nonhuman beings in the supposed realm of nonsymbolic motion. Language communicates "information," dramatism would suggest, but in its own exceedingly creative and contorted way. It brings stirring "pageantry" ("What Are the Signs of What," LASA) to realms beyond the social intercourse of man and womankind. Ed From VM Fri Jan 05 02:32:50 2001 Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 02:32:50 -0600 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 266 Question for information purposes, not critique: Did Burke associate logology with epistemology in so many words? I ask because he presents logology in RofR as a metaphysics of language, an ontology (or at least I think he does). I've always thought of dramatism as epistemic, logology as ontic. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. 970 Applewood Court #3 Coralville, IA 52241 FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 mailto:michael@mcgees.net "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin From VM Fri Jan 05 05:45:36 2001 Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2001 05:45:36 -0500 From: Dan Smith Subject: RE: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 267 "Dramatism and Logology" CQ 33:2 (Spring 1985): 89-93 For the record, I think it's a problematic distinction. -- DS At 02:32 AM 1/5/01 -0600, Michael Calvin McGee wrote: >Question for information purposes, not critique: Did Burke associate >logology with epistemology in so many words? I ask because he presents >logology in RofR as a metaphysics of language, an ontology (or at least I >think he does). I've always thought of dramatism as epistemic, logology as >ontic. > >michael > >Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. >970 Applewood Court #3 >Coralville, IA 52241 >FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 >mailto:michael@mcgees.net > > "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." > --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin > From VM Fri Jan 05 11:36:52 2001 Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 11:36:52 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 268 In Response to Michael and Dan: Here's the abstract from that Spring, 1985, article of Burke's in CQ Dan referred to: "In this essay, Kenneth Burke re-examines his distinction between dramatism and logology which he proposed in 1968. Dramatism is treated as a technique for analyzing language as a mode of action in which specialized nomenclatures are recognized, each with particular ends and insights. Logology is cast as the study of the knowledge acquired by the human being's aptitude for learning communication. Implications for the rhetoric-as-epistemic question conclude this discussion" (p. 89). On the off -chance that Jim Chesebro, editor of CQ at the time, wrote that abstract, let me quote also from the text of Burke's article: "This might be the place to explain why TWO terms for the ONE theory. Though my aim is to be secular and empirical, 'dramatism' and 'logology' are analogous respectively to the traditional distinction (in theology and metaphysics) between ontology and epistemology. My 1968 'dramatism' article (in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences) features what we humans ARE (the symbol-using animal). Logology is rooted in the range and quality of knowledge that we acquire when our bodies (physiological organisms in the realm of non-symbolic motion) come to profit by their pecular aptitude for learning the arbitrary, conventional mediums of communication called 'natural' languages (atop which all sorts of specialized nomenclatures are developed, each with its particular kind of insights). Burke's letter-to-the-editor of the London Times Literary Suplement, August 12, 1986, p. 859, is also frequently cited as a source of Burke's distinction between dramatism as ontology and logology as epistemology. The key phrase in the quotations above, vis-a-vis my previous post, is "the range and quality of knowledge that we acquire" as a result of learning language. My brief exposition meant to elaborate on that "range" and especially that "quality." As for Dan's finding Burke's distinction a "problematic" one, I tend to agree. We can make a distinction between the epistemic "function" of language and the ontological "nature" of the animal that has the innate capacity to learn and use language. I personally am not comfortable, though, with anything close to a rigid differentiation between "dramatism" and "logology" as approaches to our understanding of use of language and the being possessed of that capacity. I've said it before on this list: "logology" is dramatism worked out "to the end of the line," to borrow a phrase. It is implicit in dramatism. It completes the trajectory of implications embodied in Burke's ealier emphasis on a "poetic" (1935) "actor" (1945) performing a "self-interfering act" (1950) for an "ethically" constrained (1935, 1945) purpose. (See especially 1945, pp. 294-97). Thanks for chiming in. Ed From VM Fri Jan 05 11:40:53 2001 Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 11:40:53 -0600 From: "J. Comas" Subject: RE: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 269 On 1/5/01 at 5:45 AM, Dan Smith wrote: > For the record, I think it's a problematic distinction. On 1/5/01 at 11:36 AM, Edappel8@cs.com wrote: > As for Dan's finding Burke's distinction a "problematic" one, I tend to > agree. We can make a distinction between the epistemic "function" of > language and the ontological "nature" of the animal that has the innate > capacity to learn and use language. I personally am not comfortable, though, > with anything close to a rigid differentiation between "dramatism" and > "logology" as approaches to our understanding of use of language and the > being possessed of that capacity. I've said it before on this list: > "logology" is dramatism worked out "to the end of the line," to borrow a > phrase. It is implicit in dramatism. It completes the trajectory of > implications embodied in Burke's ealier emphasis on a "poetic" (1935) "actor" > (1945) performing a "self-interfering act" (1950) for an "ethically" > constrained (1935, 1945) purpose. (See especially 1945, pp. 294-97). Perhaps it is not the distinction between the two concepts that is problematic as much as the relationship between the two, specifically the relation of priority which would ground a philosophy (viz., first philosophy). Do we find Burke giving priority to logology, which would put him in the Descartes-Kant-Husserl tradition of grounding philosophy in epistemology; or do we find Burke giving priority to dramatism, which would align him with the ontological/metaphysical tenor of twentieth-century Continental philosophy? Or do we find this relation of priority to be undecided in Burke's thought? And might such indecision (whether it characterizes Burke's thought or not) be a quality that could be called "postmodern"? Jim -- J. Comas, Assistant Professor Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia ---------------------------------- From VM Fri Jan 05 15:27:12 2001 Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 15:27:12 -0800 From: RWess@orst.edu Subject: FW: A law for one person? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 270 More on Bush v Gore, not Burke, so you may want to delete and move on-- You may recall the dialogue on Bush v Gore that a few people on the list forwarded to us. The author, Mark Levine, is a lawyer, so I sent him a few questions; I included my essay but it's not reproduced here. The questions are reproduced below. His response follows. Based on what he says, what the Court did was essentially a lawless act that is lawful only because the Court did it. In my questions, I refer to the Florida Supreme Court's response to the US Supreme Court. It's available at www.flcourts.org (or at least it was when I last checked the week after Christmas). *** Many thanks for your "Layman's Guide to the Supreme Court Decision in Bush v. Gore." Below is an essay (about 2000 words) I wrote in anger the day after the decision. Writing it was the only way I could get the anger out of my head. If you have the time, maybe you could explain a few legal issues. The main one centers on a sentence in the decision that you address and that I take up in my penultimate paragraph. The sentence occurs at pp. 10-11 in the "Per Curiam" opinion: "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities." I didn't think the Court could do this. Is there a legal principle that allows it? I thought the law always had to be general. This sentence seems to me to be like writing a law applicable to one person. Is this legally permissible? Is there anything I could read that would cover it? I note that the Court cites no case law justifying what they do here. Is this sentence without precedent? Am I right in my guess in my penultimate paragraph that the reason the Court had to remand the case back to Florida is that otherwise it would have had to rule the Florida law unconstitutional and that such a ruling could not be limited to this particular case? Finally, have you seen the 12/22 opinion the Florida Supreme Court issued in response to the Court's 12/12 remand? Florida takes issue with the US Supremes on some matters. Is there precedent for that? Many thanks for your time. ---------- From: MarkLevineEsq@aol.com[SMTP:MarkLevineEsq@aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 2:39 PM To: RWess@orst.edu Subject: Re: A law for one person? In a message dated 12/29/00 1:50:52 PM Pacific Standard Time, RWess@orst.edu writes: > > I didn't think the Court could do this. They can do anything they want, according to their rulings. This would presumably include declaring martial law and deposing the President, since there is apparently no requirement that their rulings be either legal or Constitutional (I did not think this prior to this decision.) Like the Pope, they are tautologically infallible. Is there a legal principle that > allows it? None before now. I thought the law always had to be general. True, until now. This sentence seems > to me to be like writing a law applicable to one person. Yes, the "Gore Exception" Is this legally > permissible? Not according to the rule of law that used to exist in this country. Indeed, it appears to violate the ex post facto clause of the US Constitution as well as the bill of attainder clause. Is there anything I could read that would cover it? > Not until now. > I note that the Court cites no case law justifying what they do in this > sentence. There isn't any. Is the reasoning in this sentence without precedent? Yes. > Am I right in my guess in my penultimate paragraph that the reason the Court > had to remand the case back to Florida is that otherwise it would have had > to rule the Florida law unconstitutional and that such a ruling could not be > limited to this particular case? > Actually, as I read the opinion, they necessarily and logically did declare Florida's and 33 states' laws unconstitutional. But as you note, they may have been purposely vague on this. It is indeed hard to get a political result you want when there is not only no law to support it, but no logic to support it either. That's why they had to avoid both logic and law. > Finally, have you seen the 12/22 opinion the Florida Supreme Court issued in > response to the Court's 12/12 remand? yes Florida takes issue with the US > Supremes on some matters. Is there precedent for that? yes, though the best opinion, J.Quince's concurrence does not have the force of law. There is lots of precedent for a lower court complaining about a higher court opinion on remand. Sometimes, on rare occasions, the lower court even prevails in a long ping-pong match of opinion and remand before two higher and lower courts. Sometimes the higher court just refuses to remand in order to prevail. --ML From VM Sat Jan 06 01:15:32 2001 Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 01:15:32 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 271 First, thanks to Robert for his very helpful post on the "Supreme Miscarriage." His questions and Levine's answers home in on the most risible aspect of the Court's lawless "legal" act. This injudicial piece of work is going to keep commentators and scholars in many fields busy for some time to come. It will not be forgotten. As for Jim's comments and questions on Burke's "priorities" in respect to issues of ontology vs. epistemology, or dramatism vs. logology, let add a thought or two: First, I personally don't want to prioritize any one book or idea or period in Burke's' corpus or career and say, "This is the essence of Burke's philosophy. Everything else merely builds up to it. Or everything else is kind of an elaboration or afterthought." We all know that Burke was not systematic in the presentation of his philosophy. At best, he was elliptical. Users of Burkology can take any parts of it they want to use and ignore the rest. Their obligation is to justify with sound reasons what they are doing with Burke's notions. As Jim Chesebro once said to me, with some validity, "Burke is preparadigmatic. You provide the paradigm." Taking this tack, interpreters are justified in privileging the earlier, so-called "dramatistic" period, or the later, so-called "logological" period, Burke's ontology or his epistemology. Burke's lack of system absolves us from any obligation to privilege one part over another. Second, I modify the later logological/epistemological period with the verbal modifier "so-called" because, as I see it, the ontological ramifications of the ideas Burke highlights in his later works are just as patent, or virtually just as pronounced, as the epistemological ones. Surely, the hortatory negative, the motive of pefection or entelechy, and the terms of the guilt-redemption cycle have much to do with a philosophy of being as it relates to humankind. When was it, after all, that Burke proposed his "definition of man [sic]," a notion supercharged with ontological overtones. It's very hard to pigeonhole Burke, in my judgment, in respect to various angles of approach. Several Burke scholars have called Burke a "realist," notably Brockriede and Fisher in an article published back in the '70's, I believe. Brock has denominated Burke a "critical realist" in the intro to Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought. I don't take issue with either of these conclusions per se. What I would add is: Burke is also a pragmatist, an idealist, a materialist (in the sense in which Burke defines the term in GM), and a mystic. The standards of "truith" Burke directly proposes or implies in P & C, CS, and PLF are distinctly pragmatic, in my judgment. His emphasis on the motivational power of the scene-act ratio is notably "materialist." His accentuation of the negative, the empirically empty content of the abstractions that are symbols, and the controlling influence of theological motivations in human life can fairly be described as "mystical." And although his "idealism," or stress placed upon the agent-act correspondence, might not get as much play in his thought as the other four philosophical stances, it is there to be reckoned with in the Grammar and in Burke's overall treatment of the terms of the pentad as coequal motivational forces. As for Burke's "realism," by the way, Crusius argues in Kenneth Burke and the Conversation After Philosophy that Burke didn't necessarily believe in the actual reality of human action in the "free moral agent," or partially "free moral agent," sense. Crusius takes issue with Lentricchia and Rueckert on this point. Tim had lots of conversations with Burke. He says only that Burke's "bottom line," as set forlth in "Terministic Screens" in LASA, is that human beings can't "get along" with one another on any other assumption than that they, in some sense, freely act rather than blindly succumb to chemical, biological, and environmental forces over which they have no control. Dramatism/logology appears to be a "meta-philosophy," operating on a high, high level of abstraction that serves as a source of critique and means of analysis of various other systems of thought. As for whether such seeming definitional "indeterminacy" places Burke and his philosophy squarely within the realm of postmodernism, I'll leave that up to Jim, an "Encyclopedist" of the postmodern, for whom my question would be: Is the Encyclopedia of Postmodernism out yet? The last time I asked about it at Borders, they couldn't find it in their computer. Ed From VM Sat Jan 06 00:20:54 2001 Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 00:20:54 -0800 From: "Hugh Ellis" Subject: RE: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 272 That is absolutely the most beautiful thing I have read in years. If Burke could write like that he would have transformed the world. (Please pardon my enthusiasm.) Thank you. Hugh Ellis -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu]On Behalf Of Edappel8@cs.com Sent: Friday, January 05, 2001 12:04 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Language as Transmission of Information In Response to Jim: I don't think the dramatistic slant on language as a means of communication of information is one that makes us go either/or. The questions we need to address are: what is primary in language and how does the information we derive from language-use come to us. Elaborating on Burke's Merriam-Webster definition, we might say: Dramatism is a critique of language or philosophy of language that posits that language is primarily a mode of interested, tendentious, value-laden, purposeful moral action, and a call to purposeful moral action as physical enterprise, rather than a means of transmitting disinterested, objective, value-free information. Language primarily expresses an attitude, creates an orientation toward certain pathways of action, gives cues to action and a command to follow those cues, rather than objectively describes and gives information. Language does give information, but it does so in its own incomplete, distorted, selective, deflective, prismatic, refractive, concealing as well as revealing, tunnel-vision, funhouse-mirror way. Thus, dramatism is an epistemology of a kind, a philosophy of knowledge, a description of the way humans come to "know" the world. It is, though, it seems to me, an epistemology that emphasizes the way language creatively superimposes on the "object world" motivational concepts that do not necessarily inhere in it. It synthesizes and organizes phenomena in reference to mental schema that ineluctably dramatize, charge the blind motions of nature with hints, or, in more archaic cultures, picturesque myths of moral conflict. Language, for Burke, seems to operate on human thought forms much like Kant's transcendental ego, with its a priori categories of understanding. (Jim Comas recently called attention to the analogy betweern Burke and Kant.) Dramatism would therefore strongly suggest that, with respect to "information" about "things in themselves" out there in the natural world, language obfuscates as well as illuminates, serves as an obstacle to acquistion of "true knowledge," as it were, as well as vehicle of transmission of useful information. It's not just an obstacle or such a vehicle. There's no either/or. It is both/and. Burke calls his philosophy looked at as an epistemology "logology," the study of words as such, the study of the way language presents the world to human beings. Burke's great logological emphasis is that, when we view the world through the creative optics of language, we are "seeing" that world not only through the refractive lens of drama, but more particularly through the shaping contours of the ultimate drama of theology. Most particularly, "logology" is "the systematic study of theological terms for the light they might throw on the forms of language" ("Termistic Screens, LASA), theological terms being the most thoroughgoing, far-reaching, ultimate terms in language. Studying theological terms is like studying language in terms of its biggest picture, its most sharply defined relief map. "Logology" can also be defined as tracking down the implications of words in terms of the way in which they do our thinking for us, via the kinds of "common sense" observations and discriminations they imply. It is examining how humans view the world through the lens of language, particularly the way the positives of nature are seen through the eyes of moral negativity or infinite-negative perfection. Never underestimate the subtle operations of the "theological motive of perfection" even in "language used trivially." Thus, logology, Burke style, emphasizes the way language moralizes things; infinitizes things; absolutizes things; schematizes things by way of pristinely pure categories of being arranged vertically and horizontally in pyramidal fashion; simplifies things where complexity reigns; socializes things by way of associative and dissociative points of identification that knit tribes, clans, nations, and orientations together; polarizes things in terms of dialectical oppositions; partializes things while treating those parts as perfected wholes; dramatizes things via conflicting principles of right and wrong, truth and error, good guys/bad guys, that do battle throughout a discourse unto some sort of morally satisfactory resolution at the end; perfects things; theologizes things; discriminates things hierarchally, one up, one down; treats things that in "reality" may be very finely shaded in all-or-none, either/or terms; addresses individual entities "tautologically," as members of a larger, more abstract classification of being, at least by implication; "entelechially" abstracts and classifies phenomena via symbols in a way that ideally and utterly transcends the "sheer brute materials of the world as it is," deflects attention away from their separate and individual attributes; teleologizes things by way of an overarching title that connotes a moral purpose more than it conjures up a specific image; draws attention to "wrongdoing" and "error"; points the finger of blame at persons, groups, and/or environing conditions for those rule violations; exacts a payment, penalty, or punishment, a compensatory "pound of flesh," for the moral turpitude; and then conjures up a vision of a redeemed sense of justice, redeemed understanding, redeemed relationships, redeemed identity, or redeemed conditions--often even when dealing with nonhuman beings in the supposed realm of nonsymbolic motion. Language communicates "information," dramatism would suggest, but in its own exceedingly creative and contorted way. It brings stirring "pageantry" ("What Are the Signs of What," LASA) to realms beyond the social intercourse of man and womankind. Ed From VM Sat Jan 06 23:41:33 2001 Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 23:41:33 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: A Law for One Person? