Abstract

Kenneth Burke bases his theory of identification on Freud's; however, whereas Burke insists that identification is a symbolic act that therefore remains available for conscious critique and reasoned adjustment, Freud reflects on an affective identification that precedes the distinction between “self” and “other.” This nonrepresentational identification—Freud sometimes calls it “primary identification”—remains stubbornly on the motion side of the action/motion loci, impervious to symbolic intervention. This article argues that Freud's scattered insights on primary identification undercut any theory of relationality grounded in representation, and therefore any hope of securing a crucial distance between self and other through conscious critique. It further argues that Freud's theory on identification presents rhetorical studies with a distinctly unBurkean challenge: to begin exploring the sorts of rhetorical analyses that become possible only when identification is no longer presumed to be compensatory to division.