Overview cont.
1.4. Chapter Four Overview: Systems Theory in the Later Works
In the Forties, Burke launched into a trilogy of books intended to account for human motives, the Motivorum. In the first volume, A Grammar of Motives (1945), Burke continues his reclamation of rhetoric and the corollary attack on reductionism. He repeats his assertion that motives cannot be reduced to the terms favored by classical science (i.e., trying to treat entities in terms of their particles will not get us very far). In this volume Burke deploys the Dramatistic Pentad as a method for analyzing a text or situation in all its complexity, including interrelations, which places him solidly within systems theory.
One of the most important contributions of A Grammar of Motives to systemic theory of symbolic action is the idea of the paradox of substance. Burke establishes the existence of the system that gives rise to symbolic action by demonstrating its transformational capabilities (since transformation is only possible in systems, according to Claude Lévi-Strauss). He employs a volcanic metaphor, claiming that the system throws out distinctions, but also reabsorbs them. This dynamic suggests why quality space can reclassify and reorient itself. This transformative capability is the essence of symbolic action.
Now that Burke is certain that he is dealing with systems, he sets out to explain how they operate. Specifically, the mechanism of transformation is the subject of A Grammar of Motives. Burke identifies two sources: the paradox of substance, and the overlaps in the network which allow for "alchemic opportunities" for transformation and thus for symbolic action.4 In A Grammar of Motives Burke studies the resources of ambiguity that language affords as a result of the paradox of substance. His metaphor for this process is of a central moltenness which throws forth distinctions that can be reabsorbed. The ambiguity of language allows for transformation, which is essentially, "substantially," metaphor. Burke's volcanic metaphor is the simplest model possible for a system.
Because of the transformational properties created by the paradox of substance, people can not only classify, but reclassify. The idea of classification brings us to the second source of transformation: terminological overlap. The more associative links that exist between two entities in the system, the easier it is to classify them together. Metaphor is the process of transformation wherein related things can be classified together, but so great are the resources of language that very different entities can be grouped together (in fact, opposites can) (1973 77).5
The next book in the series, A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), examines how the transformation of quality space is used for persuasive ends. In the process he reclaims much of the traditional lore of rhetoric, defends it from scientistic attack, and expands its scope by adding the idea of identification. Burke claims that rhetoric has not been rendered obsolete by scientism, asserts that rhetoric and metaphor are outside the realm of true-false, and that opinion is not the opposite of truth. Moreover, Burke shows that positive science cannot account for human behavior and motives, and that it is important to do so because the "word magic" of political discourse can be extremely effective, even fatal. He often points out that words about the supernatural are real, even if the supernatural is not. Words have meaning even when they do not correspond to a physical thing, despite the claims of Logical Positivism. In fact, the most powerful words do not, for example "God," "Apartheid," "patriotism," etc. Though positive science cannot deal with and denigrates the "merely" linguistic, emotional, metaphorical, and ethical, Burke claims that an ethical "shall" is often smuggled into scientific discourse that purports to deal only in what is, not what ought to be.
Evidence of Burke's systemic thinking is readily seen in A Rhetoric of Motives, e.g., in his definition of an identity as a unique structure (and elsewhere as a set of interrelated terms). In addition, he spends a great deal of time discussing the systems ideas of hierarchy and telos. He also describes a society as a "superentity," a term used in General Systems Theory (130). His interest in substitution and hierarchy is also paralleled by General Systems Theory, and is continued in The Rhetoric of Religion (1961). In that work he also asserts that not only is a culture as a whole a system, but all its contending doctrines are as well.
Burke's next projected book was to be either an ethics or a poetics, but in The Rhetoric of Religion he instead decided to map a microcosm of the system, since to map the whole shifting quality space was not then possible. Consequently, he chose to begin to map a theological doctrine because (despite its being much smaller) it possesses all the transformational devices operating in the system as a whole. Burke's analysis leads him to examine transcendence, ethics, values, guilt and redemption, but as systemic functions, not as theological terms.
Burke's last major text, Language as Symbolic Action (1966), is an anthology in which he introduces few new ideas, but rather seeks to make his philosophy of language clearer and more systematic. Moreover, many of his key terms are systemic; e.g., function, context, perfection (telos), and Logology, the latter being "the systematic study of theological terms. . . purely for the light they might throw upon the forms of language . . . . a purely empirical study of symbolic action" (47).
This overview conveys the gist of Burke's development of a systemic theory of symbolic action. Systems thinking is evident in the influences on Burke, the problems that he chooses, in the terms that he develops, and in his running battle with scientism. The systemic basis of the Burkean corpus will become even more evident when Burke and Bertalanffy are placed in a dialectic in the following chapter.
next: 1.5. Chapter Five Summary: The Systemic Basis of Burke's Theory of Symbolic Action