Kenneth Burke and Object-Oriented Rhetoric

Continuing to chew on an object-oriented rhetoric, I had this lovely run-in with Kenneth Burke this morning (from A Rhetoric of Motives):

Here are ambiguities of substance. In being identified with B, A is "substantially one" with a person other than himself. Yet at the same time he remains unique, an individual locus of motives. Thus he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another.

As we think of the place in rhetoric in object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, and new materialism (Barnett's discussion of metaphor, Brown's use of decorum, Bogost's procedural rhetoric, Reid's force and relation), I'd like to also ponder identification/consubstantiality as useful terms here. Particularly, they are potentially helpful in negotiating the relation/withdrawal tension (or, as I feel it, the Latour/Harman tension). UPDATE #1: In the comments to the post linked here Reid's force and relation, the connection to Burke gets made as well. "Read the comments," I remind myself. UPDATE #2: This connection I made this morning was also made by Nathan Gale (about a year ago).

Reading the above passage, I immediately thought of Harman's Guerrilla Metaphysics and that book's chief task of describing how objects relate.

Object-oriented philosophy has a single basic tenet: the withdrawal of objects from all perceptual and causal relations. This immediately implies a single basic problem: how do relations occur?

This is rather ambiguous, and Harman's task in the book is account for relations.

It needs to be shown how relations and events are possible despite the existence of vacuum-sealed objects or tool-beings.

Burke is at work with the same ambiguity.

The thing's identity would here be its uniqueness as an entity in itself and by itself, a demarcated unit having its own particular structure.

And here:

A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he may identify himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so.

For Burke, identification has a pragmatic value: rhetoric is the use of language (Burke isn't not wholesale amenable to an object-oriented rhetoric) to induce cooperation. Identification, as rhetoric, is necessary and made possible by division. We are only ever able to do anything together (produce effects) by virtue of those moments we identify or become consubstantial with one another, remaining, as we are, "demarcated units." What's useful here is how, I think or hope, such a connection between Burke and Harman is mutually beneficial. Identification describes (accounts for) the activity of bringing into relation discrete, demarcated, vacuum-sealed things. The need to cooperatively produce effects or to be affected compels us toward relations. Harman's object-oriented philosophy calls our attention to identification as fundamental to all relations and not just human relations.

I am obviously in the early going here, but I thought it worth noting. What's to gained, the question we are fruitfully asked in many places on digital digs, by describing nonhuman as well as human relations in terms of identification and consubstantiality? Is rhetoric a way to think about how objects relate or could rhetoric also be the plasma in which relations are possible? As objects divide (Burke) and withdrawal (Harman) from one another do they create the possibility and the need for rhetoric?

Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification: is compensatory to division. If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity.

Ethosbook

I have been mulling this over for a while, and as my graduate students read a book on gut feelings and decision making, I am ready to say something. As my students embark on an understand of self, agency, and cognition as very messy things indeed, I would like to do the same here.

Researchers in psychology recently published this article. In this article the authors claim that, contrary to what one might assume, online profiles (e.g., Facebook) "reflect actual personality." (Please read the article for things like research methods). Now, I do have some problems with the conclusions of the article: "Instead, [online social networks] might be an efficient medium for expressing and communicating real personality, which may help explain their popularity." I would argue we could interpret or study such networks for how they cultivate "real personality" - that is, the study treats as stable what I would treat as rhetorically unstable. That aside, their findings point in interesting rhetorical directions. The two I will deal with are:

1. The parts of our online profiles (ethos?) we cannot control (i.e., what other people post to our profiles)
2. The agonism (this is a term I apply here) that constrains our profiles (i.e., putting things up that others will "agree" "reflects" us accurately)

The first is interesting in terms of how our audiences become our co-authors. What this finding suggests is that we are perceived not just directly but through others. This is really nothing new ("it's a motley crew I run with"). What is "new" (at least outside of rhetoric) is that these identifications are accurate ways to assess someone -- that who you have identified with says something about you. This is, for instance, why I typically shudder when people start a conversation with "you would like this." I shudder because I am about to have something about me revealed to me (whether I like it or not -- which is not to say that that other person is always "right"). We are, to some extent, what people say to and about us. This is the social nature of ethos/identity/personality (a hard to define-parse matrix to be sure).

The second finding strikes me as another way of saying the first thing: that the "honesty" our expressions of personality (ethos?) are shaped by audiences. Not only do our "friends" reveal our personalities in what they say to us in public, they constrain what we add to our profiles implicitly. The study suggests we are not likely to put "false" impressions of ourselves up if we think our friends will see it this way. That is, we shape our profiles on the fly based on what we know our friends and relations to already know about us. Our friends, in other words, keep us who we are (online and, I would argue, in the flesh).

