Even More Kenneth Burke Typed up by Me

Excerpt from Identification and "Consubstantiality" subheading in the Grammar of Motives by Kenneth Burke, as excepted by Brummett in his Anthology of Rhetoric, whose complete citation is elsewhere in this blog.

The Rhetoric deals with the possibilities fo classification in its partisan aspects; it considers the ways in whihc individuals are at odds with one another, or become identified with groups more or less at odds with one another.
Why "at odds," you may ask, when the titular term is "identification"? Because, to begin with "identification" is, by the same token, though roundabout, to confront the implications of division. And so, in the end, men are borught to that most tragicvally ironic of alldivisions, or conflicts, wherein millions of cooperative acts go into the preparation for onesisingle diesctructive act. We refer 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 ad isease, or perversion of communion. Modern war characteristically requires a myriad of constructive acts for each destructive one; before each culminating blast there must be a vast netowrk of interlocking operations, directied communally.)
Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because htere is division. Identificaiotn is compensatory to divions. If men were not apart form one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity. iFmen were wholly an truly of one substance, absolute communcation would be of man's very essence. It woudl not be an ideal, as it now it,s partly embodied in material conditions and partly frustarated by the sse same conditions; rather, it woudl be as natural, spontnaeous, and total as twith those ideal prototypes of communication, the theologian's angels, or "messengers."
The Grammar was at peace insofar as it contemplated the paradoxescommon to all men, the universal resources of verbal placement. The Symbolic should be at peace, in that the individual substances, or entities, or constituted acts are there considered in their uniqueness, hence outside the realm of conflcit. FOr individual universes, as such, do not compete. Each merely is,, being its own self-sufficient realm of discourse. And the Symbolic thus considers each thing as a set of inter-related terms all conspiring to round out their identity as participants in a common substance of meaning. An individual does in actuality compete with other individuals. But within the rules of Symbolic, the individual is treated merely as a sefl-substistent unit proclaiming its peculiar nature. It is "at peace," in that its terms cooperate in modifying one another. But insofar as the individual is involved in conflict with other indiv iduals or groups, the stuyd of this same indidvidual would fall under the head of LRhetoric. Or considered rhetorically, the fvictim oof a neurotic conflict is torn by parliamentary wrangling; he is heckled like HItler within. (Hitler is said to have confronted a constant wrangel in his private deliberations, after having imposed upon his people a flat choice between conformity and silence.) Rhetorically, the neurotic's every attempt to legislate for his own conduct is disorganized by rival factions wihtin his own dissociated self. Yet, considered Symbolically, the same victim is technically "at peace," in the sense that his identity is like a unified, mutally adjusted set of terms. For even antagonistic terms, confronting each other as parry and thrust, can be said to "cooperate" in the bui9lding of an over-all form.
The Rhetoric must lead us through the Scramble, the Wrangle of th Market Place, the fulrries and flare-ups of the Human Barnyard, the Give and Take, the wavering line of pressure and counterpressure, the Logomcahy, the onus of ownership, the War of Nerves, the War. It too has its peaceful moments: at times its endless ocmpetition can add up to the transcending of itself. In ways of its own, it can move from the factional to the universal. But its ideal culminations are more often beset by strife as the condition of their organized expression, or material embodiment. Their very universaility becomes transformed into a partisan weapon. For one need not scrutinize the concept of "identificationn" very shrply to see, implied in it at every turn, its ironic counterpart: division. Rhetroric is concerned with the state of Bablel after the Fall. Its contribution to a "sociology of konwledge" must often carry us far intot he lugubrious regions of malice and the lie.