Kenneth Burke on Myth by Coupe Lawrence;

Author:Coupe, Lawrence;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2005-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Burke’s notion of the interval, and the whole subject of transition that he may be seen to explore throughout his writing career, has proved extremely influential. One of the more obvious examples is the anthropology of Victor Turner. In The Ritual Process (1974) Turner even echoes the insight of dramatism when he discusses ritual as social drama, though he never cites Burke. His own stated source for his speculations on the nature of ritual is Arnold van Gennep. Van Gennep’s model of the “rite of passage” observes the ethnological importance of the “liminal” period, during which the initiate has a profound experience of moving from one state to another. That is, the initiate crosses a “threshold” (Latin: limen). For Turner, this phase becomes the key to all ritual. In spelling out this insight, he can be seen to qualify van Gennep’s model in terms very close to Burke’s paradigm.

Turner’s basic distinction is between two ways of living socially: “structure” and “communitas.” Having distinguished them, he is interested in how communitas marks a move beyond the threshold of the structure. “All human societies implicitly or explicitly refer to two contrasting social model. One… is of society as a structure of jural, political and economic positions, offices, statuses and roles, in which the individual is only ambiguously grasped behind the social persona. The other is of society as a communitas of concrete, idiosyncratic individuals who, though differing in physical and mental endowment, are nevertheless regarded as equal in terms of shared humanity.”3

“Structure” is the everyday social world, with all its ranks and restrictions. “Communitas,” inspired by the vision of a sacred alternative, is transitional, promoting equality and fellowship. Looking around for contemporary examples, Turner praises the counterculture of hippies. He remarks on their inclination toward marginal, tribal living, nonpossessive personal relationships, and eccentric appearance and behavior: “The Hippie emphasis on spontaneity, immediacy, and ‘existence’ throws into relief one of the senses in which communitas contrasts with structure.”4 Nor does Turner lack more traditional illustrations. He sees many mystics and founders of religious orders, such as St. Francis of Assisi, as representing devotional experience rather than abstract doctrine: religious radicals always embody communitas rather than structure.5 Indeed, it is the religious aspect of the principle that makes it so radical, given the unimaginative, uniform nature of life in modern secular society. Still, Turner is under no illusions about the sustainability of communitas. He acknowledges that the transitional way of life, while originating in spontaneity and marginality, will usually become normative, institutional, and narrowly ideological—like “charismatic” authority for Weber.6

Burke anticipates Turner in various ways. First, Turner’s liminality is reminiscent of Burke’s perspective by incongruity—that is, in the process by which we move from one orientation to another. Second, when Turner refers to the given social order by the term “structure,” he seems to mean something like Burke’s “piety,” though for Burke restricted to its secular manifestations. Third, by identifying structure with institution and authority, Turner may remind us of Burke’s stress on the importance of the “forensic” as the background against which ritual rebirth might occur.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.