Rhetoric Review Jul 2011

Divided We Stand: Beyond Burkean Identification

Shane Borrowman Walden University ; Marcia Kmetz Walden University

Abstract

Despite arguments to the contrary, division is as natural to the civic-minded human animal as is identification. Both sides of this natural inclination are explored in the works of Kenneth Burke, although the latter, rather than the former, tends to be championed. In this essay we explore Burkean ideas about the division/identification binary through a particularly personal and frequently ignored national example: Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin. As the first woman ever elected to Congress, Rankin is known best neither for her work toward universal suffrage nor for her fight against corporate excess. Instead, she is simply the woman who voted against US involvement in both World War I and World War II.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2011-07-01
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2011.581942
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
modern rhetorical theory
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (9)

  1. Goad (2023)
    The Problem with Police-Recorded Video
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Amicucci (2023)
    Trivialization and Disembodiment of the Black Lives Matter Movement through the…
    Rhetoric Review
  3. Amicucci (2022)
    #ShopSmall because #ArtAintFree: Instagram artists’ rhetorical identification w…
    Computers and Composition
  4. Cowan (2021)
    The Constitutive Rhetoric of Late Nationalism: Imagined Communities after the D…
    Rhetoric Review
  5. Olson (2019)
    Our Bodies and the Language We Learn: The Dialectic of Burkean Identification i…
    Rhetoric Review
Show all 9 →
  1. Richards et al. (2017)
    “Government Is an Instrument in Their Hands”: Jeanette Rankin on Progressive Te…
    Advances in the History of Rhetoric
  2. Lewis (2017)
    Democracy and Government: A Critical Edition of Jeannette Rankin’s 1917 Address…
    Advances in the History of Rhetoric
  3. Carter (2015)
    Mediated Mourning: Troubled Identifications in Atom Egoyan’sArarat
    Rhetoric Review
  4. Jones (2014)
    Compensatory Division in the Occupy Movement
    Rhetoric Review

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    A Grammar of Motives
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Show all 22 →
  1. Burke Kenneth (1973)
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  17. Weiser M. Elizabeth (2008)
    Burke, War, Words: Rhetoricizing Dramatism
CrossRef global citation count: 16 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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