KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society

3 articles
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body and rhetoric ×

June 2018

  1. Embodied Rhetorics: Writing Rides from the Seat of a Bike
  2. Embodied Rhetorics: Writing Rides from the Seat of a Bike

April 2010

  1. Smart Mobs and Kenneth Burke
    Abstract

    THE ACADEMY (AND OUR DISCIPLINE) has a love for grand figures. Any type of work with social movements is often seen through and discussed in terms of leaders who are easy to identify, and therefore, easily work as metonymic figureheads for their respective organizations. The speaker in this situation becomes the embodiment of the social movement, and s/he (and the organization s/he represents) is judged by hir ability to speak in accordance with the classic concepts of oratorical performance. Inevitably, this model conjures up images of a leader crafting an oration for public consumption in an offstage space; some text carefully crafted by the individual speaker working alone until the appropriate time of its release. It is easy to imagine all rhetoric, and especially unorthodox or polemic rhetorics, working in this way since it is comforting—it allows rhetoricians to make the unfamiliar familiar by pressing unusual or discomforting rhetorics into a Quintilian-like model of public performance.