2017 Triannual Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

Resisting Community with Burke and McKeon: Rhetoric and Poetic at their 1970 Debate

Thank you, David, and thank you to our guests attending this panel on Defining and Debating Community. I’m James Beasley from the University of North Florida, and my major area of research is Burke’s time at the University of Chicago. Burke taught at the University of Chicago two different times, once in the summer of 1938, and in the fall of 1949. Liz Weiser has brilliantly detailed Burke’s 1938 relationship with Chicago in her excellent article, the title of which comes from Burke’s own admission of where he felt he belonged at Chicago:  “Once More I Fell on the Bias.” I have written in several places about Burke’s 1949 lectureship at Chicago, and to connect a bit to David’s paper just now, I’ve always asked the question whether Burke considered himself a member of the Chicago Community? Yes, since of any other university faculty he was a member of, he disagreed with them the loudest. However, If Burke’s disagreement is a characteristic of community, then would the opposite also be true? Would the lack of conflict with the Chicago circle indicate when he didn’t feel he was a part of that community?

On November 13, 1970, Kenneth Burke returned to Chicago for a debate with Richard McKeon. The topic of this debate was the difference between “Rhetoric” and Poetic.” As a true logomachy in real time, this debate reveals much about Burke's understanding of conflict and community. For Burke, conflict was predicated on being part of a member of a community that sought identification, even as its divisions were simultaneously being multiplied. Conflict is the agency that is able to find identifications where only divisions were perceived. By examining when Kenneth Burke initiates conflict in the transcript of this 1970 debate, it is possible to understand how Burke saw himself as part of the community of scholars at the University of Chicago. But by also examining when he avoids conflict in this debate, it is possible to understand how Burke attempts to distance himself from this Chicago community. 

Before I discuss the specific characteristics of their 1970 debate, I’d like to give a little background on the history between Burke and McKeon. I’ve already mentioned Liz Weiser’s work on Burke’s lectureship in 1938, but also Ann George and Jack Selzer detail Burke and McKeon’s early friendship at Columbia in their work, Burke in the 30’s. If we take as our premise that for Burke, conflict meant community, what I would like to do is to focus on moments of conflict in their early relationship that suggest close friendship. This is to provide a baseline of sorts, for if we can identify moments of conflict that demonstrate community, then when we turn to their 1970 debate, we can identify moments that demonstrate how Burke felt he was not part of McKeon’s community.

Burke’s invitation to Chicago is most comprehensively told in Selzer and George’s Burke in the 1930’s and Robert Wess’s “Burke’s McKeon Side.” Both of these histories take as their major claim that Burke was influenced by McKeon and the Chicago circles and both recover Burkean theory within those moments of connection and discussion. However, it can just as easily demonstrated that McKeon not only took much from Burke, but in many ways considered Burke his audience for his landmark 1942 article, “Rhetoric in the Middle Ages.” For instance, McKeon describes the confusion over rhetoric during the middle ages as "the tradition of “logic which passed as ‘Aristotelian’ yet which followed Aristotle only in the treatment of terms and propositions, and Cicero in the treatment of definitions and principles (4).

Furthermore, in McKeon’s correspondence with Burke, it can be seen that McKeon sharpening his hierarchical attitude of Aristotelian demonstration. While both Selzer and George and Wess’s histories utilize the letters exchanged between McKeon and Burke as evidence of their spheres of influence, these letters also demonstrate the extent to which McKeon was willing to demonstrate his Aristotelian attitude at the expense of Burke. In other words, Neo-Aristotelianism changed McKeon’s orientation to authority. It was not only a critical stance towards literature, but a critical stance towards others.