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 273 First, a sincere thank you to Hugh for his more than kind comments about my January 5th post. I really appreciate your response. Second, as follow up to the very useful info from attorney Mark Levine that Robert posted for us, I want to reiterate my profound disappointment at the behavior of Democratic office-holders in the wake of the Florida fiasco. In my judgment, they rank somewhere between the "gang of five" (In)Justices and rock bottom. They perpetrated their final act of betrayal in the House Chamber today when not one Democratic senator would stand by the African-American House members who protested Congressional validation of the Florida vote. Their cowardice or indifference--or whatever it was--at such a focal moment is the ultimate affront. It tells the Blacks of Florida and Blacks in general: not even your supposed friends and political allies care a whit that you were systematically, or semi-systematically, disenfranchised in half a dozen different ways in the "Sunshine State." You say you made an extra-intense effort to get to the polls this time around, the stakes, in your judgment, being so high? Don't bother us with your whining. We've got you in our back pocket, so we're not going to sour the mood of "good feeling" and political sportsmanship the country might expect from us as we approach January 20. Be glad you even have the franchise at all. It's not as though white people in our own state were harrassed on their way to the voting booth or turned away because they were told they were felons, when they weren't, or condemned to use the most unreliable polling equipment. In due time we'll get to your case, so disappear for a while. Be seen, perhaps, but not heard. Frankly, you're embarrassing us. We needed a profile in courage from one senator today, just one. Didn't get it. Ed From VM Mon Jan 08 10:02:51 2001 Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 10:02:51 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: A law for one person Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 274 On Mark Levine's response: I'm not certain that he is entirely accurate on the unprecedented nature of the non-prospective rule of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. It is very unusual, and it certainly flies in the face of the prospective effect of law (which ensures fairness and limits such decisions), but not unknown. I seem to remember years ago reading some law articles about this practice. I'll investigate and let you know what I find. Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Mon Jan 08 10:05:05 2001 Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 10:05:05 -0600 From: "J. Comas" Subject: Re: Language as Transmission of Information Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 275 On 1/6/01 at 1:15 AM, Edappel8@cs.com wrote: > As for whether such seeming definitional "indeterminacy" places Burke and his > philosophy squarely within the realm of postmodernism, I'll leave that up to > Jim, an "Encyclopedist" of the postmodern, for whom my question would be: Is > the Encyclopedia of Postmodernism out yet? The last time I asked about it at > Borders, they couldn't find it in their computer. I haven't received my copy of the _Encyclopedia of Postmodernism_, so can't say with certainty that it's out. Routledge still lists the publication date as Nov 2000; and Borders.com lists the book as available. The intent of my previous questions was to raise, very tentatively, the possibility that it may be productive to regard a postmodern philosophy as one that chooses neither epistemology nor ontology/metaphysics as "first philosophy" but, instead, recognizes as problematic the traditional relationship between these two branches of philosophy. I think the question of conceptualizing the "postmodern" (and how Burke's thought may help us address this question) is more interesting than the question of whether or not Burke's thought fits within any preconceived notion of postmodernism. Jim -- J. Comas, Assistant Professor Department of English University of Missouri-Columbia ---------------------------------- From VM Mon Jan 08 13:19:02 2001 Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 13:19:02 -0800 From: RWess@orst.edu Subject: RE: A law for one person Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 276 Clarke, thanks in advance for checking. I'd very much like to know anything you could find. Bob ---------- From: rountrj@email.uah.edu[SMTP:rountrj@email.uah.edu] Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 7:03 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: A law for one person On Mark Levine's response: I'm not certain that he is entirely accurate on the unprecedented nature of the non-prospective rule of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. It is very unusual, and it certainly flies in the face of the prospective effect of law (which ensures fairness and limits such decisions), but not unknown. I seem to remember years ago reading some law articles about this practice. I'll investigate and let you know what I find. Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Mon Jan 08 13:38:29 2001 Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 13:38:29 -0800 From: RWess@orst.edu Subject: RE: A Law for One Person? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 277 Ed, can't say the Democratic senators surprised me. The Democratic establishment has become little more than the Republican party but with a human smile (not heart or guts). A few years back I heard Noam Chomsky argue the thesis that the Democratic establishment today is to the right of Richard Nixon. Maybe he's right. Bob ---------- From: Edappel8@cs.com[SMTP:Edappel8@cs.com] Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 8:42 PM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: A Law for One Person? First, a sincere thank you to Hugh for his more than kind comments about my January 5th post. I really appreciate your response. Second, as follow up to the very useful info from attorney Mark Levine that Robert posted for us, I want to reiterate my profound disappointment at the behavior of Democratic office-holders in the wake of the Florida fiasco. In my judgment, they rank somewhere between the "gang of five" (In)Justices and rock bottom. They perpetrated their final act of betrayal in the House Chamber today when not one Democratic senator would stand by the African-American House members who protested Congressional validation of the Florida vote. Their cowardice or indifference--or whatever it was--at such a focal moment is the ultimate affront. It tells the Blacks of Florida and Blacks in general: not even your supposed friends and political allies care a whit that you were systematically, or semi-systematically, disenfranchised in half a dozen different ways in the "Sunshine State." You say you made an extra-intense effort to get to the polls this time around, the stakes, in your judgment, being so high? Don't bother us with your whining. We've got you in our back pocket, so we're not going to sour the mood of "good feeling" and political sportsmanship the country might expect from us as we approach January 20. Be glad you even have the franchise at all. It's not as though white people in our own state were harrassed on their way to the voting booth or turned away because they were told they were felons, when they weren't, or condemned to use the most unreliable polling equipment. In due time we'll get to your case, so disappear for a while. Be seen, perhaps, but not heard. Frankly, you're embarrassing us. We needed a profile in courage from one senator today, just one. Didn't get it. Ed From VM Mon Jan 08 16:59:27 2001 Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 16:59:27 -0500 From: John M Duffy Subject: RE: A Law for One Person? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 278 Chomsky has also made the argument that the Democrats and Republicans are essentially different branches of one political party: The Business Party. The internecine warfare between branches may become intense, as in Florida, but the essential interests remain shared and consistent. In this case the common interests include: support for increased arms production, for NAFTA and the WTO, for the death penalty, for the drug war, for the use of food and medical sanctions as a political weapon. John Duffy >Ed, can't say the Democratic senators surprised me. The Democratic >establishment has become little more than the Republican party but with a >human smile (not heart or guts). A few years back I heard Noam Chomsky >argue the thesis that the Democratic establishment today is to the right of >Richard Nixon. Maybe he's right. Bob > > ---------- > From: Edappel8@cs.com[SMTP:Edappel8@cs.com] > Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 8:42 PM > To: kb@purdue.edu > Subject: A Law for One Person? > > First, a sincere thank you to Hugh for his more than kind comments >about my > January 5th post. I really appreciate your response. > > Second, as follow up to the very useful info from attorney Mark >Levine that > Robert posted for us, I want to reiterate my profound disappointment >at the > behavior of Democratic office-holders in the wake of the Florida >fiasco. In > my judgment, they rank somewhere between the "gang of five" >(In)Justices and > rock bottom. They perpetrated their final act of betrayal in the >House > Chamber today when not one Democratic senator would stand by the > African-American House members who protested Congressional >validation of the > Florida vote. Their cowardice or indifference--or whatever it >was--at such a > focal moment is the ultimate affront. It tells the Blacks of >Florida and > Blacks in general: not even your supposed friends and political >allies care a > whit that you were systematically, or semi-systematically, >disenfranchised in > half a dozen different ways in the "Sunshine State." You say you >made an > extra-intense effort to get to the polls this time around, the >stakes, in > your judgment, being so high? Don't bother us with your whining. >We've got > you in our back pocket, so we're not going to sour the mood of "good >feeling" > and political sportsmanship the country might expect from us as we >approach > January 20. Be glad you even have the franchise at all. It's not >as though > white people in our own state were harrassed on their way to the >voting booth > or turned away because they were told they were felons, when they >weren't, or > condemned to use the most unreliable polling equipment. In due time >we'll > get to your case, so disappear for a while. Be seen, perhaps, but >not heard. > Frankly, you're embarrassing us. > > We needed a profile in courage from one senator today, just one. > > Didn't get it. > > > > Ed > John M. Duffy Assistant Professor of English Director, University Writing Center B012 DeBartolo Hall University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556-5692 (219) 631-7265 From VM Mon Jan 08 17:51:21 2001 Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 17:51:21 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) From: "James F. Klumpp" Subject: Re: RE: A Law for One Person? Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 279 Let me put my oar in the water here, although this discussion seems less Burkean and more a matter of political background. Some political scientists have argued that there are currently four political parties: Congressional Democrat, Congressional Republican, Presidential Democrat and Presidential Republican. The analysis differentiates on ideology rather than on what is on the membership card in their pockets. I would modify this a bit. It seems to me that there are three parties, Congressional Democrats, Congressional Republican, and Presidential. The third of these is not simply an in-betweener, but a different ideological base, tied more heavily to pragmatism and incrementalism than the other two. Both Gore and Bush fit nicely into such an analysis as Presidentials. The upshot of this analysis if true, is that we are now in a situation where each of the three parties hold a veto power. That is, to the Presidential veto add the near total split in the two houses of Congress, with the closure rules making the split in the Senate a veto split. The analogy here is the UN Security Council during the cold war. This turns the normal relationship of a triumvirate -- each party seeks an alliance with a second that would overcome the third -- on its head. It is a formula for legistlative inaction which places the locus of action within the confines of executive power. ---------------------- James F. Klumpp jk44@umail.umd.edu Voice: 301-405-6520 FAX: 301-314-9471 HomePage: http://www.wam.umd.edu/~jklumpp/home.htm From VM Mon Jan 08 17:40:54 2001 Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 17:40:54 -0500 From: "Herbert W. Simons" Subject: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 280 Herbert W. Simons wrote: Noam Chomsky, then Ralph Nader, then Robert Wess and J. M. Duffy (among others) have alleged that the Democrats and Republicans are, as Duffy put it, essentially different branches of one party, the Business Party. There is surely something to be said for their argument, but now that we know what the two "branches" are a part of, Burke would enjoin us to desynonymize, seeing ways that they are "apart from" one another. Begin with the truism that the two parties aren't just concernd with the business of business. Each has a social agenda, the Dems typically far more liberal than the Repubs on such matters as a woman's right to choose, gay rights, affirmative action, treatment vs.punishment for drug offenders, prayer in schools, etc. While attention has been focused on the abortion issue in re George W's S likely appointees to the Court, the more consequential question is whether the next appointees will join the Conservative Five in behalf of "States Rights," thus further nullifying a host of gains for "have-nots," introduced by the pre-1994 Democratic Congress and, subsequently, by executive orders and regulatory decisions under Clinton's rule. Then add that Dems and Repubs have had vastly different environmental policies under Dems and Repubs. Remember James Watt? We're about to get his protege, thanks in part to Brother Ralph's failure to desynonymize. Also kiss goodbye efforts initiated under the Dems to reign in Big Tobacco, the drug manufacturers, the gun sellers and manufacturers. Their lobbyists made it abundantly clear which presidential candidate they preferred in 2001. As for NAFTA and IMF (and World Bank and Gatt, etc.), I've yet to read a compelling argument that Nader is much different from Buchanan on these organizations. Were the Nader and Buchanan parties "branches" of the Anti-globalization Party? The same simplistic logic would seem to apply. -- Herbert W. Simons Professor of Speech Communications 265-65 Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122 wk: 215-204-1880 fax: 215-204-8543 hm: 215-844-5969 Coordinator Temple Issues Forum, http://www.temple.edu/tif Homepage, http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons From VM Tue Jan 09 10:39:18 2001 Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 10:39:18 -0500 From: John M Duffy Subject: Re: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 281 Herbert W. Simons is right when he notes the differences between Democrats and Republicans. Even if one accepts--and many would not--that Democrats and Republicans are two branches of the same tree, this does not mean that there cannot be real and substantive differences between the two sides. And these differences are most evident, as Simons points out, in the social agendas of the two parties. The Bush cabinet nominations provide ample evidence. Also, it seems clear that there are various branches on the Republican side--their business branch (Bush the Elder), their Christian branch (Falwell, etc.), their neo-confederate branch (Ashcroft, Trent Lott, Bob Barr). Yet it is equally true that Democrats as well as Republicans are responsible for the upward redistribution of income and wealth, and the punishment of the poor in the last decade. One need only look at Clinton's role in what the media call welfare "reform," which redefined the place of poor single mothers by forcing them from the home into the workplace, generally into marginal jobs that provided neither health care or child care. Similarly, Democrats are responsible for the creation and expansion of NAFTA, as well as the growing influence of such bodies as the WTO and IMF, all of which serve primarily to protect the interests of banks and corporations at the expense of working people and the environment. (Buchanan's views on all this, it seems to me, are an irrelevancy). So one can choose to work with the better of two, or try to create a third choice. Apologies for the lack of Burke in the above remarks. Partly the topic, perhaps, but really more my ignorance. I'm a Burkean neophyte and learning a lot from this list. Many thanks, John >Herbert W. Simons wrote: > >Noam Chomsky, then Ralph Nader, then Robert Wess and J. M. Duffy (among >others) have alleged that the Democrats and Republicans are, as Duffy >put it, essentially different branches of one party, the Business Party. >There is surely something to be said for their argument, but now that we >know what the two "branches" are a part of, Burke would enjoin us to >desynonymize, seeing ways that they are "apart from" one another. > >Begin with the truism that the two parties aren't just concernd with the >business of business. Each has a social agenda, the Dems typically far >more liberal than the Repubs on such matters as a woman's right to >choose, gay rights, affirmative action, treatment vs.punishment for drug >offenders, prayer in schools, etc. While attention has been focused on >the abortion issue in re George W's S likely appointees to the Court, >the more consequential question is whether the next appointees will join >the Conservative Five in behalf of "States Rights," thus further >nullifying a host of gains for "have-nots," introduced by the pre-1994 >Democratic Congress and, subsequently, by executive orders and >regulatory decisions under Clinton's rule. > >Then add that Dems and Repubs have had vastly different environmental >policies under Dems and Repubs. Remember James Watt? We're about to get >his protege, thanks in part to Brother Ralph's failure to desynonymize. > >Also kiss goodbye efforts initiated under the Dems to reign in Big >Tobacco, the drug manufacturers, the gun sellers and manufacturers. >Their lobbyists made it abundantly clear which presidential candidate >they preferred in 2001. > >As for NAFTA and IMF (and World Bank and Gatt, etc.), I've yet to read a >compelling argument that Nader is much different from Buchanan on these >organizations. Were the Nader and Buchanan parties "branches" of the >Anti-globalization Party? > >The same simplistic logic would seem to apply. > > >-- >Herbert W. Simons >Professor of Speech Communications >265-65 Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122 >wk: 215-204-1880 fax: 215-204-8543 >hm: 215-844-5969 >Coordinator Temple Issues Forum, http://www.temple.edu/tif >Homepage, http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons John M. Duffy Assistant Professor of English Director, University Writing Center B012 DeBartolo Hall University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556-5692 (219) 631-7265 From VM Tue Jan 09 09:42:13 2001 Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 09:42:13 -0600 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 282 Perhaps several of us who believe it are not finding the correct way of articulating that the decided shift of the Democrat Party to the right has resulted in a one-party system. Desynonmizing might thus be a good idea. Most of the particulars you refer to, Herb, have to do with different conceptions of what constitutes social "justice." Both major parties have significant constituencies of "social issue" identification. Social issue Democrats want to protect the environment, include more than exclude members of the growing underclass, and to universalize human rights. Republicans, on the other hand, define "social issue" in more specific ways with the rights of sovereign individuals. The driving force of the first set of "social issue" identifications is decidedly secular, the force of the second set of "social issue" identifications is spiritual. Redefinition of the "conservative" and "liberal" symbols all have to do with one's attitude toward social issues. This said, the two parties have moved closer together in all other ways. The USAmerican political spectrum has never been narrower. Perhaps "Business Party" is the wrong term, but we are to think straight, some term must bear the burden of saying that the center of the Democrat Party is what we used to think of as "Rockefeller Republican." Perhaps the term ought to designate what "moderates" conceive themselves to be in both parties. Is it fair to say that the "moderate Republican" is one who is unconcerned with social issues, or who defines social issues in a secular way? The "moderate Democrat" could be so identified because she is a Federalist on "Business issued" and/or takes the spiritual attitude toward social issues? michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. 