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On the limits and sub‐stance of

Kenneth Burke and his critics
a b
Phillip K. Tompkins & George Cheney
a
Professor of Communication and Comparative Literature ,
The University of Colorado , Boulder
b
Associate Professor of Communication , The University of
Colorado , Boulder
Published online: 05 Jun 2009.

To cite this article: Phillip K. Tompkins & George Cheney (1993) On the limits and sub‐stance
of Kenneth Burke and his critics, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 79:2, 225-231, DOI:
10.1080/00335639309384030

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 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
79 (1993): 225-231

THE FORUM
ON THE LIMITS AND SUB-STANCE OF KENNETH
BURKE AND HIS CRITICS
Phillip K. Tompkins and George Cheney

B Y placing the colloquy about the "Limits of the Burkeian System" in the Forum
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section of the August 1992 issue of QJS, the editor seemed to be inviting
responses. Finding much to respond to, we wish in this short essay to indicate, first,
points of disagreement with some of the interpretations and limits placed on
Kenneth Burke by Condit1 and Chesebro;2 second, we wish to suggest some limits of
and lacunae in Burke's work overlooked by these two writers.

I
We could not avoid noticing the fascinating but surely coincidental appearance in
the same issue of Count Alfred Korzybski on page 349 of Condit's essay and page
370 of Gerard Hauser's review of a new book on rhetoric and philosophy.3 While
Hauser took some pains to extricate rhetoricians from Henry W. Johnstone, Jr.'s
charge that "theorists of Speech" took Korzybski to be a serious philosopher, Condit
was placing Burke in a line of descent from a series of "social critics—most notably
Freud, Marx, and Korzybski."4
We will leave Johnstone's charge for Hauser to handle, but we cannot let Condit's
remark go without challenge. Simply put, Korzybski had precious little if any
influence on Burke. It is true that Korzybski is discussed in the Grammar and a few
complimentary statements are served up, but this is in the context of withering
criticism. We quote one paragraph from Burke dealing with Korzybski's key
concept:
What bothers me always is the conviction that Korzybski is continually being driven by the
nature of his keen intuition, to grope beyond the borders of his terminology. He needs a
systematic concern with dialectic. Indeed, his very key concept, the "consciousness of
abstracting," is a haphazardly rediscovered aspect of Neo-Platonism. As such it calls for
expansion into a consciousness of dialectic in general (consciousness that would be manifest
not merely in a general policy or attitude of skepticism as regards language, but by a detailed
analysis of linguistic aptitudes and embarrassments). As things now stand, for instance,
there is nothing to mitigate our embarrassment on being warned against "two-valued
orientations" in the same enterprise that places itself in a two-valued alignment of
"Aristotelian" vs. "Non-Aristotelian," or in his distinction between what goes on "inside the
skin" and what goes on "outside the skin," or in his flat opposing of "verbal" and
"unspeakable" levels.5

This is by no means the only criticism Burke levels at Korzybski's work. Many,
including Burke himself, have called Burke's work post-Marxist and post-Freudian.
Some add to that list, post-Arisotelian. Condit is the first we know to suggest that it is
 226
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH MAY 1993