In a response to McKeon on August 27, 1939,  letter to McKeon, Burke writes the following:

Finally sent some stuff off to Crane, but I fear, very belatedly. The point was that, after getting started on the Coleridge material, I had to lay it aside in preparation for some lectures at Syracuse. And since they seemed to go well, on my return I wrote them up (borrowing the magic synecdoche, I mean title, “Psychology of Literary Form,” in which I not only summarized my perspective, but also did a lot in the “what to look for, how, when, where, and why” mode, on the basis of said perspective, with the whole focused on matters of literary analysis). It is now being typed—and begad I’d like to burden you with it, on the grounds that, since the hero is a function of the villain and the villain a function of the hero, one should choose only the best of opponents (“judge a man by the enemies he keeps”)—and so, in self-flattery I keep worrying about them as has been ordained by Aristotle. (Burke to McKeon)

In this letter, Burke’s fluid description of the hero/villain relationship and McKeon’s appropriation of that dichotomy demonstrates that they themselves had more complicated notions of their relationship. Burke’s continued self-effacement at the expense of McKeon not only demonstrates Burke’s particular attitude towards authority, but also his attunement to McKeon’s self-proclaimed Aristotelian authority.

Both Burke and McKeon began the twentieth century debating the importance and effects of universals and particulars, and they were still squabbling about universals and particulars into the latter half of the twentieth century. Wess writes, “One record of a face-to-face encounter survives in the form of an unpublished transcript. At the University of Chicago in 1970, Burke and McKeon engaged in a debate, moderated by Wayne Booth, which centered mainly on how to draw a theoretical line between rhetorical and poetic analysis” (54).

At this time, I would like to give a brief overview of the structure of the debate and its transcript. The transcript of the debate is 39 pages total, however, the last 15 pages are from the question and answer period.

1. Introduction/Exigence: pg. 1

Wayne Booth moderates, but after his brief introduction, McKeon takes over and acts as the moderator until near the end, where Booth helps to bring the event to an end. This procedural hiccup directly connects to McKeon and Burke's respective attitudes toward hierarchy, given their critical commitments. It also connects to Booth's role as "mediator" between them, a role that he believed he had.

In the introductory remarks, McKeon says of Burke, "This is merely his dramatistic way of misinterpreting..." (top of page 2). This seems tongue and cheek to me, winking at the notion that "dramatistic" and "misinterpretation" are in close proximity.

McKeon says about Burke’s arguing that "I would resent being treated as a scholar...and Burke would always resent my treating him like a poet" (2). While I think McKeon really did resent that, I'm not sure that Burke would have. The point here, though, seems to be that it is McKeon that addresses how they feel they are being treated by one another, while Burke does not.

3. Background: pgs. 3-4

Burke says that "Some of my colleagues would object to me because I didn't analyze one work in particular" (3). This seems familiar in "The Problem of the Intrinsic" and his discussion of the Chicago School, and it might be that Burke is being ironic in this place.

4. How Burke and McKeon approach the problem of rhetoric and poetic: pg 5-6

In this section, McKeon discusses how the difference in rhetoric and poetic. While doing so, McKeon says, "among other things we discovered Aristotle" (bottom of 5). I laughed out loud the first time I read this, since McKeon himself was quite an Aristotelian before he came to Chicago. No doubt he brought Aristotle to the School, but there is perhaps a sense in which the School did discover Aristotle. Aristotle became important for Crane after he ran into McKeon, for example, not before, and this speaks to McKeon’s authoritative attitude that his Neo-Aristotelianism would value.

4. Burke and McKeon on particulars and universals: pgs. 6-10

McKeon interrupts Burke on page eight, "This is the point where I have to explain what you're saying" (8). Burke has just spent a couple pages talking about Aristotle, and McKeon interrupts him and sets about to correct his interpretation. He does it again on page 16. Whenever Burke starts talking about Aristotle, McKeon interrupts and corrects. This goes back to "Rhetoric in the Middle Ages" (1942), when McKeon writes about the tradition of logic which passed as ‘Aristotelian’ yet which followed Aristotle only in the treatment of terms and propositions, and Cicero in the treatment of definitions and principles (4). It seems at these moments that McKeon thinks that Burke is a kind of interloper in discussing Aristotle.

