Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric, Subjectivity, Postmodernism

by Robert Wess

Overview

Kenneth Burke's influence ranged across history, philosophy and the social sciences. This important study examines Burke's influence on contemporary theories of rhetoric and the subject, and explains why Burke failed to complete his Motives trilogy. Burke's own critique of the "isolated unique individual" led him to question the possibility of unique individuation, thereby anticipating important elements of postmodern concepts of subjectivity. This book is both a timely and judicious exposition of Burke's long career and a crucial intervention in critical debates surrounding rhetoric, history and human agency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521410496
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/11/1996
Series:	Literature, Culture, Theory , #18
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	5.59(w) x 8.82(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

1. Ideology as rhetoric; 2. Counter Statement: aesthetic humanism; 3. Permanence and Change: a biological subject of history; 4. Attitudes towards History: the agon of history; 5. The Philosophy of Literary Form: history without origin or telos; 6. A Grammar of Motives: the rhetorical constitution of the subject; 7. A Rhetoric of Motives: ideological and utopian rhetoric; 8. The Rhetoric of Religion: history in eclipse.