also post-Korzybskian. Most of Burke's later work radiates from the insights of
Counter-Statement, and there is not the slightest hint in that book to indicate Burke
was aware of Korzybski, let alone a hint of influence. We believe Condit must
redeem by evidence and argument her assertion that Burke is in a line of descent
from Korzybski and that the latter's influence is comparable to that of Freud and
Marx. Given the low standing of Korzybski's work among rhetoricians, linguists, and
other students of language, to link him to Burke as Condit did amounts to an
argument of guilt by association, which explains Hauser's motivation in distancing
himself and other rhetoricians from Korzybski.
Our more important reservation is with Condit's key titular term: sub-stance. By
hyphenating and calling it the key term of the Burkean corpus, Condit at first
signalled to readers that she would follow Lentricchia's analysis:
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In his stunning discussion of the "paradox of substance" Burke locates in the term
"substance" a strange self-difference. Substance differs from itself, for it moves between a
sense that denotes what a thing intrinsically is—that part of the thing that is uniquely there
and nowhere else, that which makes the thing what it is, what confers its special identity—
and a sense (etymologically evident) that denotes a thing's support: sub-stance, that upon
which the thing stands, what is beneath it—its "foundation" (from the Greek: a standing
under). The paradox, then, is that "the word 'substance,' used to designate what a thing is,
derives from a word designating what a thing is not. That is, though used to designate
something within the thing, intrinsic to it, the word etymologically refers to something
outside the thing, extrinisic to i t . . . . The concept of substance, the one thing that must not
differ from itself if definition is to be definition, is endowed with what Burke calls an
"unresolvable ambiguity," but which we can call, after Derrida, "undecidability," since no
choice can be made between two very different senses. . . . With the self-presence of key
Western terms like "substance" and "act" so unstabilized by Burke's analysis, we are
prepared to confront, in the terminological dimension itself, a more detailed and heteroge-
neous level of history process than we have been accustomed to knowing.6

We maintain with Lentricchia that Burke's "sub-stance" is in fact a brilliant

revelation of the most fundamental paradox of language, naming, and the many
wonders and pitfalls that are entailed by that most basic problem. In this regard,
Burke's commentary on substance—what stands metaphorically beneath, inside,
and beyond a problem—could be said to have anticipated the anti-foundationalist
and anti-essentialist claims of post-structuralist and post-modernist theorizing.
Indeed, Burke's early recognition of the problem of naming things' "essences"
parallels the contemporary treatment by the German social-systems theorist Niklas
Luhman, who sees the process of "self-reference" as leading one into tautology or
paradox or both.7 Simply put, the naming of a thing, including the self, leaves us
open to only two basic options: to declare the thing to be "itself as itself (tautology)
or to name it with reference to something "outside," something it is not (paradox).
In addition, the term "substance" is important not only to understanding how
Burke accounts for human relations but also to grasping his dialectical epistemol-
ogy. We turn to his words again:
At the very best, we admit, each time you scrutinize a concept of substance, it dissolves into
thin air. But conversely, the moment you relax your gaze a bit, it reforms again. For things
do have intrinisic natures, whatever may be the quandaries that crowd upon us as soon as we
attempt to decide definitively what these intrinsic natures are. And only by systematically
dwelling upon the paradoxes of substance could we possibly equip ourselves to guard
against the concealment of "substantialist" thought in schemes overtly designed to avoid it.8
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QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH TOMPKINS AND CHENEY

