Nietzsche contra Burke: The melodrama in dramatism

The works of Kenneth Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche find common ground in a similar understanding of the hortatory nature of language‐using. This similarity gives rise to a measure of dissonance when weighed against their radically differing conceptions of the negative—Burke employing a “sacrificial,” dialectical negative and Nietzsche a “discriminative,” nondialectical negative. These differences in use of the negative allow a distinction between two genres of dramatism with important consequences identified in tragic drama, illustrating contrasting orientations toward symbolic activity in general

Heidegger and derrida: The conflict between hermeneutics and deconstruction in the context of rhetorical and communication theory

Jacques Derrida's deconstructive analyses expose the sense in which hermeneutic strategies fall prey to the “metaphysical exigency”: an unargued and concealed choice significant to the exposition of a philosophical position. The roots of this choice come most fully to light in the context of Derrida's differentiation of his views from those of Martin Heidegger. These differences contain two issues crucial to an understanding of the relationship between language, rhetoric, and communication: intersubjectivity and disclosure of being. The confrontation between deconstruction and hermeneutics on these issues brings into question the possibilities for and the valuation of communication while offering the basis for a thoroughly rhetorical understanding of language‐using

Choosing a Rhetoric of the Enemy: Kenneth Burke's Comic Frame, Warrantable Outrage, and the Problem of Scapegoating

Kenneth Burke's dramatistic theory of rhetoric presents a significant tension between an “Iron Law of History” and a “comic” attitude. Comic framing in ironic awareness of one's own shortcomings in a conflict, as well as those of one's opponent, moderates aggression but also appears to dissolve the ground for the identification and censure of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, this did not prevent Burke from engaging in the censure of wrongdoing. Although Burke does not explicitly and adequately counter the apparent inconsistency, he implicitly provides a meta-perspective advancing a possible resolution. Forceful scapegoating of scapegoating itself, through comic irony and double-visioned analysis, can guide, in serial progression, warfare and redemptive reunion. Wartime speeches of Franklin D. Roosevelt illustrate the larger comic framing inherent in a rhetorical movement from “factional tragedy” to “comic” regard and reconciliation

“You ain’t gonna get away wit’ this, Django”: Fantasy, fiction and subversion in Quentin Tarantino’s, Django Unchained

From 2009 to 2015, U.S. director, Quentin Tarantino, released three films that were notable for their focus on particular historical events, periods and individuals (Inglorious Basterds 2009; Django Unchained 2012; The Hateful Eight 2015). Together, these films offered a specifically “Tarantinian” rendering of history: rewriting, manipulating and, for some, unethically deploying history for aesthetic effect. With regard to Django Unchained, this article examines how Tarantino’s historical revisionism provides a valuable point of inquiry into the ways in which “history” is depicted on-screen and, more importantly, how depictions of “the past” can prove useful for highlighting underlying contradictions, ambivalences and ambiguities in the “present”. Drawing upon Slavoj Žižek’s Lacanian approach to film analysis, it is argued that through a combination of fantasy, subversion and counterfactual possibility – most notable in the film’s final stand-off between its leading black characters – Tarantino is able to render the Real of U.S. slavery as an ahistorical antagonism. This antagonism highlights the ongoing trauma of these events in the present as well as the use of fantasy to explore their traumatic subject matter. Such historical fictions are not fixed to the past but, via an encounter with the Real, can be used to appraise the present

Physics and language—science and rhetoric: Reviewing the parallel evolution of theory on motion and meaning in the aftermath of the Sokal Hoax

Alan Sokal's concern about a decline in intellectual standards includes an indictment of what he calls current “subjectivist” trends accompanying a general erosion of “objectivity “ stemming from postmodern views such as deconstruction. This erosion is identified most importantly in postmodern claims about the instability of rigorous distinctions between opposites. This study argues that the deconstructive practice of disturbing the status quo between opposites extends as far back as Newton and constitutes one of the central themes of physics since the Enlightenment. Parallel developments in physics and language studies are summarized from Aristotle to Einstein and quantum theory‐all in support of the contention that to question postmodern language theory exemplified in deconstruction necessitates questioning also the parallel developments in physics from Newton to the present time. Both physics and language theory make rigorous distinctions between opposites a thing of the past. This circumstance necessitates, contrary to what Sokal argues and consistent with current themes in the rhetoric of science, a construction of reality in language and experience which is nevertheless not essentially subjectivist, objectivist, nor relativist