6. Burke on words as symbolic action: pgs. 14-16

The main contrast between rhetorical and poetic approaches becomes central around p. 15, where McKeon, using example of King Lear, contrasts Burke’s view of text as symbolic action and Chicago School’s view of it as an artificial object. It is also one of the few times that Burke actually interrupts McKeon, “You don’t worry about jealousy?” Burke erupted. “About marital jealousy? You’re not allowed to speak of it? What kind of scheme is that? You can’t talk about what the damn thing is built on!”

It’s from this point on that the contrast between rhetoric and poetic dominates the discussion, much of which revolves around how to decide what is inside a text and what is outside. Listen to how McKeon interrupts Burke and Burke’s reply: You’re doing that in this method, Dick. But you’ve got this motive that you are dealing with.

“On the contrary, if you bring all your sociological gunk in.”

“Now wait a minute...” Burke replies.

Debate over how to decide this issue carries over into the Q&A period.

7. McKeon on Criticism Booth's Rhetoric of Fiction: pgs. 16-20

McKeon is very complimentary of Booth throughout (14, 19). Booth seemed to indicate that his Rhetoric of Fiction was a result of both the influence of McKeon and Burke.  McKeon seems to be suggesting to Booth in front of Burke that Booth's work is less dramatistic and more philosophical, as is also suggested by Timothy Cruisus’s introduction to Unending Conversations, as he places Wayne Booth within the philosophical rhetoric of McKeon, rather than the dramtistic rhetoric of Burke.

The debate concludes with a Question and Answer Session: pgs. 20-39. At one point during the Q&A, they had to move the entire audience to a different room, so in many places the transcript is incomplete.

There are several characteristics of their 1970 debate that shed light on how Burke himself saw his place in the Chicago rhetorical community. Throughout the debate, McKeon speaks for Burke and interrupts him many times. It is worth noting, however, when McKeon interrupts Burke. "This is the point where I have to explain what you're saying" (8). Burke has just spent a couple pages talking about Aristotle, and McKeon interrupts him and sets about to correct his interpretation. Whenever Burke starts talking about Aristotle, McKeon interrupts and corrects. It seems at these moments that McKeon thinks that Burke is a kind of interloper in discussing Aristotle. What is also interesting is not just that they needle each other, but who does it, and when. While I hear a little insecurity in McKeon’s taunts to Burke, there aren't any instances of the wordplay that Burke was so adroit with here either. McKeon says in the debate that, “Mr. Burke and I were undergraduates together. We argued at that time; we’ve been arguing ever since.” By generally avoiding conflict throughout the debate, however, Burke demonstrates his own position as an outsider to the philosophical rhetoric of McKeon and Booth. Before I close, I would just like to speak to the use of the debate transcript as a document of rhetorical history and its place in the rhetorical theory canon.

I teach Burke, McKeon, and Booth in a rhetorical theory seminar, and we’ve put on staged readings of this debate in class, which I wholeheartedly recommend for anyone who teaches Burke. What is interesting is not just that they needle each other, but who does it, and when. I hear a little insecurity in McKeon’s taunts to Burke, and that could be just me, but I also don’t hear the kind of wordplay that Burke was so adroit with here either. By reading the transcript of this debate, students encounter not just Burke or McKeon’s theories, but their theories as an act, a unintended result that I’m sure Burke would have approved of. Thank you.

2017 Conference on College Composition and Communication Paper

Archival MEthods: Cultivating Disasters In-Action

            Hello, and welcome to our panel “Archival MEthods: Cultivating Disasters In-Action.” I’m James Beasley from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida, almost as far away as you can get from Portland, Oregon. Which is in many ways symbolic of archival research, as where you begin can be as far away as you can get from where you started. The intention of our panel was to present the results of a semester-long archival methods class from four perspectives: of mine the professor, of one of the graduate assistants in the course, one of the undergraduate students in the course, and finally the perspective of one of our community partners in the course.  Since our acceptance to this conference, however, our student presenter decided to have her first baby girl this weekend, so she is unable to present today, and the graduate assistant from the course has taken a job outside of academia that would not allow her the time off. Therefore, I will be presenting a brief introduction to the course, then Jeannette Vigolotti of the Virginia Commonwealth University will present her work as one of our community partners, then I will read some of the work of the other two students that cannot be here today.