Surely Condit should have been more careful in choosing to analyze "sub-stance"
as the key concept of Burke, a quest he would regard as unresolvable, at least in the
usual way. We find Lentricchia's reading of Burke convincing, Condit's confused and
confusing. Condit reads substance as an ultimate compromise in Burke, allowing
him to play both sides of numerous fences. It seems possible to us that Condit has
confused Burke's method—dialectic—with his "essence" (also her word: see foot-
note two on page 355). If we are correct in following Lentricchia, much of Condit's
essay is thus misleading, partitioning itself as it does into "substances" of a familial,
geometrical, and directional nature. If we are incorrect, Condit at least needs to
clarify what she intends with an analysis of substance, which for Burke has a
self-differentiating meaning at odds with Condit's.
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Writing as two males, we fully realize that we enter dangerous waters when we
engage Condit on the gender-biased "Definition of Man." Nonetheless, a few words
are in order. Burke was, after all, following the conventions of his time in speaking of
all humans as man. One of us rewrote the definition in 1982 with the he/she
conventions. Burke accepted it in good humor, even though he complained that it
threw off the rhythm. Condit adds a "Definition of Woman" and finally a post-
feminist, post-Burkean "Definition of [People?]." There is, however, a small incon-
sistency in Condit's falling short of the number of definitions needed to match the
four genders and six biological types she had discussed earlier as support for her
criticism of Burke's definition. Enough on sex.
Burke is also faulted for focussing on race at the expense of culture and class.
Given the state of race relations when Burke was writing, and what others were
writing and not writing, this might well be treated as a compliment. We believe a
complete concordance of Burke's corpus would show the term culture popping up
as frequently, if not more so, as race. And if necessary we could line up those who
concentrate on culture—cultural anthropologists—to show how much they have
been influenced by Burke. We have in mind such people as Clifford Geertz, Dell
Hymes, Victor Turner, and many others. We limit ourselves here to a remark by
Fred Davis in the preface of R.S. Perinbanayagam's recent attempt to reorient
Symbolic Interactionism to Burke's Dramatism. Davis remarks that a quotation
from Burke can serve as the central claim for Perinbanayagam's book: "human
cultures are 'rough drafts' for action realized in and through communication."9
Some of Burke's ideas do seem to have a cultural universality, but we agree with
Condit that more could be done to explore the relevance and limitations of Burkean
ideas beyond western societies. Perhaps we could agree that Burke has contributed
indirectly to our understanding of culture by having his work used by those closest
to culture and directly to the same end by means of his art and criticism of art and
human relations.
In wishing that Burke would have done more with the economic bases of social
class, Condit does not seem to realize he constructs primarily a rhetorical analysis of
the phenomenon: "But we are clearly in the region of rhetoric when considering the
identification whereby a specialized activity makes one a participant in some social
or economic class. 'Belonging' [to a group of any sort] in this sense is rhetorical."10
Burke's post-Marxist view of class relies largely on the subjective state of the
individual, not primarily on the objective state of an aggregate of people. This
 228
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH MAY 1993

subjective state is the result of rhetoric, or hegemony, and the creation of identifica-
tion or a sense of belonging.
At the same time, of course, Burke recognizes the intermingling of the symbolic
and the nonsymbolic as when he playfully observes in A Rhetoric of Motives (p. 24)
that "property" is used to refer to both the material assets we own and the traits of
character that we possess; in fact, we commonly use our properties material to point
to our properties personal. And this tendency is pushed to its limit through the
marketing and advertising functions of advanced corporate capitalism. Moreover,
Burke certainly recognizes the stark differences in material well-being between the
lower and upper segments of our society that may be delineated by income. But
being a "word man," he keeps his attention on the amazing feats of political and
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cultural rhetoric by which an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens see themselves

as "middle class" and the gulf between rich and poor is obscured by nationalism,
racism, anti-collectivism, and other misguided allegiances. We regard Burke's
rhetorical move as a useful correction of Marx and are disappointed to see Condit
desirous of a move backward toward avowedly objective and strictly economic
analyses.
We must hasten now to our concerns with Chesebro's treatment of Burke. Unlike
Condit's literal response to Brock's call for a paper on the limits of the Burkeian
system, Chesebro read the invitation as being "asked to either confirm or to reject
Burke's system" (p. 356). Unconvinced that a definitive response was either war-
ranted or appropriate, Chesebro chose to isolate limitations of the system and
explore potential revisions which might overcome them.
The limitations turn out to be equated with distinguishing characteristics which
are in turn equated with biases. The first bias is monism, transformed by Chesebro
into "monocentric," an unfortunate neologism which adds nothing to monism or
monistic but also has the unhappy characteristic of being inaccurate. Chesebro's
seventh footnote defines monism and unfortunately asserts that Burke's work
reduces the world to one "substance" or ultimate reality. We shall not repeat our
critique of referring to the "sub-stance" of Burke. Rather, we shall dismiss this
limitation/characteristic/bias by recalling two of Burke's several well-known dual-
isms: symbolic/nonsymbolic (or extrasymbolic) and action/motion. It is true that the
symbolic does serve as the terministic screen through which we observe the nonsym-
bolic, but there is no gainsaying that Burke maintains this and other dualisms. In
addition, we find the charge of "monism" to be peculiar in light of the fact that
Burke's corpus is usually seen to embrace too many perspectives. Some of the
harshest critics have in fact charged that he flirts with relativism.
The second bias Chesebro identifies is the "logocentric." This is a term associated
with Derrida, and used by him to indicate too much emphasis in the Western world
upon the rational, the truth, and in particular the written word. Even though
Derrida does surface in this section, it is not clear whether or not Chesebro is
attempting to deconstruct Burke. In any case he stops short of evoking the
Deconstructionist's slogan: "// n'y a pas de hors texte (There is not an "outside the
text"). And as established above, there has never been a question that Burke has
maintained the existence of the nonsymbolic. Nor is there a question about the
presence of some structuralist elements in Burke's writings, most notably in his
brilliant treatise on language and world-views, A Grammar of Motives. By quoting
 229
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH TOMPKINS AND CHENEY