970 Applewood Court #3 Coralville, IA 52241 FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 mailto:michael@mcgees.net "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin From VM Tue Jan 09 11:03:42 2001 Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 11:03:42 -0500 From: "JON ROBERTS" Subject: [Fwd: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party"] Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 283 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------C8BCC14A071A440F180E6F3F Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --------------C8BCC14A071A440F180E6F3F Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <3A5B0C26.2F8C640@stacmail.stac.edu> Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 08:03:35 -0500 From: JON ROBERTS Organization: St.Thomas Aquinas College X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Herbert W. Simons" Subject: Re: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" References: <3A5A41F0.7412F889@astro.temple.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I apologize for the lack of explicit Burke content in what follows though I wonder what you would have to say about Burke's take on the "them vs. us" appeal launched by Gore during the convention. Prof. Simons makes some good points but I feel I must respond in order to prevent Nader's appeal from being lost entirely. Nader ran on a simple premise: he wants to reverse the trend toward what I call "voter nullification" whereby campaign contributions and soft money can effectively erase voter will. One reason why Ashcroft lost to a dead man in Missouri was because he campaigned against the will of most of his constituency for permitting people to tote concealed weapons. He was remunerated for his services by the NRA. And, to be fair, Joe Lieberman has 3.5 million sitting in his war chest from any number of pharmaceutical firms. Nader's issue was that there can be no self-governance if money can nullify votes. Insofar as neither party is willing to end campaign contribution from lobbies, interest groups, and corporations, period, they both stand in the way of popular rule. Every other issue follows from the question of whose being represented. Look at the energy deregulation fiasco supported bipartisanly. Energy companies knew, as did member of Congress, that competition would allow them to become secondary as well as primary suppliers of energy. But congress told us that competition would bring prices down. If then rate hikes were unforeseen, it was only we citizens who did not foresee them. Do you think, deregulation would have gotten through congress any other way? As far as the Supreme Court is concerned, it should be remembered that Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the senate and that Thomas could not have become a justice unless less eleven Democrats voted for him. And for Nafta and WTO stuff, Buchanan is simply an isolationist, though he is quite happy to allow American capital regulate world finance from home; Nader's stance is consistent with the opposite view, that America should not impose it market values on the rest of the world as a form of economic imperialism. We run the show but Nader would like us to stop rigging the game. If his appeal, like Buchanan's, is primarily about jobs, it is because he is trying to win votes. Most folks just don't care about America's dominance in business. Anti-globalization no more describes the different views of Nader and Buchanan than Anti-Hitler did America and the Soviets in WWII, but I think that is Prof. Simons's point. That's why I offer this explanation. Professor Simons is right to point out that Nader did not make enough of the differences between the two business parties but that's not his job. It was Gore's job to do that and when he makes a "them vs. us" appeal at the convention which scares the heck out of the Republicans who immediately accuse him of trying to incite class war and back away from it in the weeks that followed insisting how corporation friendly he was, he does not help his own case. Best, Jack Roberts "Herbert W. Simons" wrote: > Herbert W. Simons wrote: > > Noam Chomsky, then Ralph Nader, then Robert Wess and J. M. Duffy (among > others) have alleged that the Democrats and Republicans are, as Duffy > put it, essentially different branches of one party, the Business Party. > There is surely something to be said for their argument, but now that we > know what the two "branches" are a part of, Burke would enjoin us to > desynonymize, seeing ways that they are "apart from" one another. > > Begin with the truism that the two parties aren't just concernd with the > business of business. Each has a social agenda, the Dems typically far > more liberal than the Repubs on such matters as a woman's right to > choose, gay rights, affirmative action, treatment vs.punishment for drug > offenders, prayer in schools, etc. While attention has been focused on > the abortion issue in re George W's S likely appointees to the Court, > the more consequential question is whether the next appointees will join > the Conservative Five in behalf of "States Rights," thus further > nullifying a host of gains for "have-nots," introduced by the pre-1994 > Democratic Congress and, subsequently, by executive orders and > regulatory decisions under Clinton's rule. > > Then add that Dems and Repubs have had vastly different environmental > policies under Dems and Repubs. Remember James Watt? We're about to get > his protege, thanks in part to Brother Ralph's failure to desynonymize. > > Also kiss goodbye efforts initiated under the Dems to reign in Big > Tobacco, the drug manufacturers, the gun sellers and manufacturers. > Their lobbyists made it abundantly clear which presidential candidate > they preferred in 2001. > > As for NAFTA and IMF (and World Bank and Gatt, etc.), I've yet to read a > compelling argument that Nader is much different from Buchanan on these > organizations. Were the Nader and Buchanan parties "branches" of the > Anti-globalization Party? > > The same simplistic logic would seem to apply. > > -- > Herbert W. Simons > Professor of Speech Communications > 265-65 Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122 > wk: 215-204-1880 fax: 215-204-8543 > hm: 215-844-5969 > Coordinator Temple Issues Forum, http://www.temple.edu/tif > Homepage, http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons --------------C8BCC14A071A440F180E6F3F-- From VM Tue Jan 09 11:27:14 2001 Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 11:27:14 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 284 Put me on Herb's side on this one, for reasons I've already given in a previous post, the one in which I made reference to Thomas Friedman's column in the NYT. Like Herb, Friedman covered a lot of the ground that separates the two parties. I am most disappointed in the behavior of elected Democrats, particularly senators, in what Maureen Dowd has called the chronicles of "The Hundred Chads War." That dismay does not for me, however, translate into a conflation of the two parties from top to bottom. Herb has put this discussion back on Burkean grounds. One of the messages of CS is: Opposites explain; differences--as well as, and perhaps more than, similarities--define. They make for "counter-statements." There is also, though, running throughout Burke's corpus, emphasis on the "cooperative," uniform grounding that makes viable those "competitive," dialectical divergences. Groups with nothing in common are less likely to join together in ideological combat. (What would they fight over?) For USAmerican voters with strong convictions, the question, of course, becomes: Are the differences between the two major parties striking enough to warrant support for one side against the other, even though in a two-party polity there's bound to be centripital pressure, movement toward the center of the political spectrum. (Paul Turpin posted some good stuff on this question a few months back.) Or should a partisan wax idealistic, thumb his or her nose at the "bureaucratization of the imaginative" one of the two large, mainstream parties will inevitably succumb to, and vote for the "true blue" party or candidate on the wing that hasn't got a chance of election, but whose more prescient insight and potent moral force may, in due time, "bring the nation to its senses." I opt for a "bird in the hand" now. On the issue that vexes me most profoundly, the one that Burke addressed as early as P&C and was even more preoccupied with in D&D and the Helhaven Papers, the issue of the environment and what the business-of-America-is-business ideology is doing to it--on this question, I say let's ameliorate things as best we can at present. Sadly, needed radical change for the better will not come until things get markedly worse, when "the sheer brute materials of the world as it is," the "unanswerable opponent," grinds our commercial rhetoric to bits. Nader's discourse won't do it, I am afraid. Robert did say, as I recall, he could defend his Nader vote "on Burkean grounds." I invite him to do so. Ed From VM Tue Jan 09 23:18:42 2001 Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 23:18:42 -0600 From: gary scott groce Subject: Re: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 285 it seems harsh to me to place all blame on the voters who actually voted for someone whose views were most aligned with theirs. should nader and his followers be scapegoated? i'm sure many voted with their consciences, and maybe as many went over to gore, realizing the race was close. at least they participated; at least they voted. scapegoating nader has become so common and mainstream that tom tomorrow has already lampooned it in This Modern World. but, admittedly, it is an interesting tendency. just imagine all the variables at work to get bush elected, and in particular, i'm thinking of the nearly 50% non-voting but eligible voters in the country. have they somehow been excluded from party politics? if so, what force excludes them? for instance, how many people have been invited to a democratic convention, and who, in fact, is regularly invited to these events? perhaps party politics have become too exclusive. that's not a problem for the republican party, except for elections, which can be won with money (about 95% of the time), as i believe everyone knows. however, for democrats, whose myth of egalitarianism and equality relies on participation, exclusive practices must cause feelings of impiety. their ideals are clashing violently with reality regarding participation. the resulting guilt can be great and is well known to conservatives who often joke about "liberal guilt." but, as some have mentioned, those "vastly different environmental policies" haven't exactly led to any improvements in our environment. perhaps the economic shift from industry to services has helped much more. and the "host of gains for 'have-nots'" escape most of us. welfare reform, the continued bombing of iraq, the use of mines and DUs, and the recent "Colombia Project" of the Clinton administration all indicate that most people simply do not matter to the party, whose ideals have little resemblance to its actions. the resulting division seems to far outdistance the movement of merger. but, those governmental actions listed above, which may be unknown and seem like diffuse abstractions to most working people, may not be the problem with american non-participation in the election. it may also be very difficult for people with serious problems to take things like elections very seriously, although i realize this may not seem like a good excuse for most people reading this. it's true that bush isn't gore, but the most interesting part of this concern with nader may be the assumption of his complete and effective instrumentality regarding the recent "election." -g. s. groce, siu From VM Wed Jan 10 08:04:44 2001 Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 08:04:44 -0500 From: "JON ROBERTS" Subject: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party"]]] Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 286 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------B7977013D15A23A3E0CB4501 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --------------B7977013D15A23A3E0CB4501 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <3A5C5D45.A9960E26@stacmail.stac.edu> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 08:01:57 -0500 From: JON ROBERTS Organization: St.Thomas Aquinas College X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: knyhus@igc.org Subject: [Fwd: [Fwd: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party"]] Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------E8C9BB3899DC8968FA940BE9" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------E8C9BB3899DC8968FA940BE9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Karen, I'm sending you a few political post from a recent online episode in the Kenneth Burke listserv on Nader bashing. Here's the first one. --------------E8C9BB3899DC8968FA940BE9 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <3A5B365E.9FEF135A@stacmail.stac.edu> Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 11:03:42 -0500 From: JON ROBERTS Organization: St.Thomas Aquinas College X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: [Fwd: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party"] Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------C8BCC14A071A440F180E6F3F" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------C8BCC14A071A440F180E6F3F Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --------------C8BCC14A071A440F180E6F3F Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <3A5B0C26.2F8C640@stacmail.stac.edu> Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 08:03:35 -0500 From: JON ROBERTS Organization: St.Thomas Aquinas College X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Herbert W. Simons" Subject: Re: Desynonymizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" References: <3A5A41F0.7412F889@astro.temple.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I apologize for the lack of explicit Burke content in what follows though I wonder what you would have to say about Burke's take on the "them vs. us" appeal launched by Gore during the convention. Prof. Simons makes some good points but I feel I must respond in order to prevent Nader's appeal from being lost entirely. Nader ran on a simple premise: he wants to reverse the trend toward what I call "voter nullification" whereby campaign contributions and soft money can effectively erase voter will. One reason why Ashcroft lost to a dead man in Missouri was because he campaigned against the will of most of his constituency for permitting people to tote concealed weapons. He was remunerated for his services by the NRA. And, to be fair, Joe Lieberman has 3.5 million sitting in his war chest from any number of pharmaceutical firms. Nader's issue was that there can be no self-governance if money can nullify votes. Insofar as neither party is willing to end campaign contribution from lobbies, interest groups, and corporations, period, they both stand in the way of popular rule. Every other issue follows from the question of whose being represented. Look at the energy deregulation fiasco supported bipartisanly. Energy companies knew, as did member of Congress, that competition would allow them to become secondary as well as primary suppliers of energy. But congress told us that competition would bring prices down. If then rate hikes were unforeseen, it was only we citizens who did not foresee them. Do you think, deregulation would have gotten through congress any other way? As far as the Supreme Court is concerned, it should be remembered that Scalia was unanimously confirmed by the senate and that Thomas could not have become a justice unless less eleven Democrats voted for him. And for Nafta and WTO stuff, Buchanan is simply an isolationist, though he is quite happy to allow American capital regulate world finance from home; Nader's stance is consistent with the opposite view, that America should not impose it market values on the rest of the world as a form of economic imperialism. We run the show but Nader would like us to stop rigging the game. If his appeal, like Buchanan's, is primarily about jobs, it is because he is trying to win votes. Most folks just don't care about America's dominance in business. Anti-globalization no more describes the different views of Nader and Buchanan than Anti-Hitler did America and the Soviets in WWII, but I think that is Prof. Simons's point. That's why I offer this explanation. Professor Simons is right to point out that Nader did not make enough of the differences between the two business parties but that's not his job. It was Gore's job to do that and when he makes a "them vs. us" appeal at the convention which scares the heck out of the Republicans who immediately accuse him of trying to incite class war and back away from it in the weeks that followed insisting how corporation friendly he was, he does not help his own case. Best, Jack Roberts "Herbert W. Simons" wrote: > Herbert W. Simons wrote: > > Noam Chomsky, then Ralph Nader, then Robert Wess and J. M. Duffy (among > others) have alleged that the Democrats and Republicans are, as Duffy > put it, essentially different branches of one party, the Business Party. > There is surely something to be said for their argument, but now that we > know what the two "branches" are a part of, Burke would enjoin us to > desynonymize, seeing ways that they are "apart from" one another. > > Begin with the truism that the two parties aren't just concernd with the > business of business. Each has a social agenda, the Dems typically far > more liberal than the Repubs on such matters as a woman's right to > choose, gay rights, affirmative action, treatment vs.punishment for drug > offenders, prayer in schools, etc. While attention has been focused on > the abortion issue in re George W's S likely appointees to the Court, > the more consequential question is whether the next appointees will join > the Conservative Five in behalf of "States Rights," thus further > nullifying a host of gains for "have-nots," introduced by the pre-1994 > Democratic Congress and, subsequently, by executive orders and > regulatory decisions under Clinton's rule. > > Then add that Dems and Repubs have had vastly different environmental > policies under Dems and Repubs. Remember James Watt? We're about to get > his protege, thanks in part to Brother Ralph's failure to desynonymize. > > Also kiss goodbye efforts initiated under the Dems to reign in Big > Tobacco, the drug manufacturers, the gun sellers and manufacturers. > Their lobbyists made it abundantly clear which presidential candidate > they preferred in 2001. > > As for NAFTA and IMF (and World Bank and Gatt, etc.), I've yet to read a > compelling argument that Nader is much different from Buchanan on these > organizations. Were the Nader and Buchanan parties "branches" of the > Anti-globalization Party? > > The same simplistic logic would seem to apply. > > -- > Herbert W. Simons > Professor of Speech Communications > 265-65 Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122 > wk: 215-204-1880 fax: 215-204-8543 > hm: 215-844-5969 > Coordinator Temple Issues Forum, http://www.temple.edu/tif > Homepage, http://astro.temple.edu/~hsimons --------------C8BCC14A071A440F180E6F3F-- --------------E8C9BB3899DC8968FA940BE9-- --------------B7977013D15A23A3E0CB4501-- From VM Wed Jan 10 08:09:33 2001 Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 08:09:33 -0500 From: "JON ROBERTS" Subject: The post I meant to forward. Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 287 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------262287B9823C21F2ECFDF1DA Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry to list members, I accidentally forwarded my last post to you when I had meant to send it and Prof' Simons's to a friend of mine. This is the one I meant to send. --------------262287B9823C21F2ECFDF1DA Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <3A5C5C8A.1011B7CF@stacmail.stac.edu> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 07:58:50 -0500 From: JON ROBERTS Organization: St.Thomas Aquinas College X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gary scott groce , kb@purdue Subject: Re: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks to Mr. Groce for some great insights on voter participation. It occurred to me after I wrote yesterday that there is one rhetorical act that will point out the similarities between the dems and the GOP. It doesn't have to do with Nader not be allowed to debate. Do you all remember the scene in the opening of The Republic when the boys surround Socrates on his way back to Athens and try to persuade him to come home with them. He responds that he will make argument to free himself from any such obligation. They respond "What if we don't listen to your arguments." This was like denying Nader the right to participate in the CPD debates. But then, the boys threaten to use force to make Socrates go with them. Before two of the debates (in MA and in MO), Ralph Nader arrived on his bus to attend the debates by an invitation to sit listen to the candidates. Not even in the same hall as the debaters, mind you, but by close circuit in another room. In both cases the "bipartisanally" sponsored CPD used local law enforcement official to force Nader back on his bus. He repeatedly asked what law he would be violating if he want to stay. The police told him apologetically that staying was not an option, though they could not charge him with breaking any law. The CPD, the DNC, the RNC, and both campaign were absolutely silent on this issue after both incidents. In other words, a private American citizen was barred from attending a political event using law enforcement by an agency established by congress to have debates. My own take it that the word came down from Verizon--one of the corporate sponsors of the debates, which never should have been taken out of the hands of the LWV as it was after the Perot fiasco of '92--was angered by Nader's support of their striking workers and used their corporate clout to force the CPD into action. The use of force will always defeat the better argument. Think of the Athenians and the Melians in Thucydides. But the Democrats are as silent as the Republicans on this one and until one of these parties stands up for the rights of citizen (with invitation) to attend a public event, they are both permitting this kind of "bullyism" to continue. Democrats were upset that the Republican party flew in, housed, fed and paid individuals to disrupt the recount in one Florida county through force, but what moral grounds do they have to stand on with they tacitly approved of the action of the Commission of Presidential Debates' use of force. If Nader is guilty of weakening Gore's message and appeal, than Gore and George II are both guilty through their parties of a far worse act. You can accuse Nader of being unrealistic and a spoiler, but I charge both presidential candidates and the CPD with creating a political atmosphere in which a citizen may illegally be threatened with force to prevent him from exerting his foremost political right, the right to participate. If Democrats want to vilify Nader and those who support him, that's fine by me as long as you can defend the Democratic Party's decision not to intervene on Nader's behalf and if not ask that he be included in the debates, than at least insist that he be permitted to attend them. I've honored Prof. Simons's request for an argument on why Nader's and Buchanan's anti-globalism are different. I don't say my argument was utterly convincing but I met him honestly on the issue. I invite Democrats to defend the CPD's action or the response to it by the DNC. Republican are welcome to respond to this challenge as well but don't pipe use this as an opportunity for Dem bashing. Note that I don't not really expect most Republicans to make a strong case against such a use of force or pressure especially since one week before the election is was reported that the Bush camp had said they would stop at nothing, including the incitement of a popular uprising, to overturn the results of the electoral college if BUSH won the popular vote. I refer you to the following link for the Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/2000-11-01/News_and_Views/Beyond_the_City/a-86769.asp gary scott groce wrote: > it seems harsh to me to place all blame on the voters who actually voted > for someone whose views were most aligned with theirs. should nader and his > followers be scapegoated? i'm sure many voted with their consciences, and > maybe as many went over to gore, realizing the race was close. at least > they participated; at least they voted. > > scapegoating nader has become so common and mainstream that tom tomorrow > has already lampooned it in This Modern World. but, admittedly, it is an > interesting tendency. just imagine all the variables at work to get bush > elected, and in particular, i'm thinking of the nearly 50% non-voting but > eligible voters in the country. have they somehow been excluded from party > politics? if so, what force excludes them? > > for instance, how many people have been invited to a democratic convention, > and who, in fact, is regularly invited to these events? perhaps party > politics have become too exclusive. that's not a problem for the republican > party, except for elections, which can be won with money (about 95% of the > time), as i believe everyone knows. > > however, for democrats, whose myth of egalitarianism and equality relies on > participation, exclusive practices must cause feelings of impiety. their > ideals are clashing violently with reality regarding participation. the > resulting guilt can be great and is well known to conservatives who often > joke about "liberal guilt." > > but, as some have mentioned, those "vastly different environmental > policies" haven't exactly led to any improvements in our environment. > perhaps the economic shift from industry to services has helped much more. > and the "host of gains for 'have-nots'" escape most of us. welfare reform, > the continued bombing of iraq, the use of mines and DUs, and the recent > "Colombia Project" of the Clinton administration all indicate that most > people simply do not matter to the party, whose ideals have little > resemblance to its actions. the resulting division seems to far outdistance > the movement of merger. > > but, those governmental actions listed above, which may be unknown and seem > like diffuse abstractions to most working people, may not be the problem > with american non-participation in the election. it may also be very > difficult for people with serious problems to take things like elections > very seriously, although i realize this may not seem like a good excuse for > most people reading this. > > it's true that bush isn't gore, but the most interesting part of this > concern with nader may be the assumption of his complete and effective > instrumentality regarding the recent "election." > > -g. s. groce, siu --------------262287B9823C21F2ECFDF1DA-- From VM Wed Jan 10 16:50:11 2001 Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 16:50:11 -0800 From: RWess@orst.edu Subject: RE: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 288 Robert did say, as I recall, he could defend his Nader vote "on Burkean grounds." I invite him to do so. Ed Ed's wish is my command (one time only). My Burkean defense consists of four points. One prefatory point: I subscribe to the politics of catastrophe. You need mass movements to have an impact on the power structure, and mass movements are ignited by catastrophe (the 1930s, the 1960s). Waiting for catastrophe (unlike Godot, catastrophe does come), we need to ready ourselves to meet it. For that, one needs to think about the long term. Ecology is likely to be the site of the biggest catastrophe in the 21st century. We live with an economics of growth. Capitalism must grow or die (a corporation that simply repeated its performance from one year to the next would suffer a collapse in its stock price by virtue of showing no gain). Hence, capitalism is necessarily relentless in its predatory search for new markets; it can't continue in any other way. "Rotten with perfection," capitalism strives to make us pay for everything. We work more not less with every advance in technology because technology functions to transform the earth and its inhabitants into new markets and sources of more profit. Eventually we may end up renting our bodies from a corporation that owns a patent on our genes. But how can the earth sustain this? On the one hand, there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative to an economics of growth; on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any way an economics of growth can continue indefinitely. Next to that problem, the occupant of the White House for the next four years isn't very important. How does Burke help? As a word man, he gives us ways of thinking about the role of words in our problems. What words in the public domain are the problem? How can you get new words into the public domain to prepare for the catastrophe to come? To answer these questions, I use Burke's terms "reflection" and "deflection" from "Terministic Screens." First, what the political discourse in Washington "reflects" serves corporate power by "deflecting" attention from what would weaken that power. Gore complained that most of Bush's tax cut would go to the top 1%, but even though Gore's complaint wasn't even a threat to corporate power, it was stigmatized as "class warfare" without serious challenge (i.e., without a serious discussion of which class wins the war on a routine basis). Real threats to corporate power are virtually unmentionable. Consider the need for universal health care, an example of a problem that can't be solved without defeating a significant sector of corporate power. Because this problem is so severe, it occasionally makes its way into public discourse to have an impact on the dominant "terministic screen." But in the end nothing happens. When Clinton came to office, the support for universal health care was seemingly overwhelming. For a year we heard politicians get on TV and say the question is not whether there will be universal health care but only what form will it take. But in the end nothing happened. The "single payer" argument was powerful: (1) it would strengthen our economy's competitiveness in the global marketplace by removing the cost of health care from the cost of production; (2) it would eliminate the HMO problems by giving everyone the freedom to make their own health care decisions; (3) it would save money by eliminating altogether from the costs of health care the profits that go to the private health insurance industry; and (4) it would also save money and simplify the bureaucracy by having one government bureaucracy displace the multiple bureaucracies of all the private health insurance companies, with their varying forms and procedures that make life difficult for health care providers. But this argument never even got a serious hearing in the debate. Clinton gave the whole game away in the very beginning by trying to create a universal health care system through the private insurance industry. He tried to compromise with a sector of corporate power and got nothing in return. That ended his chance to be a historic president. Second, what is to be done? How can one change the "terministic screen" in Washington that dominates public discourse? Voting for a Democrat just because a Democrat has a chance to win does nothing to change the status quo. I concede that there are advantages to having a Democrat in the White House but to me they are a short term gain that is outweighed by the long term loss of perpetuating the current "terministic screen." Bear in mind that everyone who turns 21 this year was born the year Reagan was elected. For this generation, the current "screen" is really the only "screen" that ever was. This "screen," moreover, will become a more powerful force in the country as the generations whose "screen" was shaped by the depression era begin leaving the "conversation" altogether. Third, the media is no help. They've given up the business of providing a "screen" independent of Republican and Democratic spin. Instead, the media is now built around a "screen" of entertainment structured around (1) happy talk journalism, (2) Democrats and Republicans putting out their spin, and (3) media commentators spinning the spin. This is cheap to produce and it gets good ratings. Paying journalists to dig up information beneath the spin would cut into profits; it's cheaper to have journalists party with their "sources" and report the latest spin. For every ounce of independent journalism we get, we get tons of this entertainment. By happy talk journalism, I mean the practice of anchors joking with one another. When that started years ago, it was controversial because serious journalists argued that it was inconsistent with the proper posture of journalists, who should be like Joe Friday--"just the facts"­­but happy talk won out because it improved ratings. This happy talk "screen" played right into the Republican spin in Florida. In happy talk journalism, one problem is that you need to keep thinking up things to joke about. Well, for a month, "chads" made that job easy. So we got jokes about chads instead of independent journalism about them. I saw one short segment of investigative journalism (1) that reported that the National Bureau of Standards recommended as long ago as 1988 that the kind of machines used in Florida should be eliminated because of their unreliability; (2) that showed clear pictures of ballots with hanging chads, dimples, etc by which it was easy to see that one could determine the intent of the voter; and (3) that went over a case in which a state supreme court examined such ballots and used that evidence to overturn a congressional election. Here journalism was providing a "screen" independent of the spin. It was drawing attention to ("reflection") what the Republicans were "deflecting" attention from. But this was the rare exception to the general rule and didn't have a chance against the happy talk. In the end, we're left with the dominant "screen" coming out of Washington, and a media "screen" that simply replays it for entertainment. Fourth, I don't see any way to change this "screen" except by forging a new political presence that rises from the people to force itself on the public attention. If such a presence could establish itself over time, even in a small way (e.g., 10%), it could begin to have an effect, but to work for this you have to think about the long term rather than the short term advantage of having a Democrat in the White House. I don't have any illusions that someone like Nader is going to get elected anytime soon, but I do think the Greens can become a presence. Out here in Oregon they call themselves the "Pacific Green Party" and maybe can one day win some local offices. I like to think that maybe there are a few congressional districts in the country where a Green may have a chance (the Reform Party elected a governor). Finally, if a Nader could get 10­15% of the vote, it would be hard to keep him out of the debates and that would have an added effect. While a Nader is not going to win the White House, his presence nationally could help Greens establish themselves in local struggles. Once the ball starts rolling, who knows how much it will snowball. In the days of the USSR, anyone talking like Nader did in his campaign would have been lambasted as a "fellow traveler." That weapon of the cold war is gone. If Gore hadn't been such an inept candidate and had stomped Bush the way he should have, Nader would have easily gotten 5% and maybe up around 10%. Nader got his 5% percent in Oregon and I still think the nation would be better off today if he'd gotten 5% nationwide. The money would have helped to establish the Greens as a more permanent political presence. ---------- From: Edappel8@cs.com[SMTP:Edappel8@cs.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2001 8:27 AM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" From VM Thu Jan 11 11:28:27 2001 Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 11:28:27 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 289 I don't have time right now to respond in detail to Robert's terrific reply to my "invitation." Let me just say in general reply to all his postings over the last few weeks: I am proud of myself for having elicited, cajoled, or extracted so much good stuff from him in recent days, or at least played a part in doing so. Robert is one of the great Burke scholars, I need hardly remind subscirbers to this list. I thank him for all the Burkean wisdom he has vouchsafed us on concerns related to the topic above. To Jon, I say: I am very much interested in the piece in the NY Daily News you referred to. I couldn't get at it using the address you gave. Can you tell us any more about that article or column on Republican plans to raise thunder if their guy had lost in the Electoral College, but won the popular vote? I'd like to learn more. Ed From VM Fri Jan 12 11:31:30 2001 Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 11:31:30 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Desynonomyzing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 290 Two more times I've carefully read Robert's post defending, on Burkean grounds, his Nader vote. I'm more impressed now than I was yesterday. It is certainly an analytical and political, as well as dramatistic, tour de force. To pick out all the good things in the case he makes and comment on them would stretch this reply into an even longer discourse. I'd like to cite just a couple pasages here, and get back to his essay again later. His first shot to the bull's eye is his opening statement: He subscribes to the "politics of catastrophe." I think Robert is right on. Things are going to have to get very bad on the environmental front, as I see it, before USAmericans, and earthlings in general, sufficiently awake from their dogmatic slumbers. Robert then gets to the nub of the capitalist problem, as a dramatist would construe it: Ecology is likely to be the site of the biggest catastrophe in the 21st century. We live with an economics of growth. Capitalism must grow or die (a corporation that simply repeated its performance from one year to the next would suffer a collapse in its stock price by virtue of showing no gain). Hence, capitalism is necessarily relentless in its predatory search for new markets; it can't continue in any other way. "Rotten with perfection," capitalism strives to make us pay for everything. I am a director of an environmental group in my locale, Lancaster County, PA. The organization is called LAND, Lancaster Alliance for New Directions. Our general goal is to preserve as much farmland as we can--it's the best non-irrigated farmland in the world--in this beautiful, silvan countryside. Specifically, we fight any and all attempts to build a new highway in Eastern Lancaster County, so far successfully, right through Lancaster County's Old Order Amish community. From some of our county commissioners, we keep hearing the same old refrain: Industry in Lancaster has to grow or die. Yes, we're all for preservation of as much farmland and open space as possible ("controlled growth" is the mantra), but we have to grow our industries or die. We have to expand job opportunities and systems of transportation for the projected increase in population, 25 years, 50 years hence. How long, we ask, will it be before this "controlled growth" engulfs every farm in Lancaster County, turns this "National Monument" as an international preservation organization has labeled our county, into a replica of Northern New Jersey? Robert has called our attention, I do believe, on the essence of the problem. Captalism's "trained incapacity"--it produces new "things" and generates "new needs" with extraordinary efficiency--threatens to overwhelm Mother Earth. It's just too good at its creative/destructive enterprise. More later. Ed From VM Fri Jan 12 17:42:01 2001 Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 17:42:01 -0500 From: "JON ROBERTS" Subject: bush (holy) family drama dramatistically Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 291 I will not claim that I am going to be able to cast this in Burkean terms because my familiarity with Burke texts are those of C-S, P&C, ATH, PLH, and RR. I don't understand dramatism well enough to cast this scenario confidently in these terms but here it is. I guess I'm scheming biblically. 1. The Father (GHW Bush) raises taxes and is defeated by the Demon Clinton in the 1992 election with the aid of a proposed middle class tax cut. The devastating ad that sinks The Father shows The Father repeating "read my lips;" mocking the words of The Father (holy writ) who promised "no new taxes" and then raised taxes. 2. The Son is mortified at The Father' s defeat at and vows vengeance on the Demon. 