Last Kenneth Burke Entry....For Now

Still from all of those before, Grammar of Motives, as excerpted in Reading Rhetorical Theory by Brummett, under the new subheading: The Identifying Nature of Property.


Metaphysically, a thing is identified by its properties. In the realm of Rhetoric, such identification is frequently by property in the most materialistic sense of the term, economic property, such property as Coleridge, in his "Religious Musings," calls a

twy-streaming fount,
Whence Vice and Virtue flow, honey and
gall.

And later:

From Avarice thus, from Luxury and War
Sprang heavenly Science; and from
Science, Freedom.

Coleridge, typically the literary idealist, goes one step further back, deriving "property" form the workigns of "Imagination." But meditations upon the dual aspects of peoperty sas such are enough for our present purposes. In the surrounding of himself with properties that manme his number or establish his identity, man is ehtical. ("Avarice" is but the scenic wor "property" translated into terms of an agent's attitude, or incipient act.) Man's moral growth is organized through properties, properties in goods, in servic es, in position or status, in citizenship, in reputation, in acquantanceship and love. But however ethical such an array of idnetificaiont may be when considered in itself, its rlelation to other entities that are likewise forming their identity in terms of peroperty can lead to turmoil and discord. Here is par excellence a topic to be considered in a rhetoric having "identification" as its key term. And we see why one should expect to get much insight from Marxism, as a study of capitalistic rhetoric. Veblen is also, from this point of view, to be considered a theorist of rhetoric. (And we know of kno better way to quickly glimpse the range of rhetoric than to read, in succession, the articles on "Property" and "Propaganda" in the The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.)
Bentham's utilitarian analysis of language, treating of the ways in which men find "eulogistic coverings" for their "material interests," is thus seen to be essentially rhetorical, and to bear directly upon the motives of property as a rhetorical factor. Indeed, since it is so clearly a matter of rhetoric to persuade a man by identifying your cause with his interests, we note thae ingredient of rhetoric in the animal experimenters' ways of conditioning, as animals that resond avidly at a food signal suggest, underlying even human motives, the inclination, like a house dog, to seek salvation in the Sign of the Scraped Palte. But hte lssons of this "animal rhetoric" can mislead, as we learn from the United States' attempts to use food as an instrument of policy in Europe after the war. These efforts met with enough ill will to suggest that the careful "screening" of our representtattves, to eliminate reformist tendenceies as far as possible and to identify American aid only with conservative or even reactionary interests, practically guranteed us a dismal rhetoric in our dealings with other nations. And when Henry Wallace, during a trip abroad, began earning for our country the genuine good will of Europe's common people and intellecutal classes, the Genius of the Screening came into its own: our free prese, as at one signal, began stoutly assuring the citizens of both the United States and Europe that Wallace did not truly represnt us. What did represent us, presumably, was the policy of the Scraped Plate, which our officialdom now and then bestirred themselves to present publicly in terms of a dispirited "idealism," as heavy as a dead elephant. You see, we were not to be identified with very resonant things; our press assured our people that the outcome of the last election had been a "popular mandate" to this effect. (We leave this statement unrevised. For the conditions of Truman's reelection,. after a campaign in which he out-Wallaced Wallace, corroborated it "in principle.")
In pure identification there would be no strife. Likewise, there would be no strife in absolute separateness, since opponents can join battle only through a mediatory gorund that makes their communicatino possible, thsu providing the first condition necessary for their interchange of blows. But put identifcation and division ambiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, and you ahve the characteristic invitaiton to rhetoric. Here is a major reason why rhetoric, according to Aristotle, "proves opposites." When towo men collaborate in an enterprise to which they contribute different kinds of services and form which they derive different abmouhnts and kinds of profit, who is to say, once and for all, just where "cooperation" ends and one partner's "exploitation" of the other begins? The wavering line betweeen the two cannot be "scientifically" identified; rival rhetoricians can draw it at different places, and their persuasiveness varies with the resources each has at his command. (Where pbulic issues are concerned, such resources are not conifed to the intrinsic powers of the speaker and the speech, but depend also for their effectiveness upon the purely tecnical means of communication, which can either aid the utrterance or hamper it. For a "good" rhetoric neglected by the press obveiously cannot be so "communicative" as a poor rhetoric backed nation-wide by headlines. And often we must hink of rhetoric not in terms of some on particular adddress, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetition and dull daily reinforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill.)
If you would praise GOd, and interms that happen also to sanction one system of material property rather than another, you ahve forced Rhetorical considerations upon us. IF you would praise science, however exaltedly, when that same sciecne is at the service of imperialist-militarist expansion, here again you bring things within hte orbit of Rhetoric. For just as GOd has been identified with a certain worldy structure of ownership, so scienc may be identified witht he interstets of ceraint gorups or classes quite unscientificin their puposes. Hence, however "pure" one's motives may be cataully, the impurities of identificaiton lurking about hte dges of such situations introduce a tyupical Rhetorical wrangel of the sort that can never be settled once and for all, but belongs in the field of morla controversy where men properaly seek to "prove opposites."
Thus, when his friend, Preen , wrote of a meeting where lifke-minded colleagues wouldb e pres-ent and would all be procaliming their priase of science, Prone asnwered: "You fail to mention another colleague hwo is sure to bet there too, unless you take care to rule him out. I mean John Q. Militarist-Imperialist." Whereat, Preen: "This is John Q. Militarist-Imperisalist must be quite venerable by now. I seem to ahve heard of him back in Biblical times, before Rober B. Science was born. Doesn't he get in everyewhere eunless he is explicityly ruled out?" He does, thanks to the ways of identification, which are in accordance iwth the naure of property. ANd the rhetorician and thee moralist become one at that point where the attempto tis mdade to reveal theundetected presence of such an identificaiotn. Thsu in the United States after the second Wordl War, the temptations of such an identification became particularly strong because so much scientifci research had fallen under the direction of the military. To speak meerely in praise of pscience, wihtout explicitly dissociating oneself form its reactinoary implications, is to identify oneself iwth these reactionary implications by default. Many reputable educatiors oculd thus, in this roundabout way, funcation as conspirators." In their zeal to get fedaeaeral subsideies for the sciecne department of their college or university, they could help to shape exucational policaies with the ideals of war as guiding principle.