attacks on structuralism without showing the relevance to his argument about

Burke, Chesebro does not move the debate forward; there is nothing to refute. If
Chesebro merely means that Burke places stress on the symbolic, that is not news.
We happen to believe, as students of rhetoric and communication, that Burke's
judgment is correct in his emphasis on language, the symbolic domain, although it is
surely the case that more can be said than Burke has about the power of visual
imagery. If Chesebro wants to point out a linguistic bias in Burke, let him try to do so
without resorting to the logocentric medium of language.
The ethnocentric bias in Burke as developed by Chesebro repeats much of what
was said by Condit. We wish to provide some additional context by which to evaluate
this criticism. Although his work may not always meet today's standard of what is
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politically correct, Burke is an agnostic, not a Christian. Further, in relying princi-

pally on Judeo-Christian texts and tradition in The Rhetoric of Religion, Burke was
merely using that which was familiar, well-documented, and accessible to his
readership. Further, Burke was secularizing Judeo-Christian terminology and
imagery to make his own points about symbolism: for example, that sacred words
often "point" to things that are transcendent or beyond human experience (see The
Rhetoric of Religion^1). Burke was sufficiently sensitive to other cultures and nations
to learn Greek, Latin, French, and enough German to read Marx in the original and
offer the first English translation of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (as a teenager).
That is not such a bad record for an American autodidact born in the 19th century.
Chesebro also quotes a letter from Burke that seems to reflect badly on Burke's
attitude toward gay and lesbian concerns. (We hope the sentence is not misleading
for having been quoted out of context.) Does Chesebro understand the significance
of Burke's comparative study of Andre Gide's The Immoralist and Mann's Death in
Venice in the early thirties? Both works subtly developed the theme of homosexuality
at a time when the word could not even be printed. Burke sought to explicate the
two works, again without being able to use the word, and simultaneously promote
the works of these relatively unknown writers in the U.S. Gide, a homosexual, and
Mann, the father of a homosexual son; both expressed their gratitude in various
ways to Burke. In addition, Ralph Ellison, the distinguished African-American
writer, publicly expressed appreciation for Burke's early and continuing support of
his career. What else might have Burke done during his times to avoid the charge of
ethnocentrism from Condit and Chesebro?
Chesebro's charge of methodological bias is both unfair and too truncated to be
useful. It is unfair in blaming Burke for the sins of "religious" followers and
over-avid advocates of Dramatism and especially of the Pentad. Chesebro's attack is
too truncated in that it glosses Hobbes, Spinoza, Darwin, and Stoicism in a single
sentence in order to make the charge appear to stick. Perhaps Burke's most original,
wide-ranging, and provocative work, A Grammar of Motives has often been "reduced"
by its users because of their own haste and superficial understanding. Our field
would do well to "mine" the Grammar more carefully and thoroughly, seeing in it an
astonishingly insightful exposition of human values, the communication process,
and discursive possibility.
Finally, Chesebro's "extensions" demonstrate a remarkable disciplinary bias in
reverse. In summarizing them, Chesebro can cite only scholars and researchers
outside the field of communication (see footnote 56, pp. 367—8). We could cite our
 230
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH MAY 1993

own work as extensions of Burkean theory into the domain of organizational

communication, but prefer instead to cite the useful application and extension of
Burke into ethnography and political communication by Gerry Philipsen.12 We also
cite the application and extension of Burke's work in Robert Ivie's generic studies of
Declarations of War.13 We could cite others and wish Chesebro had also chosen to do
so; his disciplinary snobbery in reverse serves neither this journal nor scholars in the
field of communication.