3. In the year 2000, The Son announces his attention to attain the Throne and if there are any doubts that this is revenge, these are dispelled by an unprompted statement early in his campaign that his candidacy is not undertaken for the purposes of revenge. 4. The Son's revenge is two-fold because the redemption of The Father is two-fold; he must first retake the Throne and then he must not only reverse The Father's "new taxes" sin but trump the Demon by erasing his promised tax cut with a promised tax cut of his own. 5. The Son wins the Throne but fails to complete the revenge because he loses to the Demon party in the popular election, thus failing in the same way that The Father did. The difference is he is still in a position to expiate the Sin of the Father. 6. While it is politically "imprudent," The Son must get his tax cut to minimize the pain of being humiliated by the Demon party as The Father was. If he does not get the cut, The Father has suffered again at the Demon's hands because the Son's double failure has renewed The Father's failure. What this explains is why Bush against all political wisdom needs to push his cut through as fast as possible in order to save what's left of his revenge. The stakes are great because if he fails to great the cut, his father's death and humiliation are doubled and mortised in granite. In this scheme, The Son becomes the anti-type of Christ (the anti-Christ) because He was sent to us by The Father to redeem the Father's Sin whereas Christ was sent to us by The Father to redeem our sins. I don't know if anyone one will bite. But there a nice little drama here. From VM Sat Jan 13 11:12:31 2001 Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 11:12:31 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 292 I enjoyed Jon's rendition of the Bush family saga. His reference to GW's tax-cut proposal as direct atonement for GHW's sinful reversal on his "no new taxes" pledge is interesting and novel. I haven't heard any of the political "entertainers" make that connection or observation. A good point with dramatistic implications. I want to respond a bit further to Robert's trenchant analysis of our electoral politics and potent case for voting Green rather than Democratic. His inquiry reminds one of P & C, an elaborated prescription for "changing the words that motivate," offered in the midst of the first political and economic "catastrophe" Robert refers to early in his essay. Robert's argument might be summarized as follows: (1) We must think about the long term rather than the short term. Voting for a Democrat for President is to substitute "a short-term gain that is outweighed by the long-term loss of perpetuating the current [corporate/business/money-centered] 'terministic screen.'" (2) We must focus directly on challenging and changing the corporate "screen" that overwhelms our political discourse, that vilifies and dismisses as "class warfare" even Gore's innocuous "1 %" tax-inequity rhetoric of last fall. Democrats, at best, only slightly modify or moderate the corporate "screen." To use Burke's language from ATH, they are every bit as much in the "employ" of the corporate interests as Republicans are. (3) As Burke prescribes in P & C and Robert reiterates here, we must "think about the role of words in our problems." We must "get new words into the public domain [an alternative "screen," one that is powered with "perspective by incongruity"] to prepare for the catastrophe to come," one that exposes and defies the "deflections" of the corporate "screen." We can expect no help in this endeavor from "happy talk" "journalists" in our dominant medium of communication. They have been thoroughly domesticated by the corporate/moneyed/ratings-obsessed conglomerates that sign their checks. They've turned what used to be political commentary and criticism into quasi-sitcom entertainment. (4) We need "a new political presence that rises from the people to force itself on the public's attention . . . over time," one that is not beholden to corporate power, one that emphatically rejects the mantras of the corporate "screen." "The Greens can become [that] presence." "If Nader could get 10-15 % of the vote, it would be hard to keep him out of the debates." The "new words" of an "anti-growth, environmentally-aware, limitation-sensitive 'screen'" would then echo across the land, potentially changing public perceptions of "reality," words supported by "recalcitrant" signs of climate change, species extinction, population explosion, and commodity glut. Robert makes a strong and eloquent case for his Nader vote. Two demurrers I might make are these: First, as Herb underscored in his post, there are striking differences between the two parties, and the two presidential candidates of the last election, on non-economic issues. How much should they count in our political calculations? Do those considerations pale in the face of the environmental "catastrophe" that approaches? Second, and of only peripheral concern I admit, Robert says: "If Gore hadn't been such an inept candidate and had stomped Bush the way he should have . . . ," etc. As I argued in a long and labored post before the election, we are now experiencing a conservative cycle of dominance in our politics, as I see it anyway. We're in the fourth 60-or-so-year-long stretch of one-party or one-ideology hegemomy since 1800. (An historian by the name of Kennedy at Stanford says we've had six such periods, but what does he know.) Based on my reading of our poltical history, three Democratic presidential victories in a row, in conservative times, would have been an historic first. That's why I predicted, and "successfully," Republican dominance in the executive and legislative branches come January 20. Prosperous and peaceful conditions do not necessarily overcome the macro, sea-change forces that drive our politics. Gore did remarkably well, in my judgment, given the tenor of the nation. Robert has given us all a statement to ponder. Ed From VM Sun Jan 14 07:41:42 2001 Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 07:41:42 -0600 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 293 One key to the plea for Green is that the new party must "rise from the People." In realistic terms, I believe that this must involve thinking about elections differently. Because it's so relatively easy to declare a candidate for the Presidency, and because the President is symbolically the apex of legitimate power in USAmerica, we think and write about such things only now, in the wake of a *Presidential* election. This has been true of all the "new" parties of recent years, except, of course, the brief emergence of the Minnesota professional wrestler, who could not wrestle control of his own "new party." The Greens, or any other successful challenger to the current set-up, will need to build *from the bottom up*. In Federal politics, that means electing one, then two, then however many Members of the House of Representatives. If Oregon has such strong Green power and leanings, put the Green money and organizational power of the entire nation into electing a Green Member of the House. That person would get more press attention during the two or more years of her office than any failed candidate for the Presidency. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, IA 52241 FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 mailto:michael@mcgees.net "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin From VM Sun Jan 14 09:04:48 2001 Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 09:04:48 -0500 From: John M Duffy Subject: RE: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 294 Some of what Michael McGee writes about is beginning to happen. In a Sonoma, California town, for example, the mayor is from the Green party, and Greens are the majority on the town (city?) council. (Of course, I think we are talking about two elected officials total.) The New York Times recently did a story on this. Another strategy is what are sometimes called "fusion" candidates, in which the third party allies itself with progressive Democrats. I saw this done successfully in Madison, Wisconsin, where I used to live. John Duffy >One key to the plea for Green is that the new party must "rise from the >People." In realistic terms, I believe that this must involve thinking >about elections differently. Because it's so relatively easy to declare a >candidate for the Presidency, and because the President is symbolically the >apex of legitimate power in USAmerica, we think and write about such things >only now, in the wake of a *Presidential* election. This has been true of >all the "new" parties of recent years, except, of course, the brief >emergence of the Minnesota professional wrestler, who could not wrestle >control of his own "new party." The Greens, or any other successful >challenger to the current set-up, will need to build *from the bottom up*. >In Federal politics, that means electing one, then two, then however many >Members of the House of Representatives. If Oregon has such strong Green >power and leanings, put the Green money and organizational power of the >entire nation into electing a Green Member of the House. That person would >get more press attention during the two or more years of her office than any >failed candidate for the Presidency. > >michael > >Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. >970 Applewood Court #2 >Coralville, IA 52241 >FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 >mailto:michael@mcgees.net > > "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." > --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin John M. Duffy Assistant Professor of English Director, University Writing Center B012 DeBartolo Hall University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556-5692 (219) 631-7265 From VM Sun Jan 14 12:17:40 2001 Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 12:17:40 EST From: JessEcoh@cs.com Subject: desynonymization Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 295 In a message dated 1/13/01 10:13:44 AM Central Standard Time, Edappel8@cs.com writes (in a "demurrer" to his agreement with robert): > as Herb underscored in his post, there are striking differences > between the two parties, and the two presidential candidates of the last > election, on non-economic issues. How much should they count in our > political calculations? Do those considerations pale in the face of the > environmental "catastrophe" that approaches? i am not much for "catastrophe" thinking (for several reasons), but i think herb somewhat overstates the "striking differences" between the "social" agendas of the democratic and republican parties. the democratic party, first of all, is not entirely monolithic on these points; jesse l. jackson, jr. has an excellent short piece in the current issue of *the nation* on "george bush's democrats" (you can read it at http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010122&s=jackson) in which he points out that "most Southern Democratic elected officials would be Republicans above the Mason-Dixon line." he sees an unholy alliance between conservative democrats and republicans -- a "conservative bipartisan coalition" which "is generally for denying a woman's right to choose, supports charitable choice and violates the Constitution's mandate of church and state separation by attempting to put parochial prayers and the Ten Commandments in public schools" -- as responsible for the present state of affairs: "It is this conservative bipartisan coalition that allows Ralph Nader to say that we have one corporate party with two different names. If Democrats go down this bipartisan path it will only strengthen Nader and the Greens for 2002 and 2004. The move down that path has already been aided by Democrats: In 1992 a conservative Democrat, Bill Clinton, selected an even more conservative running mate, Al Gore, who in 2000 selected an even more conservative running mate, Joseph Lieberman. By helping to shift the Democratic Party and the country further right, a very conservative George W. Bush could select an ultraconservative Dick Cheney as his running mate--and win." in other words, the democrat strategy (more properly speaking, the Democratic Leadership Council strategy) is not only guaranteeing that the "terministic screen" of national political discourse (which i've been calling by pierre bourdieu's term, "field of doxa") is going to remain hostile to radical interjections -- the screen is moving *to the right*, and will *continue* to move to the right, both "economically" and "socially," unless somebody (a lot of somebodies) intervenes. in other words, to reply to herb's argument -- it is not so much that ralph nader mistakenly *attributes* a dark "synonymity" to the republicans and democrats which does *not* exist; arguably, it is rather the case that the democrats have been failing to sufficiently "desynonymize" themselves from the republicans in practice. --jesse. From VM Sun Jan 14 10:17:47 2001 Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 10:17:47 -0800 (PST) From: David Stacey Subject: RE: Desynonomizing the Dem/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 296 On Sun, 14 Jan 2001, John M Duffy wrote: > Some of what Michael McGee writes about is beginning to happen. In a > Sonoma, California town, for example, the mayor is from the Green > party, and Greens are the majority on the town (city?) council. (Of > course, I think we are talking about two elected officials total.) > The New York Times recently did a story on this. There's a thriving Green party here in Arcata, California. Two or three on the city council, I think. Nader signs in every other yard at the peak of it. Here is where people come to fight for the redwoods, I think. There's also an acitve Earth First group out at the college. Just yesterday I saw some T-shirts for sale in the local funky grocery store: "For a Dose of Liberal Democracy, Visit Arcata." Davd > > Another strategy is what are sometimes called "fusion" candidates, in > which the third party allies itself with progressive Democrats. I saw > this done successfully in Madison, Wisconsin, where I used to live. > > John Duffy > > >One key to the plea for Green is that the new party must "rise from the > >People." In realistic terms, I believe that this must involve thinking > >about elections differently. Because it's so relatively easy to declare a > >candidate for the Presidency, and because the President is symbolically the > >apex of legitimate power in USAmerica, we think and write about such things > >only now, in the wake of a *Presidential* election. This has been true of > >all the "new" parties of recent years, except, of course, the brief > >emergence of the Minnesota professional wrestler, who could not wrestle > >control of his own "new party." The Greens, or any other successful > >challenger to the current set-up, will need to build *from the bottom up*. > >In Federal politics, that means electing one, then two, then however many > >Members of the House of Representatives. If Oregon has such strong Green > >power and leanings, put the Green money and organizational power of the > >entire nation into electing a Green Member of the House. That person would > >get more press attention during the two or more years of her office than any > >failed candidate for the Presidency. > > > >michael > > > >Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. > >970 Applewood Court #2 > >Coralville, IA 52241 > >FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 > >mailto:michael@mcgees.net > > > > "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." > > --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin > > > John M. Duffy > Assistant Professor of English > Director, University Writing Center > B012 DeBartolo Hall > University of Notre Dame > Notre Dame, IN 46556-5692 > (219) 631-7265 > From VM Sun Jan 14 17:28:09 2001 Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 17:28:09 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Desynonomizing the Deb/Repub "Business Party" Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 297 Briefly, to Michael I say: You may have a good point there. I'm all for Greens winning as many local, state, and Congressional elections as possible, even though I may still be ambivalent about voting Green in a presidential race, despite Robert's powerful case for doing so. His rhetoric has moved me from "anti" to "ambivalent." To John and David I say: Great news. And to Jess I say: Maybe I suffer from the symbolic "deflections" that may afflict a Northeastern liberal Democrat, but I "see" more striking differences between the two major parties on social issues than Representative Jackson takes note of in his Nation article. In respect to such political positions, it seems to me, the center of gravity among Democrats overall is appreciably to the left of that of the Republican Party. Also, Jess, I would take issue with your characterization of Al Gore, equating the Gore of 2000 with the Gore of the '80's and early '90's. He has moved leftward, I do believe, since the days when he bragged about how he had "howed it, suckered it," and hung it up to dry, namely, tobacco. He's moved left since his Senate days, as Tennessee has moved right. Ergo, he couldn't carry his own state in the election just passed. Remember, too, if my lengthy piece on the the cyclical nature of USAmerican politics of late last October (or early November) is valid, we're in the center of a conservative epoch, or near the center. The party out of favor at such junctures always--ALWAYS--takes on something of the coloration of the ideologically dominant party. Hence: a Bill Clinton, whom some might call the best, most moderate, Republican president we've had since Teddy Roosevelt. Hence: a Joe Lieberrman as VP nominee. Those political realities might not make a Clinton or a Lieberman more palatable to staunchly loyal Greens in particular or leftwingers in general. I don't claim that they should. Such political recalcitrances do count for something, however, with those of us more timorous souls who tend to reach for what is presently within our grasp, rather than dream of the day when we can have the whole loaf instead of half, or a third, or a tenth. By the way, in my post of yesterday, I mentioned four features of likely environmental "recalcitrance" that promise to bring on the "catastrophe" that Robert mentioned in his estimable polemic. One was "commodity glut." In our local paper today, there's an Associated Press story by Matt Crenson headline, "Will the World Run out of Stuff?" The subordinate caption reads: "American Lifestyle Threatens Earth, Experts Fear." In the piece, pro-growth champions of human "ingenuity" do battle with Paul Ehrlich-like Casandras of ecological doom. The ingenuity buffs can speculate about substitutres for diminishing fossil fuels, but they can't easily argue against species extinction, global warming, climate change, coastal flooding, potentially depleted water supplies, and the growing problem of what to do with our likely horrendous volume of effluvia. As I've said, after Burke, the "sheer brute materials of the world as it is," the "unanswerable opponent," the "rhetorician" oblivious of our most well-wrought blandishments, will, eventually, "grind our [conservative, corporate, free-enterprise, consumer-happy] rhetoric to bits." Ed From VM Mon Jan 22 14:13:59 2001 Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 14:13:59 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: In Honor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 298 In honor or W's inauguration, I pass along the following tributes in song an= d=20 auto bumper sticker: Everyone sing along now! The Kennebunkport Hillbillies (Sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song) Come and listen to my story 'bout a boy named Bush. His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush. He drank like a fish while he drove round all about. But that didn't matter 'cuz his daddy bailed him out. DUI, that is. Criminal record. Cover-up. Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes toYale. He can't spell his name but they never let him fail. He spends all his time hangin' out with student folk. And that's when he learns how to snort a line of coke. Blow, that is. White gold. Nose candy. The next thing you know there's a war in Vietnam. Kin folks say, "George, stay at home with Mom." Let the common people get all maimed up and scarred. We'll buy you a spot in the Texas Air Guard. Cushy, that is. Country clubs. Nose candy. Twenty years later little Georgie gets a bored. He trades in the booze, says that Jesus is his Lord. He said, "Now the White House is the place I wanna be." So he called his daddy's friends and they called the GOP. Gun owners, that is. Fallwell. Jesse Helms. Come November 7, the election ran late. The kin folks said, "Jeb, give the boy your state!" "Don't let those colored folks get into any polls." So they put up barricades so they couldn't punch their holes. Chads, that is.. Duval County. Miami-Dade. Before the votes were counted, the five Supremes stepped in. Told all the voters, "Hey, we want George to win." "Stop counting votes!" was their solemn invocation. And that's how George finally got his coronation. Rigged, that is. Illegitimate. No moral authority. Y'all come vote now. Ya hear? ******************************************* Bush's Inaugural Speech (to the tune of "What a Wonderful World This Will Be" by Sam Cooke) Don't know much about history Don't know much foreign policy Don't remember how I got through school I'm sure I didn't break the rules. But what's it matter 'cause my daddy says "Boy, if you want to you can be the prez! What a wonderful world this will be." Don't know much about the women's vote, Don't know much about the bills I wrote, Don't know much about the foreign vets, I've never voted for 'em yet. But I do know if your dad tries hard He can get you in the National Guard And what a wonderful place that can be. Now I don=E2=80=99t claim to be an A student But what's wrong with C's? I think that maybe by knowing the names of my cabinet I can win their love for me. Don't know much about air pollution, Don't know much about the constitution, Don't know much about th' economy, It never much affected me. But there's one thing that I know for sure, If the rich stay rich, and poor stay poor, What a wonderful world this will be. Don't know much about the national debt, I've never had to pay one yet. If we need to we can sell the States To the Japanese at discount rates. But I do know that if things get bad All I=E2=80=99ll have to do is speed dial dad, What a wonderful world this will be. ***************************************** BUMPER STICKERS (from November/December): Don't Blame Me - I voted for Gore... I Think UNPRESIDENTED! If God Meant Us to Vote, He Would Have Given Us Candidates Jews for Buchanan What popular vote? I voted - Didn't matter My parents retired to Florida and all I got was this lousy President Disney gave us Mickey, Florida gave us Dumbo DON'T THROW AWAY YOUR VOTE........ LET KATHERINE HARRIS DO IT FOR YOU Who is this Chad guy and why is he pregnant? Bush trusts the people, but not if it involves counting. Now do you understand the importance of user-testing? To you I'm a drunk driver; to my friends, I'm presidential material! One person, one vote (may not apply in certain states) I DIDN'T VOTE FOR HIS DADDY EITHER IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL YOUR BROTHER COUNTS THE VOTES The election can't be broken. We just fixed it. The skies (wheeze) of Texas (cough) are upon you! (choke) George W. Bush: The President Quayle We Never Had The last time somebody listened to a Bush, folks wandered in the desert for 40 years Campaign spending: $184,000,000. Having your little brother rig the election for you: Priceless Don't Blame Me! I Voted for BOTH of Them! -------------------- Everyone sing along now! Everyone sing along now! The Kennebunkport Hillbillies (Sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song) Come and listen to my story 'bout a boy named Bush. His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush. He drank like a fish while he drove round all about. But that didn't matter 'cuz his daddy bailed him out. DUI, that is. Criminal record. Cover-up. Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes toYale. He can't spell his name but they never let him fail. He spends all his time hangin' out with student folk. And that's when he learns how to snort a line of coke. Blow, that is. White gold. Nose candy. The next thing you know there's a war in Vietnam. Kin folks say, "George, stay at home with Mom." Let the common people get all maimed up and scarred. We'll buy you a spot in the Texas Air Guard. Cushy, that is. Country clubs. Nose candy. Twenty years later little Georgie gets a bored. He trades in the booze, says that Jesus is his Lord. He said, "Now the White House is the place I wanna be." So he called his daddy's friends and they called the GOP. Gun owners, that is. Fallwell. Jesse Helms. Come November 7, the election ran late. The kin folks said, "Jeb, give the boy your state!" "Don't let those colored folks get into any polls." So they put up barricades so they couldn't punch their holes. Chads, that is.. Duval County. Miami-Dade. Before the votes were counted, the five Supremes stepped in. Told all the voters, "Hey, we want George to win." "Stop counting votes!" was their solemn invocation. And that's how George finally got his coronation. Rigged, that is. Illegitimate. No moral authority. Y'all come vote now. Ya hear? ******************************************* Bush's Inaugural Speech (to the tune of "What a Wonderful World This Will Be" by Sam Cooke) Don't know much about history Don't know much foreign policy Don't remember how I got through school I'm sure I didn't break the rules. But what's it matter 'cause my daddy says "Boy, if you want to you can be the prez! What a wonderful world this will be." Don't know much about the women's vote, Don't know much about the bills I wrote, Don't know much about the foreign vets, I've never voted for 'em yet. But I do know if your dad tries hard He can get you in the National Guard And what a wonderful place that can be. Now I don=E2=80=99t claim to be an A student But what's wrong with C's? I think that maybe by knowing the names of my cabinet I can win their love for me. Don't know much about air pollution, Don't know much about the constitution, Don't know much about th' economy, It never much affected me. But there's one thing that I know for sure, If the rich stay rich, and poor stay poor, What a wonderful world this will be. Don't know much about the national debt, I've never had to pay one yet. If we need to we can sell the States To the Japanese at discount rates. But I do know that if things get bad All I=E2=80=99ll have to do is speed dial dad, What a wonderful world this will be. ***************************************** BUMPER STICKERS (from November/December): Don't Blame Me - I voted for Gore... I Think UNPRESIDENTED! If God Meant Us to Vote, He Would Have Given Us Candidates Jews for Buchanan What popular vote? I voted - Didn't matter My parents retired to Florida and all I got was this lousy President Disney gave us Mickey, Florida gave us Dumbo DON'T THROW AWAY YOUR VOTE........ LET KATHERINE HARRIS DO IT FOR YOU Who is this Chad guy and why is he pregnant? Bush trusts the people, but not if it involves counting. Now do you understand the importance of user-testing? To you I'm a drunk driver; to my friends, I'm presidential material! One person, one vote (may not apply in certain states) I DIDN'T VOTE FOR HIS DADDY EITHER IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL YOUR BROTHER COUNTS THE VOTES The election can't be broken. We just fixed it. The skies (wheeze) of Texas (cough) are upon you! (choke) George W. Bush: The President Quayle We Never Had The last time somebody listened to a Bush, folks wandered in the desert for 40 years Campaign spending: $184,000,000. Having your little brother rig the election for you: Priceless Don't Blame Me! I Voted for BOTH of Them! If the encomiums above appear twice, I'm sorry. One gets emotional at times= =20 like this. Ed -------------------- Everyone sing along now! From VM Mon Jan 22 19:59:24 2001 Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 19:59:24 -0500 From: John Lucaites Subject: Burke and War Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 299 Can someone point me to the place where Burke claims that "war is a disease of cooperation." Thanks, John Lucaites From VM Mon Jan 22 20:10:00 2001 Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 20:10:00 -0500 From: "Camille K. Lewis" Subject: Burke and War Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 300 Sure! In _Rhetoric of Motives_, page 22, he says: "And so, in the end, men are brought to that most tragically ironic of all divisions, or conflicts, wherein millions of co-operative acts go into the preparation for one single destructive act. We referred to that ultimate disease of cooperation: war. (You will understand war much better if you think of it, not simply as strife come to a head, but rather as a disease, or perversion of communion. Modern war characteristically requires period of constructed acts for each destructive one; before each culminating blast there must be a vast network of interlocking operations, directed communally.)" Hope all is well with you. Take care. Camille K. Lewis -----Original Message----- From: owner-kb@purdue.edu [mailto:owner-kb@purdue.edu] On Behalf Of John Lucaites Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 7:59 PM To: kb@purdue.edu Subject: Burke and War Can someone point me to the place where Burke claims that "war is a disease of cooperation." Thanks, John Lucaites From VM Tue Jan 23 14:39:11 2001 Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:39:11 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: In Honor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 301 Any subscriber interested in following up on the Bush vs. Gore decision by the Supreme Court should be aware of the essay "None Dare Call It Treason," to be published, I believe, in the Feb. 5 issue of The Nation. Authored by Vincent Bugliosi, it is a must read. Bugliosi was a Deputy DA for Los Angeles and is the author of Helter Skelter and The Five Reasons O. J. Simpson Got Away With Murder. Here's a brief excerpt from the web version: these five Justices deliberately and knowingly decided to nullify the votes of the 50 million Americans who voted for Al Gore and to steal the election for Bush. Of course, nothing could possibly be more serious in its enormous ramifications. The stark reality, and I say this with every fiber of my being, is that the institution Americans trust the most to protect its freedoms and principles committed one of the biggest and most serious crimes this nation has ever seen, pure and simple, the theft of the presidency. And by definition, the perpetrators of this crime have to be denominated criminals. A kb subscriber was kind enough to send me the 7-page article. I think it can be accessed at the following address: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?=20010205&s=bugliosi> Reading this powerful analysis will be well worth your while. The second thing I want to mention is, if you felt my post was a bit "corny" yesterday, I apologize. My favorite "bumper sticker" was, at least, a gem, I thought: One person, one vote (may not apply in certain states) Now to the gravamen of my post: With ample assistance from Burke in P & C, Herb Simons opined, just before Christmas, that all of us, not just our opponents, come to our conclusions ahead of time on the basis of our self-interests, whatever they may be, and then reach out--may I say helter-skelter?--in whatever direction for any and all argumentative support we can find. In addition, as Burke notes in GM, RM, and PLF, among other places, our search for warrants is frequently a quest to paper over some potential embarrassment or weakness of position. (Hence "dialectical": We're scrambling to solve an environmental problem, answer a question that poses some challenge or danger. I offered a post of some length on this issue last year.) Anyway, here are some of the "supports" and "warrants" I've been hearing from various Bush officials, conservative acolytes, and assorted talking heads on TV, in answer to the query: "Isn't Bush illigitimate, owing to the fact that he lost the popular vote by 539, 947 ballots, and probably, in truth, lost in the Electoral College as well?" Karen Hughes: Bush got 9 million more votes than Clinton in 1992 or 1996(?). A Talking Head: Bush increased the vote for a Republican president by 11 million since 1996. Larry Kudlow on the McGlaughlin Group: Bush won two-thirds of the states and 70 percent of the counties in the U. S. of A. Rush Limbaugh: If you take away the 11 million Black votes for Gore, Bush won in a landslide. And besides, if all the votes that were actually cast had been counted, Bush would have won by 2 million. All these non sequiturs and paralogisms are, of course, on their face, totally beside the point. In Limbaugh's case, they are flagrantly ridiculous, not at all out of character, however. The point is, we're dealing with 2000, not 1992 or 1996; we're dealing with votes by human beings, not votes by acreage. These lines of "reasoning" fit nicely with the case the "felonious five" (In)Justices of the Supreme Court made for themselves in Bush vs. Gore. Are we really "all like that," as Herb asseverated in his pre-Christmas post? I offered that he may have been pulling our leg a bit, conducting a "persuasion dialogue" or "ideal conversation" seminar for our instruction. Can anyone within earshot think of other inventive arugments for George W's "legitimacy," ones that can match those above for creative flair? Ed From VM Wed Jan 24 02:10:17 2001 Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 02:10:17 -0000 From: "William Kraemer" Subject: Re: In Honor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 302 I am a life long Democrat. Currently an aging hippie, I once fumigated my clothing and shaved my scrabbly beard in an effort to "Clean for Gene" back in '68. (Some of this fellow Minnesotan's family were friends of my family). None the less, I think it sounds like another fellow Minnesotan, Vincent Bugliosi, is full of shit on this one. Gore was never ahead in Florida. Therefore, it was he who tried to steal the election. Despite my political affiliation, I feel any book alleging the theft of the election and "enormous ramifications" is wrong spirited. Bill Clinton made it clear in his farewell address that he will stick around to badger his successor. Dick Morris, who invented triangulation and saved Clintons ass several times, knows the former President well. Morris said reacently Clinton can not stand to be out of the limelight. Otherwise, he would discourage Bugliosi and people like him. The fact that he does not do so has enormous ramifications. Another disturbing ramification of Clinton's unprecentedented pardon program is pardoned felon Susan Mac Dougald, who plans to run for the Senate. >From: Edappel8@cs.com >To: kb@purdue.edu >Subject: In Honor of W's Inauguration >Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:39:11 EST >MIME-Version: 1.0 >Received: from [128.210.11.6] by hotmail.com (3.2) with ESMTP id >MHotMailBC3729DC001E400431DF80D20B06E4DA0; Tue Jan 23 11:43:32 2001 >Received: by scribe.cc.purdue.edu for kb-outgoing@scribe.cc.purdue.edu; >Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:42:35 -0500 >Received: from herald.cc.purdue.edu by scribe.cc.purdue.edu with ESMTP for >kb@scribe.cc.purdue.edu; Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:42:32 -0500 >Received: from imo-d10.mx.aol.com by herald.cc.purdue.edu with ESMTP for >kb@purdue.edu; Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:42:31 -0500 >Received: from Edappel8@cs.comby imo-d10.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v29.5.) id >o.f5.6c83692 (4116) for ; Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:39:12 -0500 >(EST) >From owner-kb@purdue.edu Tue Jan 23 11:45:06 2001 >Return-Path: >Message-Id: >X-Mailer: CompuServe 2000 32-bit sub 113 >Sender: owner-kb@purdue.edu >Precedence: bulk > >Any subscriber interested in following up on the Bush vs. Gore decision by >the Supreme Court should be aware of the essay "None Dare Call It Treason," >to be published, I believe, in the Feb. 5 issue of The Nation. Authored by >Vincent Bugliosi, it is a must read. Bugliosi was a Deputy DA for Los >Angeles and is the author of Helter Skelter and The Five Reasons O. J. >Simpson Got Away With Murder. Here's a brief excerpt from the web version: > > these five Justices >deliberately and knowingly decided to nullify the votes of the 50 million >Americans who voted for Al Gore and to steal the election for Bush. Of >course, nothing could possibly be more serious in its enormous >ramifications. The stark reality, and I say this with every fiber of my >being, is that the institution Americans trust the most to protect its >freedoms and principles committed one of the biggest and most serious >crimes this nation has ever seen, pure and simple, the theft of the >presidency. And by definition, the perpetrators of this crime have to be >denominated criminals. > >A kb subscriber was kind enough to send me the 7-page article. I think it >can be accessed at the following address: > > http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?=20010205&s=bugliosi> > >Reading this powerful analysis will be well worth your while. > >The second thing I want to mention is, if you felt my post was a bit >"corny" >yesterday, I apologize. My favorite "bumper sticker" was, at least, a gem, >I >thought: > > One person, one vote (may not apply in certain states) > >Now to the gravamen of my post: > >With ample assistance from Burke in P & C, Herb Simons opined, just before >Christmas, that all of us, not just our opponents, come to our conclusions >ahead of time on the basis of our self-interests, whatever they may be, and >then reach out--may I say helter-skelter?--in whatever direction for any >and >all argumentative support we can find. In addition, as Burke notes in GM, >RM, and PLF, among other places, our search for warrants is frequently a >quest to paper over some potential embarrassment or weakness of position. >(Hence "dialectical": We're scrambling to solve an environmental problem, >answer a question that poses some challenge or danger. I offered a post of >some length on this issue last year.) Anyway, here are some of the >"supports" and "warrants" I've been hearing from various Bush officials, >conservative acolytes, and assorted talking heads on TV, in answer to the >query: "Isn't Bush illigitimate, owing to the fact that he lost the popular >vote by 539, 947 ballots, and probably, in truth, lost in the Electoral >College as well?" > >Karen Hughes: Bush got 9 million more votes than Clinton in 1992 or >1996(?). > >A Talking Head: Bush increased the vote for a Republican president by 11 >million since 1996. > >Larry Kudlow on the McGlaughlin Group: Bush won two-thirds of the states >and >70 percent of the counties in the U. S. of A. > >Rush Limbaugh: If you take away the 11 million Black votes for Gore, Bush >won >in a landslide. And besides, if all the votes that were actually cast had >been counted, Bush would have won by 2 million. > >All these non sequiturs and paralogisms are, of course, on their face, >totally beside the point. In Limbaugh's case, they are flagrantly >ridiculous, not at all out of character, however. The point is, we're >dealing with 2000, not 1992 or 1996; we're dealing with votes by human >beings, not votes by acreage. These lines of "reasoning" fit nicely with >the >case the "felonious five" (In)Justices of the Supreme Court made for >themselves in Bush vs. Gore. > >Are we really "all like that," as Herb asseverated in his pre-Christmas >post? > I offered that he may have been pulling our leg a bit, conducting a >"persuasion dialogue" or "ideal conversation" seminar for our instruction. >Can anyone within earshot think of other inventive arugments for George W's >"legitimacy," ones that can match those above for creative flair? > > > >Ed _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From VM Wed Jan 24 11:21:36 2001 Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 11:21:36 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: In Honor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 303 William wrote: Gore was never ahead in Florida. Therefore, it was he who tried to steal the election. Despite my political affiliation, I feel any book alleging the theft of the election and "enormous ramifications" is wrong spirited. Where is your evidence, William? What are your warrants in support of this "glittering generality"? You have posted a "feeling," an opinion. Much evidence to the contrary has been posted on this list by Robert Wess, by C. J. Jenny and Herb Simons, by Clarke Rountree, by me, and I believe by others. You use strong language in castigation of Bugliosi's thesis, but without justification, and, I would guess, without having as yet read his lengthy essay. The Miami Herald, a newspaper pretty close to the scene, did a study shortly after the election. The paper reported that, had the will of the voters who actually got into the voting booths been recorded correctly, Gore would have won the state by more than 23,000 votes. (That came to me second-hand in a column by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post.) That tally does not take into consideration, of course, African-American voters who may have been scared away by police check-points in their neighborhood (on election day!). It does not take into account what a firm named Choice/Point did to the Black vote. The Republicans who run the state hired this company to purge the voting lists of persons who might have been ineligible in one way or another. Choice/Point later admitted their list of 53,000 persons was filled only with possible, not with necessarily actual, ineligibles. The result: Many Blacks were turned away from the polls on specious grounds. If you haven't as yet read Wess's brilliant essays on kb, and that gem of a dialogue by the attorney Levine, I suggest that you do so. I urge you as well to read Bugliosi's treatise. It is chock full of evidence you will have a hard time refuting. Ed From VM Wed Jan 24 18:54:16 2001 Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 18:54:16 -0000 From: "William Kraemer" Subject: Re: In DisHonor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 304