            The course, English 4004 Research Methods in English, serves as one of the course offerings for the undergraduate Writing Minor at the University of North Florida. Several years ago, I added this course to our curriculum to increase the research presence in our English major. I have taught it many times and usually the same way every time—an introduction to empirical methods in English studies. I always first began with a three week unit on archival research, much like the archival methods unit described in Jonathan Buehl, Tamar Chute, and Anne Fields’s 2012 C’s article, “Training in the Archives: Archival Research as Professional Development.” After beginning with archival methods, I introduced students to case study research and ethnography before moving on to quantitative methodologies such as discourse analysis and experimental designs. I often vacillated between two final projects, a straight-up comprehensive exam, which demonstrably proved that my students were meeting our department course objective of excellence in content knowledge, or with a collaborative poster design, which was much more enjoyable for both the students and myself by far. In the spring of 2016, however, I found myself having two graduate assistants in the course, both students that were part of our graduate concentration in rhetoric and composition. Both students had taken the graduate version of research methods, and both wanted to utilize their own research methodologies in their work as graduate assistants in this course. This dynamic now became the organizing principle of the course, how to utilize the graduate assistants in the course to facilitate their own research interests. The three of us set out on an ambitious agenda—we would have three separate research projects, developed simultaneously, throughout the semester. We decided that the course would just focus on archival methods, since that was consistent with both of their research interests and mine, as well. I wanted the graduate assistants in the course to have some readings and methodologies that were familiar that we had covered in the graduate version, but I also used the opportunity to push them out into some new areas that we had not been able to cover, as well, namely, research in the digital humanities.  So, we began in the familiar, with Carolyn Steedman’s classic work, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History. We spent about four weeks with her book and some of the records from our own university archive. So far, this was both familiar territory for the graduate assistants and exciting for the undergraduates, who had never been introduced to utilizing primary sources before. After this four week unit, we read Buehl, Chute, and Fields’s article together, discussing the six themes that they generated from their own experiences. Those themes are as follows:

1.     An appreciation of the practical aspects of historical research

2.     Discovering the activity of browsing as a research strategy

3.     Understanding the rhetoric of historiography

4.     Understanding the discipline by practicing historical research

5.     Articulating what graduate students need from methods training

6.     Imagining teaching with archives

So, based on this list, it was easy to see how several of these themes were appropriate for the graduate assistants in the course, and how some were appropriate for the undergraduate students in the course. For the undergraduates, I wanted to focus on the first three of these themes as they moved forward with their research projects, and for the graduate students, I wanted them to focus on the last three of these themes, as they moved forward in their leading their students in their respective projects.

