The Pentad

Burke uses the organizing principles of the pentad, not only as a way of looking at Western philosophy, but also as a way of "getting at" the motives of these systems of thought. Burke, as agent, uses his books/writings/ conversations/musings as the agency or means to perform the act of exploring and explaining the methods of philosophical stances, to provide not only a heuristic for looking at stories, but also to provide a philosophy of life--Burke's motive then is to provide a ground for analysis. Imagine that one were to manipulate the terms, for the imputing of motives, in such a case as this: The hero (agent) with the help of his friends (co-agents) outwits the villain (counter-agent) by using a file (agency) that enables him to break his bonds (act) in order to escape (purpose) from the room where he has been confined (scene). In selecting a causistry here, we might locate the motive in the agent, as we were to credit his escape to some trait integral to his personality, such as `love of freedom' (xx). In the context of this hypertext, or scene, or situation, I as hero/agent appoint or "attitudinize" Kenneth Burke my agency in the here and now, to look at the scene of online environments: • Co-Agent-Hero: Burke/ Bark/ wordman/ wordmonster/ Grandparent Liddell/ Comic/ Philosopher/ Poet/ Thinker/ Human. • Additional Co-agents: Any critic/ philosopher/ wordmonster in apposition or entelechially supportive--Rhetorician cronies/ other wordmonsters/ Technorhetoricians • Counter-agents: Any critic/ philosopher/ wordmonster in dialectical opposition/ new critics, neo-luddites, but esp. quietus • Agencies: Hypertext/ Books/ Conversation/ Stories/ Language--all acts have potential to become agency • Act: Words/ Language/ Text/ Language/ Thinking/ Language/ Logic/ Language/ Dreaming/ Language/ Reading/ Language/ Writing/ Language/ Links/ Language Logs/ Language/ Reflecting/ Language • Scene: Streben/ Striving Liter/al/ary/acy / Histor/ical/icity Psychological/ Political/ Contextual/ Re-loading/ Re-Grouping/ Re-Seeing/ • Motive: of agent/hero--"integral to his [*eir] personality" love of dialectical possibilities of language in the social fabric of human lives. Wowsers...a Burkean-Mr-Toad's-Wild-ride. Hang onto yer hats! A hypertextual Burkean conversation clips along at a frenetic pace. One must often stop and cogitate on a particular term Burke uses and, dramatistically, dialectically, try to comprehend the term in relation to everything else Burke says because for Burke, "A constitution is a substance--and as such, it is a set of motives." Constitution is a word which "stands for" a substance, a document. The word which stands for document has many connotations. Those various connotations then provide various motives: We shall, of course, focus our attention upon the legal application of the word. But we cite the other usages to make it apparent that, as is typical of the Stance Family, it readily branches into a whole universe of terms. And in particular we hope that, by recalling this wide range of (substance and motivation) that justifies us in classing such works as constitutional variants Grammar of Motives (304). So the pentad, or more exactly the ratios of the pentad, show possible variations of motivation that can be derived from the word, constitution. A constitutional wish, or enactment of the constitutional wish, shows how the word itself generates varying meanings derived from the anecdotal connotations. This leads me back to Burke's discussion on "Antimonies of Definition" where he plays with the entomology of the word and relates it to substance, to "stand under," a seemingly substantive stance (however redundant that may sound) itself that most poststructuralists, not to mention postmodernists, question. The problematic crux, the continuous debate/conversation centers, locates with the notion of the transcendental signifier, any truth asTruth: the one absolute Platonic ideal vs relativism run amok, subjective and relative truths, always contextual, some think unverifiable. The Truth vs sophistry at play in the fields of the academy. These false binary oppositions: eternal, external objective "reality" vs internal, local, subjective "reality" get played out in the in the R(eal) L(ife) vs V(irtual) R(eality) communities one finds online and offline. As false binaries, they beg the question. As more and more people join "virtual" communities, use online virtual spaces to conduct their quotidian work/play/study, we are forced to re-think what it means to "be," to "exist." Burke's theory of dramatism allows one to grapple with the issues of substance. Burke maintains the word stands for something in the world, being-in-the-world, a Heideggerian construct, a metaphor. The word itself is not "real": it is a construction or symbol not just for the thing itself, but for an action. So constitution is not just a thing, although it refers to a very real thing; it is a symbol which stands for a variety of human motivations. The it-in-the-world- has been transformed through language to "mean," to "stand for" various actions "for the shaping of human relations" Grammar of Motives (341). As part of this 20th century, fin de siecle, post-everything epistemological paradigm, I too resist the notion of some ideal Truth, and yet, I keep seeking within systems some unifying notion of our existence, or how we think ourselves into existence, or how we construct our existence, our being-in-the-world, again back to the epistemology of Heidegger. Examining the "god terms" such as "R(eal) L(ife) and V(irtual) R(eality), terms that "mean" and "stand for" our various actions and relationships in the world, provide yet another set of terms to analyze pentadically. Indeed, the battle rages online and off as to what constitutes the "real" in "real time virtual conferencing environments." What is the "substance" of "emotes" online? What are the apparent and hidden motivations of online users, those masked personas, acting out different roles for varieties of "purposes" or reasons? Some would draw the line between the "real" as F2F, where one meets eye to eye with one's interlocutor. The "virtual" world is the fantasy world where no "real" work gets done. No honest communication can take place where the conversants can type whatever they please with no "real" corresponding "reality" to curb their imaginative flights of fancy. An arbitrary line has been drawn in a metaphorical time and space. R(eal) L(ife) <--- ........|....... ---> V(irtual) R(eality) Here I think I can hear Burke, or TL, saying, "Well sure. But it's more complicated than that" (R of R 315). This thesis is an attempt to contextualize and analyze some of the claims made from both sides. To start it might be of interest to appoint RL as the perfecting impulse and VR as the "rottenness." Humans have attempted to make sense of their corporeal existence in relation to their "intellectual," "spiritual" or "emotional existence as long as there has been humans. This metaphorical time and space provided by online communities provides yet a new for our theoretical ontological and epistemological cogitations. Pragmatic, empirical philosophies find themselves cut off from the corporeal. Whatever does it mean to "be" online? Who are we? Where are we? "What am I doing here?" "What is this place?" are the first questions people generally ask when they login to a MOO for the first time.They want to know about the "place" before it dawns on them that they don't know who they are in this new place. They must contextualize themselves before they can find out "who" they are.