It appears, and I might be wrong here, that by adding “portray” to the Ciceronian offices Burke seems to be attempting to insert the agent in to rhetorical act. According to Burke, the three offices of Cicero are: “The first office (docere) would be the indicative or scientific function of speech, its relation to matters of knowledge. The third office (movere) would be the persuasive or rhetorical function of speech, its use to arouse in an auditor some attitude that implies a desired kind of act or acquiescence in a desired kind of policy. The second office, to please or entertain (delectare), must, for our purposes, be redefined” (ETSM 37). Notice from this definition of terms that there is no consideration for the author of the product and all three definitions deal with the product itself or the product’s audience (notice that it is the function of speech rather than the function of the speech’s generator that does the persuading in the definition).

So here is an attempt at creating a response for today’s readings. Although, I would like to say that it should be viewed as a naïve attempt at this point to understand, because I don’t think I’ve had enough time to completely digest the readings at this point. So here we go:

So how about we explore the idea of "technologism," in a somewhere serious fashion. In the essay “Towards Helhaven” Burke seems to suggest the idea that in searching for affirmation toward technology “[w]e must not turn back the clock. We must continue in the ways that made us great – 6 percent of the world’s population, using up 40 percent of the world’s production. Forward, outward, and up – as per my vision of Helhaven, to which let us now repair” (57). Following Burke’s line of satire then, let me make the claim that there is “no turning back” now and that our time on earth has become a predictable failure. So here we go:

For my final project I will be constructing a proposal, project plan, and possible prototype for a multimedia program documenting Burke’s life. Using the chronology of Burke’s life from the Dec. 1993 Newsletter of The Kenneth Burke Society by David Curtis Williams, I will be creating an online timeline of Burke’s life. The interactive multimedia project (most likely a hybrid of flash and other mediums) I will be proposing, will highlight some of the major moments in Burke’s life along with some of his thoughts and theories about Dramatism and Rhetoric. I am also looking at various strategies of how to make the program expandable so that members of the KB Journal and The Kenneth Burke Society can submit additional information and help maintain the timeline.

So here is Burke’s summation regarding his definition of “human":
“the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal
Inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)
Separated from his natural condition by instrument of his own making
Goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order) and rotten with perfection
” (Language as Symbolic Action 16)

Let us assume that one day a new sheep wanders its way into our barnyard. A particularly stunning sheep, but every animal in the barnyard is skeptical of the sheep’s presence because no one recognizes it. The sheep, aware of the discomfort being project from the other animals, retreats from the barnyard only to be spotted again the next day and every day after that until, eventually, the other animals in the barnyard are no longer surprised by our sheep’s presence. Eventually our stunning sheep is allowed to roam free and mingle with the other sheep in the barnyard. But, alias, something is amiss here because slowly the population of sheep begins to dwindle a little for no apparent reason. Our sheep, huddled together with other frightened barnyard sheep, however, shows no sign of fear and one can almost detect a slight smile behind its eyes.

After reading the prompt question for this week, the first thing that came to my mind was the old saying: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” In “Identification and “Consubstantiality’” Burke states: “A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B” (20). If we take this passage and attribute me to A (the person trying to water the horse) and attribute the horse to B (the animal that has decided not to drink in the presence of water) I think we can come to some understanding of the meaning behind Burke’s stress upon the terms “identification” and “consubstantiality” when considering Rhetoric.

For this week’s response I think I will stick to the term metaphor and try to come to some understanding of how Burke’s use of the term impacts my interpretation of his interpretation of rhetoric. According to Burke, the “Four Master Tropes” are “metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony,” which he labels as perspective, reduction, representation, and dialectic respectively. Burke’s primary concern with the “Four Master Tropes” is “not with purely figurative usage, but with their role in the discovery and description of ‘the truth’” (503).

I think part of the complexity in trying to formulate an interpretive response to Burke’s analogy of “molten mass” is that the analogy itself represents the point Burke is trying to make, that our way of interpreting is dependent upon our scope of interpretation, which can lead to multiplicities of responses when we consider rhetoric. Stated another way, the ambiguity of the statement itself leads one to an interpretation based one’s interpretation of the Burkean concept of rhetoric (which may be why Burke selected the analogy). Because of this, I think my response for today will merely attempt to produce one particular answer to the question – one that may be limited and should only be seen as an interpretation and one I will try to follow up on later.

After reading “Freud – And the Analysis of Poetry” I can’t help but wonder if this essay is really an attempt by Burke to offer a warning about rhetoric. It seems that Burke is offering a critique against what he calls “an essentializing mode of interpretation and a mode that stresses proportion of ingredients” (261). In other words, Burke seems to disfavor any attempt to “explain the complex in terms of the simple,” which “almost vows one to select one or another motive from a cluster and interpret the others in terms of it” (262).