            At this point in the class, things are working well, both the graduate assistants and undergraduates are learning together, and the graduate assistants are getting to apply some of their own archival work with the undergraduates. It is also at this point that we move a bit outward from the first two themes of understanding archival methods and browsing, to the third theme of understanding the rhetoric of historiography. For this theme, we review some of the archival work they have already done using Tarez Graben, Alexis Ramsey-Tobeienne, and Whitney Myers’s “In, Through, and About the Archive.” In their chapter, they write that “In our own work, at this intersection, we view the archive as a critical rhetorical space that demands equally of its creators and users, a site for testing theories about how texts migrate among discourse communities and new practices come into being” (233). So, specifically with the Black Baptism group, they began to write about how when these archives were collected, it would have been unfathomable to imagine that these records would be read and used outside the St. Augustine Historical Society. How these texts “migrate” throughout our course, became part of their project. Students began to see how these records were not “beholden to physical spaces” as Graben, Ramsey-Tobienne, and Myers write. So, in understanding the rhetoric of historiography, students began to first comprehend the “migration” of these archival documents. The second characteristic of the rhetoric of historiography that these students were able to understand was their dual role as researcher and archivist.  Graben, Ramsey-Tobienne, and Myers write, “While rhetoric and writing scholars have increasingly recognized their potential to act as both archivists and researchers, and while technology makes enacting this dual role easier, we should consider the ramifications of smaller, decentralized archival spaces created by scholars familiar with archival protocols but not specifically trained as archivists.” For the students, their Excel spreadsheets became an extremely decentralized archival space, as they traded these files back and forth and around with the rest of the class. Students began understanding that they were making choices that an archivist would make, and those moments became not only moments of agency, but also of anxiety. When it was time to come back to the full class and report on their work, they were very reluctant to display their Excel spreadsheets in front of the other students not in their group. The third characteristic of the rhetoric of historiography that these students engaged in was what they themselves wanted to do with the data they had collected. They knew they would be just giving the Excel spreadsheets back to the St. Augustine Historical Society, but the fact that they had to do that made them want to do something with the data themselves, and Graben, Ramsey-Tobienne, and Myers write that “The decision about where to locate these archives and how to determine location is itself predicated on several complicating factors.” So, what became apparent is that while the St. Augustine Historical Society would be able to utilize my students work in their own projects, the students deeply felt the exigence to write, an exigence that I did not have to compel or provide on my own.

At this point in the course, the circle began to widen again, this time, however, the students did so on their own. They wanted to visit the sites that were connected to the records they had been using, so they visited the Miguel O’Reiley house in St. Augustine. One student describes her visit as follows: “While going through the house we discovered that none of O'Reilly's memorabilia was there because after he died the house was rented out and the possessions disappeared over time. Although through our research we discovered that O'Reilly was the mentor of Father Felix Varela, a Cuban independence fighter that would go on to be deemed Venerable by the Archbishops of Miami and New York and is currently being considered for sainthood. This lead my group to focus our piece of Varela returning home to St. Augustine from New York to see his mentor, now dying, one last time. The events we wrote them in are slightly out of order, for the sake of creativity we thought it would have been more interesting to have Varela visit O'Reilly after being exiled from Cuba for his protests when originally he left for Cuba after O'Reilly passed. This change, we believe, helps us shape Varela as a hero coming home. We wrote it from a diary perspective because a trip from a port to St. Augustine by horse-drawn carriage was about six hours, plenty of time to document a visit to a friend.”

By using this creative writing technique, the students discover what Greg Ulmer famously calls punctum, “an emotional, pathic response, and it is at this point of the ME that the discursive abstract information and my unique existence intersect.” What is even more interesting about this particular punctum is that was discovered by the students through the creative act of recreating a story from documents. Katherine Adams writes that “Documents must grow into storytelling or they are not really worth writing about. But the path of document to story, or course, is a treacherous one, with inferences made by the writer, often based on her own prejudices, and thus her own story.” While this is certainly true of this students’ recreation of these events involving Father O’Reiley, what is unique about this situation is that the story is not the final destination. In this instance, the documents led to a story, yes, but the story itself led to an emotional punctum, a place where student would now begin to generate a completely new path for their project that went well beyond mere data entry. For this project in particular then, these students began to identify the Disaster in Action that existed in St. Augustine.  Ulmer writes that MEmorials appropriate features of consulting and tourism, so the students began to think about what kind of punctum they wanted to create in St. Augustine and who they wanted to create that punctum for. While Liza Potts writes, “Whenever we sit down to start a project, the first question I have is, who is our audience? Understanding audience is a key skill to develop in our students.” And of course I would agree with that, but in our case, the students didn’t discover their audience until well after the data had been recorded, they had learned more about the rhetoric of historiography, they had visited the places where Father O’Reiley had baptized the 800 slaves they had read about, and they had discovered their own emotional attachment to him and his work. Potts also writes that “Concentrating on building the systems that provide for engagement between the curators and the participants can broaden the audiences for these projects, addressing both the needs of both researchers and the public” so at this time, I will turn it over to Jeannette and have her read her work on this kind of boundary between curators and participants, researchers and the public.