Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric, Subjectivity, Postmodernism (literature, Culture, Theory)

Kenneth Burke, arguably the most important American literary theorist of the twentieth century, helped define the theoretical terrain for contemporary cultural studies. His perspectives were literary and linguistic, but his influences ranged across history, philosophy and the social sciences. In this important and original study Robert Wess traces the trajectory of Burke's long career and situates his work in relation to postmodemity. His study is both an examination of contemporary theories of rhetoric, ideology and the subject, and an explanation of 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 individualism, a strategy which anticipated important elements of postmodern concepts of subjectivity. Robert Wess's study is both a timely and judicious exposition of Burke's massive ceuvre, and a crucial intervention in current debates on rhetoric and human agency. Literature, Culture, Theory 18 •A X X "x" X X X ^^1 ••• A *x* x" *x* iti x * ^t' X *x x* * A * *x* *x* *x* i it^ *x* *x* ^ii *x* * i * *x^ ^ i ^ ^#1 i Kenneth Burke Rhetoric, Subjectivity, Postmodernism Literature, Culture, Theory 18 General editors R I C H A R D MACKSEY, The Johns Hopkins University and M I C H A E L SPRINKER, State University of New York at Stony Brook The Cambridge Literature, Culture, Theory Series is dedicated to theoretical studies in the human sciences that have literature and culture as their object of enquiry. Acknowledging the contemporary expansion of cultural studies and the redefinitions of literature that this has entailed, the series includes not only original works of literary theory but also monographs and essay collections on topics and seminal figures from the long history of theoretical speculation on the arts and human communication generally. The concept of theory embraced in the series is broad, including not only the classical disciplines of poetics and rhetoric, but also those of aesthetics, linguistics, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and other cognate sciences that have inflected the systematic study of literature during the past half century. Selected series titles The subject of modernity ANTHONY J. CASCARDI Parody: ancient, modern, and post-modem MARGARET A. ROSE Critical conditions: postmodernity and the question of foundations HORACE L. FAIRLAMB Introduction to literary hermeneutics PETER SZONDI (translated from the German by Martha Woodmansee) Anti-mimesis from Plato to Hitchcock TOM COHEN Mikhail Bakhtin: between phenomenology and Marxism MICHAEL F. BERNARD-DONALS Theories of mimesis ARNIE MELBERG Poetry, space, landscape: toward a new theory CHRIS FITTER The object of literature PIERRE MACHEREY (translated from the French by David Macey) Rhetoric, sophistry, pragmatism edited by STEVEN MAILLOUX Derrisa and autobiography ROBERT SMITH Novels behind glass: commodity culture and Victorian narrative ANDREW H. MILLER Kenneth Burke Rhetoric, subjectivity,