 I am pleased to know my *generalizations* glitter. I've always wanted to write something that glittered.

I am not a Burke scholar. I am a wannabe. Or at least I was.

But it is very disturbing to me that Burke scholars uncritically accept news reports, expecially those (actually the majority of them) that put the Democrats in a good light and the GOP in a bad light.

Celebrity journalists like Damn Lather and Larry King, who are not qualified to report the political news and not qualified to interview politicians, routinely badger Conservatives and bally hoo the glittering generalizations of people like George Stay On Top of It.

A lot of their tripe has been reproduced on this listerv without being worked over first by Burkean rhetorical critique.

LIke I said, a long time ago, I shaved my scruffy beard, fumigated my clothes to look Clean for Gene. (I even ate the roaches rather than let them sit in the ash tray).

I watched the election returns come in on election eve. I even heard Damn Lather say, "We don't mean to say there's something fishy going on here, folks."

But Gore was never ahead in Fla. The Election News Service mistakenly reported that Gore was ahead, then retracted.

As George Stay on Top of It said, to parapharase, "THis could be like 1960. We may never know why this happened. Today's history, tomorrow's mystery."

Though  a life long Democrat (I shouldn't even have to say this) I really wonder if the party many of us have fought so hard for now believes in one party rule.

It disturbs be also that a listserv of professional rhetoricians are so eager to have competitive conversations where the "winner" humiliates the "loser" than open discussion.

I suggest that the glare of the listserv's pantopican be turned on Democrats and GOPs alike.

 

 

 

>From: Edappel8@cs.com
>To: kb@purdue.edu
>Subject: In Honor of W's Inauguration
>Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 11:21:36 EST
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>William wrote:
>
>Gore was never ahead in Florida. Therefore, it was he who tried to steal the
>election.
>
>Despite my political affiliation, I feel any book alleging the theft of the
>election and "enormous ramifications" is wrong spirited.
>
>Where is your evidence, William? What are your warrants in support of this
>"glittering generality"? You have posted a "feeling," an opinion. Much
>evidence to the contrary has been posted on this list by Robert Wess, by C.
>J. Jenny and Herb Simons, by Clarke Rountree, by me, and I believe by others.
> You use strong language in castigation of Bugliosi's thesis, but without
>justification, and, I would guess, without having as yet read his lengthy
>essay. The Miami Herald, a newspaper pretty close to the scene, did a study
>shortly after the election. The paper reported that, had the will of the
>voters who actually got into the voting booths been recorded correctly, Gore
>would have won the state by more than 23,000 votes. (That came to me
>second-hand in a column by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post.)
>
>That tally does not take into consideration, of course, African-American
>voters who may have been scared away by police check-points in their
>neighborhood (on election day!). It does not take into account what a firm
>named Choice/Point did to the Black vote. The Republicans who run the state
>hired this company to purge the voting lists of persons who might have been
>ineligible in one way or another. Choice/Point later admitted their list of
>53,000 persons was filled only with possible, not with necessarily actual,
>ineligibles. The result: Many Blacks were turned away from the polls on
>specious grounds.
>
>If you haven't as yet read Wess's brilliant essays on kb, and that gem of a
>dialogue by the attorney Levine, I suggest that you do so. I urge you as
>well to read Bugliosi's treatise. It is chock full of evidence you will have
>a hard time refuting.
>
>
>
>Ed