This is, likewise, why I never quite understand Plato's worries about rhetoric. Just because things are subject to rhetoric/persuasion/manipulation does not mean that they can, at any and all moments. become whatever. Anybody who has ever attempted persuasion knows that you don't need foundational truths to stop persuasive attempts (you just need your own argument).

Thus, here is my conclusion. Identity (as a loose and trouble stand-in for many other "self" terms) while not simply static and expressible but rather dynamic and cultivated, is not infinite. We find ourselves always in communities to whom we both present and owe our identities. And those communities help to cultivate and constrain those identities. I could certainly remake my Facebook profile to make me into Johnny Bravo, but I would have a lot of convincing to do before anyone bought it.

Day 3: Whither America?

I have been enjoying and appreciating the efforts of our neighbors up North. The games look great (I really like the color scheme of the games, for instance), and they are valiantly struggling against uncooperative weather. I have likewise enjoyed the outpouring of Canadian nationalism. In contrast to their typical modesty, Canadians’ have responded to their Prime Minister’s call to arms.

I like this outpouring, because, as an American, I think I am almost too close to Canada to understand how it is not America. I keep hearing Mike Meyer’s joke about “eating Canadian” tonight. Their geography is quite different from ours and their system of government is distinct (they still have a queen, for instance). Beyond that, however, I am embarrassingly ignorant.

Of course, I suspect my enjoyment has nothing in particular to do with Canadians being really excited about being Canadian. I think what I like is seeing countries other than America being excited about themselves. The Olympics are an important and necessary antidote to American exceptionalism.

The Olympics (even through our National media – which necessarily covers the games from our perspective, as I assume other nations’ media do) celebrate all nations, big and small, ally or not. It’s politically messy (heck, I’ll be complaining about this tomorrow when the IOC feels my wrath), but this messiness draws attention to the present-ness of other countries, their needs, values, and expectations. Sometimes North and South Korea compete together; sometimes they do not. Ireland proves a necessary opening ceremony buffer between Iran and Israel. At these moments we must (as in should) think about how these places see each other and themselves independent of us. I guess I am saying I like the Olympics for the same reason we like literature and drugs: it is another chance to not be trapped by ourselves in ourselves.

Perhaps ironically, what makes the Olympics additionally interesting is that despite this balm for the rash of American exceptionalism, I find myself particularly patriotic during the Olympics. I’ll celebrate athletic excellence in and of itself as much as the next cosmopolitan fellow, but I’m watching the medal count like a patriotic scoundrel.
Combining these two instincts (a rejection of exceptionalism and a performance of patriotism), I can root for my country not as an exception but as an equal participant in an international community event: because I'd like to be a patriot in a country that is uniquely my own, but which must responsibly share the stage with other countries unique in their own right.

Local News is Local News is Local News

Under the barrage of heavy, wet snow and near constant news coverage of the "Super Storm 2010," I have some observations about local news affiliates. In brief, I observe that local news somewhere is local news everywhere. Moving from WLFI (Lafayette) to WUSA (D.C.) was not a huge transition. The toys are better, there is slightly less screen-awkwardness, but the heart and the approach is the same.

There is, in general, a strange and incongruous mix of helpful and detailed information (the stuff national news can't or won't cover) and then huge helpings of the inane and goofy. Want to know how the roads are, what the snow is like to drive on, the emergency numbers for various utilities, warnings about snow emergency routes, warnings to stay off the roads for the benefit of snow plow drivers and power company trucks, and a good sense of how neighbors are handling and responding to the storm, I find the local news comforting and informative and intimate. The woman on the t.v. knows where I live.

And then, of course, there are the goofy graphics, the on the scene reporter using a plastic toy car to describe road conditions, another reporting banging his ice scraper with his snow shovel to show how thick the ice is, that other reporter wearing the ski goggles for some reason, and that other one driving around with a web cam attached to his dashboard streaming back piss-poor video via Skype. There is also that super cute reporter jetting around Dupont Circle on snow skies getting super excited about seeing another guy on skies and then complimenting him on his nice skies.

Of course, as I write this second list, I really start to like even these things, and I am pretty sure that they contribute as much to my liking the local news as the rest. I guess, to borrow from Garrison Keillor's treatment of State Fairs, I like liking it despite itself and, importantly, despite myself.

I do live here. I am no better or worse than here and those around me. This is something it is, perhaps, good to believe every now and then, and the local news, wherever it is, does this act of believing for me. Let it do the same for you.