Conspiracy Theory
PWR 1 Fall Quarter 2008
Jonah G. Willihnganz
Stanford University

Kenneth Burke and The Rhetorical Situation

Kenneth Burke was one of the most idiosyncratic and important American intellectuals of the 20th century. He spent most of his career analyzing the different ways we communicate, and how we are, in a sense, our communication. In your packet you will find an excerpt from his essay on Terminstic Screens. Below are two additional excerpts that can help us think about our "situation" as writers, speakers, especially in relation to the culture in which we live.

"Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress."

From Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action. (1941; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 110-11.

"The divine right of kings was first invoked by secular interests combating the authority of the theocrats. It held that God appointed the king, rather than the church authorities, to represent the secular interests of "the people." Later, when the church made peace with established monarchs, identifying its interests with the interests of the secular authorities, the church adopted the doctrine as its own. And subsequently the bourgeoisie repudiated the doctrine, in repudiating both monarch and state. It did so in the name of "rights." Among these "rights" was " freedom ." And Marx in turn stole this bourgeois symbol for the proletariat. The stealing back and forth of symbols is the approved method whereby the Outs avoid being 'driven into a corner.'"

From Kenneth Burke, Attitudes Toward History. (1937: rpt Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 341-43.