Tribute to the Founders

The founders, Mark Huglen and Clarke Rountree laid the granite foundation for this journal. They assembled an editorial board and support staff. David Blakesley provided technical support and an arsenal of problem solving skills. For four long years Huglen and Rountree worked the threshing room floor, soliciting and winnowing manuscripts.

Shaun Treat, University of North Texas

Abstract

This article demonstrates the remarkable persistence of the "pathetic fallacy" in mass media entertainment. The Crescent City plays a role akin to that of Thomas Hardy's "inanimate actor" in prime time presentation. It also shows that Redfield's concept of the stereotypical American ideal of place is alive and well in our electronic literature.

Paul Lynch, Saint Louis University

In “The Question of Kenneth Burke’s Ethics,” (KB Journal 3.1, 2006), Timothy Crusius asks whether we can “fashion an ethics inspired by Burke’s thought.” Burke himself who goads us to this project. Crusius insists, “ethics is Burke’s first and most recurrent impulse. What we should want and not want, what we should do and avoid doing is Burke’s subject first to last.” Yet Crusius’s choice of the verb fashion reflects the challenge of any such assay. Burke’s ethics are not only eclectic, but they also do not announce themselves as such. Burke also never completed his Ethics of Motives, though there have been recent attempts to reconstruct what such a work might have been.[1] “Whoever would write An Ethic of Motives,” suggests Crusius, “must range far beyond what Burke said.” In addition to discerning Burke’s ethics, we are faced with the problem of placing them since they do not fit neatly within any of the various competing ethical philosophies, which are, as Crusius suggests, “chaotic: too many schools of thought, each entertaining its own assumptions, advancing its own premises, and arriving therefore at conclusions incommensurate with each other.” Thus, any Burkean ethics would inevitably be a reconstruction, Burkean in stance rather than system. Given these mysteries, “the situation provides unusual freedom”; however, as Crusius suggests, “[s]o much freedom is always threatening.” The freedom to discern answers to these questions, however, need be threatening only if we insist that we find the Burkean ethics rather than a Burkean ethics. In this essay, I offer one possible response, aware that should be many others. Ideally, then, any possible Burkean ethics would be fashioned in such a way that it could account for other possibilities.

Katerina Tsetsura, University of Oklahoma

Abstract

Building on Burke’s and Gramsci’s hierarchical perspectives, this essay examines the hierarchical nature of corporate advocacy and presents corporate advocacy as an inevitable outgrowth of the power relationship between corporations and publics. Using Burke’s guilt-purification-redemption cycle, the author argues that corporate advocacy can be seen as a way of guilt redemption within the corporate hierarchy. The study provides implications for studying the nature of corporate advocacy and illustrates how a hierarchical approach to corporate advocacy can help to further examine corporate social responsibility campaigns.

Rebecca McCarthy, Kaplan University

Introduction

In Attitudes Toward History, Kenneth Burke writes about the concept of transcendence: “When approached from a certain point of view, A and B are ‘opposites.’ We mean by ‘transcendence’ the adoption of another point of view from which they cease to be opposites” (Attitudes Toward History 336). One of the best ways to transcend “opposites” or either/or arguments is through a perspective by incongruity or, as Burke terms it, the comic corrective where a “comic synthesis [of] antithetical emphasis would ‘Transcend’ them by stressing man in society” (170). There is no dramatic piece that better demonstrates the tragic results of either/or arguments, the process of developing and adopting another, dialectically ordered point of view in order to achieve transcendence, and the pivotal role that a perspective by incongruity, the comic corrective, plays in transcendence than Sophocles’ Antigone. Although tragic, when examined through a Burkean lens the Antigone reveals itself to be not only a heartbreaking tale ending in death and destruction, but an allegory, a lesson regarding the reaffirmation of life and renewal of symbolic action through the process of transcendence.

Stefanie Hennig, The Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen

Abstract

The German Philosopher Hans Blumenberg causes vehement disputes among German scholars. To some, he is a rhetoric scholar, to others he is not. As a result of the disagreements on Blumenberg’s categorization, a new rhetoric approach has been created: Rhetorische Anthropologie, Rhetorical Anthropology. In fact, Blumenberg should be considered a New Rhetoric advocate. In order to prove this hypothesis, this article provides a comparison of Blumenberg and an indisputable New Rhetoric advocate: Kenneth Burke. The significant parallels between Blumenberg and Burke will clear up the German dispute, allude to some underlying problems within the discipline in Europe, and recast Rhetorical Anthropology from its status as a unique cast of rhetorical ideas.

Micah McCormick, Independent Scholar

Abstract

The following letter and subsequent essay respond to the article by Camille Lewis in the Spring 2008 issue of the KB Journal. Micah McCormick calls for a sagacious tone in engaging with religious sectarians in hopes of fostering productive dialogue.

Rountree, Clarke. (2007) Judging the Supreme Court: Constructions of Motives in Bush v. Gore. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Along with an editorial from new editor Andy King, the Fall 2008 Issue of the Kenneth Burke Journal contains the following new essays: Shaun Treat “Scapegoating the Big (Un)Easy: Melodramatic Individualism as Trained Incapacity in K-VILLE”, Paul Lynch “Something Completely Different: Notes Toward a Burkean Ethics”; Katerina Tsetsura “Hierarchical Approach to Corporate Advocacy: Corporate Advocacy

The future of Burke scholarship is in the hands of young scholars who build on an early interest in Burke and develop research agendas that use Burke’s teachings for critique and that contribute to our unending conversation about Burke and his ideas. To encourage and promote these scholars, we have requested profiles of scholarship from recent graduates of doctoral institutions who focused their dissertations on Burke, and we present more than a dozen of them below in alphabetical order. They come from a variety of fields: art, communication, composition, environmental planning, and literature. We hope that the Burke community will get to know these scholars and their work, seeking them out when putting together edited books, seeking them out when putting together panels for conferences, and seeking them out as co-authors. We have included their contact information to facilitate such scholarly relationships. We encourage them to submit their future work to KB Journal, so that our audience of Burke scholars from various disciplines can become interlocutors learning from and contributing to this scholarly conversation.

Darr, Christopher R. "Civility as Rhetorical Enactment: The John Ashcroft 'Debates' and Burke's Theory of Form." Southern Communication Journal 70 (2005): 316-328

Reviewed by Maura J. Smyth, Indiana University

Howard, Robert Glenn. "A Theory of Vernacular Rhetoric: The Case of the 'Sinner's Prayer' Online." Folklore 116.2 (2005): 175-91.

Reviewed by Candace Epps-Robertson, Virginia Commonwealth University