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From VM Wed Jan 24 13:35:31 2001 Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 13:35:31 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: In Honor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 305 I must disagree with William Kraemer and side with Ed on the Bugliosi essay. I have read the essay from The Nation and find it quite compelling. Mr. Bugliosi makes a good argument for "moral outrage" against the 5 Supremes who hijacked this election. I found myself falling into the "oh they've hurt the Court's credibility" mode that leaves it at that, while Bugliosi believes, with some justification, that they should be called criminals. (Perhaps we want our institutions to appear to "work" so much that we gloss over too quickly the serious cracks in its facade; or maybe we've lost our sense of moral outrage--a Burkean defect?) Bugliosi gathers lots of evidence we've heard before and brings other evidence to light. For example, he notes their tainted motives: "The fact that O'Connor, per the Wall Street Journal, said before the election that she wanted to retire but did not want to do so if a Democrat would be selecting her successor, that Thomas's wife is working for the conservative Heritage Foundation to help handle the Bush transition and that Scalia's two sons work for law firms representing Bush...." He highlights something that right now troubles me most: that there was no legal basis for stopping the recount. The justification required is "irreparable harm," and the Court simply says (without much more), Bush will face irreparable harm. What is the harm? They don't say. Apparently the harm is that Gore will take the lead and Bush will lose the election! They stopped the recount to avoid the discovery of an unpleasant truth. That is some judicial gall! Thanks, Ed, for the citation, though the URL is off a bit. Look to http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010205&s=bugliosi. Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Wed Jan 24 16:30:17 2001 Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 16:30:17 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: In Honor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 306 Thanks to Clarke for his response. I am pleased that he read Bugliosi's essay. Clarke is one of the scholars on this list who can do the most with this issue. Thanks, also, to William for his reply. It does, though, prompt a retort. For one thiing, William says: "But Gore was never ahead in Fla. The Election News Service mistakenly reported that Gore was ahead, then retracted." That's the question, William, and you're begging it. Why was "Gore never ahead it Fla.," and why did the hand-counting of the ballots in contested counties, or any of the counties that had undercounts for that matter, have to stop? What was the even-handed, precedent-respecting legal basis for such a judicial ruling? And why was the majority opinion handed down partly unsigned and sui generis in respect to presidential elections in the large? William says, in addition: It disturbs be also that a listserv of professional rhetoricians are so eager to have competitive conversations where the "winner" humiliates the "loser" than open discussion. I don't understand the "humiliation" charge in respect to any facet of the discussion we've had on this list on the Bush vs. Gore decision or on the election that led up to it. I think the tone has been very civil, perhaps too one-sided, but that's not the fault of those who have participated. Maybe I've displayed an untoward sharpness of tongue in a few of my posts in the past. Not this time around, however, not even close. Finally, it doesn't take seasoned Burkean scholars to put their "oar" in with respect to much of what we've been bantering about the past month and a half. What we've discussed is fodder for a Burkean critique, as Robert has helpfully and trenchantly shown us. A forceful anti-Bugliosi/Wess/Rountree/Jenny/Appel critique has been made so far only by what Herb Simons posted just before Christmas, and that demurrer had more to do with the rhetoric of the situation than the "facts" of the case, as I recall. We're still waiting for credible argument not only that "Gore was never ahead in Fla.," but that he would not have forged ahead if the ballots had been recounted in the time-honored way: by hand. Even more to the point, we're waiting for a creditable case to be made for what the five most conservative Justices of the Supreme Court did in their seemingly twisted, serpentine, anfractuous opinion. Why, for instance, was it an unsigned per curiam statement when the stakes were so high, the issue so formidable? Why, too, was this opinion stripped of universal application? How could such a ruling be justly made to apply in this case only, but still be made to apply in this case, when "equal protection of the laws" is patently "complex" in a nation that votes for officeholders in many different ways? Just asking. Ed From VM Wed Jan 24 18:19:35 2001 Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 18:19:35 -0600 From: "Michael Calvin McGee" Subject: RE: In DisHonor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 307 My own comments regarding the recent coup d'etat do not come from reading televisual accounts, or any other journalistic punditry (although I have been pleased by such well-supported arguments as Bugliosi's). Thanks, Ed, for the URL. I read the formal opinions written by the Gang of Five. Most of the commentary on this list has been based on similar reading. This has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans, and I could care less about the fortunes of Gore. As Clarke suggests, in agreement with Bugliosi, a majority of the Supreme Court of the United States is criminal. michael Michael Calvin McGee, Ph.D. 970 Applewood Court #2 Coralville, IA 52241 FAX: 319-338-1796 Voice: 319-338-8214 mailto:michael@mcgees.net "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov's Salvor Hardin From VM Thu Jan 25 11:04:14 2001 Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 11:04:14 -0600 From: Tony Palmeri Subject: RE: In Honor Of . . . Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 308 As soon as Gore decided to contest the results of the election, it was inevitable that supporters of the losing side would find that criminals on the other side stole the election. Thus, if the count had continued and if Gore had won Florida on the basis of magnifying glass equipped counters divining a voter's intent from a "dimpled" chad--or even from the "hanging" chads that Father Bugliosi finds so clear to interpret (see footnote number 2 in his Nation polemic)--then the other side would have charged criminality and claimed the disenfranchisement of 50 million Bush voters. If judicial partisanship (which did not originate with the Rehnquist court of course) is as criminal as Bugliosi suggests, why did not one Democratic Senator join the House African-American Caucus and protest the Florida electoral results? My guess is that they know that historically and in the future, such judicial "criminality" was/is as likely to benefit them as it did the Republicans in this case. I think a more interesting question is why did Gore contest the results of the election in the first place? Surely he and his staff must have known that to contest the election would be to expose the ugliness of an electoral system that benefits the two major parties equally. They must have known that contesting the election would open up the possibility for grassroots organizing that might question the legitimacy of the two party control of elections. I think the answer has at least something to do with the Democrats' rhetorical construction of George W. Bush during the election campaign. How could anyone bear to lose to an incompetent, illiterate, drunk until 40, Jesus is my favorite political philosopher, DUMB SH*T? Had John McCain been the Republican nominee and the results were as close in Florida, and there were two machine recounts, would Gore have contested the election further? I doubt it, as the rhetorical construction of McCain (an "American Hero") would not as readily allow for such an approach. The Gore/Dubya fiasco reminds me at least in party of Sam Shepard's great play True West. Remember that one? Austin, an educated and ambitious screenwriter, becomes livid and violent when his reckless, dumbass brother Lee is able to swing his own screenplay deal from a slimy producer. How could Austin bear losing to his inferior brother? Just a thought. -Tony Tony Palmeri, Chair Department of Communication (920) 424-4422 (office) University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (920) 235-1116 (home) Oshkosh, WI 54901 (920) 424-1279 (FAX) Palmeri@uwosh.edu Tony Palmeri's Home Page: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/ UW Oshkosh TAUWP chapter: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/TAUWP/ Commentary: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/Comment.htm From VM Thu Jan 25 15:32:08 2001 Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 15:32:08 -0500 From: mark.larocca.pitts@duke.edu Subject: Burke, the Bible and HIV/AIDS Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 309 Dear List, If I may intrude on the current discussion of our recent "election," I need some help understanding a problem, which is ultimately rhetorical, that I encounter in my work as a chaplain. From a previous short posting of mine, you may or may not remember that I just finished my dissertation at Harvard using Burke on the Day of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible. This simply means that I have a good understanding of the Bible, especially the OT/Hebrew Bible, a passable knowledge of Burke, especially his pentad, and that people outside the academy usually think I am smarter than I actually am because I went to Harvard. My current work and passion, however, is working as a hospital chaplain at Duke University Medical Center specializing in the spiritual care of HIV/AIDS patients and their families. In conjunction with this work, I have the engaging task of educating local faith communities (primarily Christian Protestant communities) concerning issues surrounding HIV/AIDS and how they might become involved in missional outreach to those living with HIV/AIDS. As you may guess, I encounter a "terministic screen" often found in mainline Protestant churches when it comes to HIV/AIDS. This "terministic screen," as simply put as possible, associates "HIV/AIDS" with "(urban) gay men" then with "The Bible" (usually Rom 1 and parts of Leviticus) and finally with "sin." This terministic screen has, at least, two negative results. One result of this misguided screen is that those who view the world through this screen refuse to become involved in HIV/AIDS-related ministries because they fear their participation may be equated with condoning "sin" on some level. Or, more heinous, they believe and act as if those living with HIV/AIDS have already been "judged" and are getting what they "deserve." (Related to this understanding is that HIV/AIDS is viewed more as a social "illness" than as a biological "disease.") The second result, which is simply due to the first erroneous linkage in this "screen," is that as long as they engage only in heterosexual activity, they will not be at risk (I am leaving IV drug use out of the current picture). As long as this remains the dominant terministic screen, people living with HIV/AIDS will remain outside (or on the periphery of) the church (which is fine for some, but not for all), and the disease will continue to spread among heterosexuals (which is the "normal" situation in the rest of the world). This is a simplified reading, but I hope it suffices to outline the problem as I understand it. This list, both among those who list and those who lurk, contains scholars and students who excel at framing problems in terms of Burkean rhetorical criticism. (I have learned much in the past year of lurking.) I believe Burke has more than I am familiar with to help frame, discuss, and, perhaps, even remedy this problem in mainline Protestant discourse (hope springs eternal...). The use of "terministic screens" may or may not be a good way to frame and discuss this problem. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Mark 'Unto the Least of These' ************************************ Mark A. LaRocca-Pitts, Ph.D. Clinical Chaplain & Assoc. Director, Partners in Caring Duke University Medical Center Box 3112, Durham, NC 27710 laroc004@mc.duke.edu Ph: 684-3211 / 1-888-842-9469 Fax: 919-681-8790 From VM Thu Jan 25 23:53:44 2001 Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 23:53:44 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: In Honor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 310 In Response to Tony: Without rehashing the unnatural history of the Florida vote, let me come at the question this way: Sometimes we can "see" an event more clearly by looking away from it and attending to the response of others to that event. (Kind of like using our peripheral vision at night, rather than straining and staring directly at an object or person in virtual pitch darkness.) Look at the per curiam argument written by the five Supremes who authored it, rather than at media accounts of the voting. Read also, of course, and I'm sure you have, Wess's essay, Levine's half satire, and Bugliosi's article concerning the Court's opinion. What is it that could possibly motivate and elicit such a tortured line of judicial "reasoning," essentially unsigned at that? Bugliosi's piece is in large measure a rhetorical critique. He's taking note of so many of the ways Rehnquist, Scalia, and their minions are brazenly, shamelessly--openly--twisting and contorting law and precedent to reach their predetermined ends. If you don't ask any other question, ask what could possibly bring into being such a document? The wake can tell us much about the ship that has just passed. Ed From VM Fri Jan 26 12:02:41 2001 Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 12:02:41 -0500 From: rountrj@email.uah.edu (Dr. Clarke Rountree) Subject: Re: Burke, the Bible and HIV/AIDS Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 311 Mark, Two lines of attack suggest themselves immediately, one emphasizing direct identification and another emphasizing a less direct identification with the victims of HIV/AIDS. On the direct side, you need a new representative anecdote--children, married heterosexuals, and other victims who are like those who would provide missionary support. This approach could use actual victims, describing in detail who they are (just like us!) and the problems they face. On the other hand, Christian religion always has the "go among the worst of sinners" argument (which moves perhaps only the truly righteous). Those who fall short of sainthood actually might think of taking on the Christ-in-the-house-of-prostitution role as a way to demonstrate their "true righteousness" (for the nonsaints, I suppose, the *demonstration* and subsequent magnification of their status would be the "payoff"; for saints, they do it because it's the Christ-like thing to do, no matter what others think). Maybe that will get the ball rolling on a discussion. (I'm sure Ed's magnificent contribution is on the way--he is truly the most knowledgeable on religion and Burke among us.) Clarke Dr. Clarke Rountree Associate Professor and Chair of Communication Arts Director of the Computer-Mediated Communication Program 342 Morton Hall University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL 35899 (256)-824-6646 rountrj@email.uah.edu From VM Fri Jan 26 13:18:06 2001 Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 13:18:06 -0600 From: Tony Palmeri Subject: Re: In Honor of W's Inauguration Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 312 Ed says: "Bugliosi's piece is in large measure a rhetorical critique. He's taking note of so many of the ways Rehnquist, Scalia, and their minions are brazenly, shamelessly--openly--twisting and contorting law and precedent to reach their predetermined ends. If you don't ask any other question, ask what would possibly bring into being such a document?" On November 25, I wrote an essay for my web site predicting that the Supreme Court would decide this case in a partisan manner: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/thetone.htm#look One thing I wrote in that essay was the following: "While it is comforting to believe that the Supreme Court is beyond partisanship and makes decisions only on the merits of individual cases, surely in this case the justices are aware that they have now placed themselves in a position to determine directly which man will appoint justices to the Supreme Court in the next 4 years." While I understand fully why Father Bugliosi (I call him "Father" because the dogmatic tone of his polemic reminds me of the priestly rants I heard regularly growing up in Catholic schools in Brooklyn) and others see the Court's reasoning in Bush v. Gore as twisted and contorted, I _don't_ understand why they see this as somehow outside of the historical norm for the Court--and by that I don't just mean isolated cases like Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson. We have had Supreme Courts that have argued that handing out leaflets to protest a war is the equivalent of "yelling fire in a crowed theatre," that the 14th Amendment protects corporations as "persons," and that allowing a third party to place a candidate on its ballot line already endorsed by the Democrats and Republicans (i.e. "fusion") is unconstitutional because it "confuses voters" and "threatens the two party system" (even Breyer and Ginsburg, from whom Bugliosi probably doesn't suspect criminality, went along with that reasoning--no partisanship from Stephen and Ruth, of course). Even the Warren Court, which so-called liberals like to hold up as the model of judiciousness, had its lapses that one might call "criminal" if one were so inclined. The best examples are the Court's behavior during the Vietnam War. Incarcerating someone for burning a draft card does not violate their First Amendment rights, argued the court, because the card is the "property" of the government and they are within their rights to protect their property (i.e. burning a draft card is like setting fire to the Pentagon, and no one would argue that we should allow people to set fire to the Pentagon--a draft card as government property, no tortured reasoning there). Even worse is the opinion that the Warren Court _never wrote_; that is, an opinion as to the constitutionality of the War. That cowardly cave in to Johnson and congressional leaders contributed to the the loss of millions of Vietnamese lives and thousands of Americans. [note: Some o-called "conservatives," of course, would argue that the Warren court twisted and contorted law and precedent in every case]. Bugliosi and others can more readily see the tortured reasoning in Bush v. Gore not because that opinion is especially more absurd than countless others released in the last two centuries, but because this time the tortured reasoning directly assaulted an institution (i.e. the presidency) and an individual (i.e. Gore) with whom they identify with heavily. The Socialist handing out the leaflet in protest of World War I, or the third party looking to cross-endorse a candidate, or people engaged in struggles against powerful corporations given the rights of a "person," or the young soldier going off to Vietnam--are these not all victims of twisted and contorted legal reasoning? Why do the Al Gore's of the world have to get screwed before we can see the obvious? And let's not say "it's not about Al Gore, it's about the 50 million disenfranchised voters." If that were true, we would have started a movement to reform our elections procedures a hell of a long time ago. -Tony Tony Palmeri, Chair Department of Communication (920) 424-4422 (office) University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (920) 235-1116 (home) Oshkosh, WI 54901 (920) 424-1279 (FAX) Palmeri@uwosh.edu Tony Palmeri's Home Page: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/ UW Oshkosh TAUWP chapter: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/TAUWP/ Commentary: http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/palmeri/Comment.htm From VM Fri Jan 26 19:25:14 2001 Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 19:25:14 EST From: Edappel8@cs.com Subject: Burke, the Bible, and HIV/AIDS Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 313 First, in response to Tony: I won't try to answer your statement. You've made a ponderable and telling set of points. Maybe, as Herb Simons has suggested, it's difficult, if not nigh impossible, for any of us to get out from behind the "screen" of our own prejudices in our assessment of who's being shafted, and how grievously, in given situations. Without a doubt, viewed from different perspectives, many Supreme Court decisions and majority arguments over the years can be assessed as partisan, political, legally fractured, perhaps even absurd. I'm going to let the Election question rest for the time being, with your helpful and well wrought contribution. In response to Clarke: Thanks for your encouraging comments and others I've recently received on and off list in recent days. You're too kind. Negative reactions to my rants include two complaints from a subscriber who called what I've had to say a lot of "crap" he's become sick and tired of reading. Get me off YOUR list, he demanded. I wrote back: Dear Mr. (Blank), In don't HAVE a list, I don't OWN a list, and I don't SERVE AS MODERATOR OF a list. Cordially, Mr. Blank's forcefully expressed review helps keep me well grounded. In response to Mark LaRocca-Pitts: You have a deep-seated problem, perhaps next to intractable, given the dramatic nature of human beings. Let's emphasize, though, the "perhaps." Over the long course of his career, Burke's project was certainly rooted in a belief, or at least an active hope, that human beings can change their "pieties," can crack the almost nuclear fusion inherent in the "what goes with what" of their particular orientation, are capable of rebirth from "above," that "above" being a re-vision of their context of operation from a higher plane of abstraction, a perception and embrace of a novel and more elevated motive contained and revealed in some new overarching name, some new "bridging term," some new "title of titles." Burke's way of phrasing and explaining the via dolorosa to such revised motivation was with the expression "paradox of purity" (GM). A new "group motive" is called for. (Nietzsche called it seeing yourself anew as an "average" [The Gay Science].) "New words," as Wess put it, need to get into the collective vocabulary--as fresh and honored "pieties." A broader conception of who the "us" are who do battle against "them" is required, toward the end of "the purification of war." "By language, through language, beyond language," at least beyond the narrowed and pinched terminologies that pit so very few of us "good guys" against so many, many of those "bad guys" that inhabit and "pollute" planet Earth. For Christians in general, the blueprint for such a recasting of pieties is easily discovered. It is found in the proclamation of Christ as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, the gospels modern Biblical scholarship tells us most accurately reflect the teachings of the historical Jesus. Problem: Christians in general, Mainline Protestant Christians, and especially Fundamentalist Protestant Christians view and assess the teachings of Christ therein proclaimed through the "screen" of creedal dogmas,