II
To sidestep the interpretation that our critiques of Condit and Chesebro are
defensive rebuttals produced by members of a Burkean "cult" or as "religious
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advocates" we offer in a hit-and-run fashion (necessarily so, because of space

limitations) what we consider to be the major limits and lacunae of Burke's corpus.
Some serious reclamation efforts will have to be made in order to save some of
Burke's positions and perhaps the system itself.
First, Burke's original position in Permanence and Change seems unequivocally to
stipulate that motives are situated in vocabularies. In later works he seems to locate
them in bodies that learn language as well as the language itself. Though not an
insoluble problem, Burke's own ambiguity about motives merits attention. Second,
as a corollary of the first point, we believe Burke erred in not clearly situating the
Pentad exclusively in the symbolic domain. Some student papers and published
criticism alike are fatally flawed by identifying, say, an agent or scene in the
nonsymbolic realm and the remaining terms of the Pentad in the symbolic. Third,
we believe it was an error for Burke to let his belief that Richard Weaver plagiarized
his teachings in a seminar prevent him from writing an ethics of rhetoric. Rhetorical
and communication scholarship would have benefitted enormously from the devel-
opment of Burkean ethics in, for example, being better able to address the question
of how to "place" ethical standards in a world of multiple perspectives. Fourth, we
believe Burke's epistemology—Logology—occurred rather late to him and as a
result remains underdeveloped. Much more needs to be said, especially in light of
current philosophical debates, about Burke's treatment in Permanence and Change of
"recalcitrance"—his term for the nonsymbolic world's intrusion into and constraint
upon (if not correction of) the symbolic world.14 Fifth, Burke's Logology must in
some way confront the reality and prominence of visual communication in this
electronic age. Sixth, we believe it was a strategic or rhetorical mistake for Burke to
discourage empirical studies of his theories as "documented parables." Seventh, we
believe that the limits and lacunae described above pose formidable challenges to
post-Burkean theory, empiricism, and criticism, especially as social inquiry re-
sponds to the profound doubts of postmodernism, particularly its skepticism about
the possibilities for rational discourse.
To some extent these challenges will best be taken up by talking about the
Burkean text, as in this exchange, but it will also require attempts to apply that text
in explanatory, empirical, and critical explanations that are open to rejecting or
transforming Burke's ideas as well as to confirming them.

NOTES
Phillip K. Tompkins is Professor of Communication and Comparative Literature and George Cheney is
Associate Professor of Communication, The University of Colorado at Boulder.
 231
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH TOMPKINS AND CHENEY
1
Celeste Michelle Condit, "Post-Burke: Transcending the Substance of Dramatism," Quarterly Journal of
Speech 78 (1992): 349-355.
2
James W. Chesebro, "Extensions of the Burkeian System," Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992): 356-368.
3 Gerard A. Hauser, review of Rhetoric and Philosophy (ed. Richard A. Cherwitz), in Quarterly Journal of Speech 78
(1992): 369-371.
4
Condit 349.
5
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (1945; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) 239-40.
6
Frank Lentricchia, Criticism and Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) 74.
7 Niklas Luhmann, Essays on Self-Reference (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).
8
Burke, A Grammar 56-7.
9
Fred Davis, "Preface," in R.S. Perinbanayagam, Signifying Acts: Structure and Meaning in Everyday Life
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985) xi. Unfortunately, Davis does not give the source of the
quotation. We would appreciate hearing from scholars who could give us the citation.
10 Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (1950; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) 27-8.
11 Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).
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Burke has said that this book, of all his works, best demonstrates the power of language.
12
Gerry Philipsen, "Mayor Daley's Council Speech: A Cultural Analysis," Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 (1986):
247-60.
13 Robert L. Ivie, "Images of Savagery in American Justifications for War," Communication Monographs 47
(1980): 279-94.
14
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984) 255-257.