"Comic Correctives"

## Citation

Burke, Kenneth. "Comic Correctives." *Attitudes Toward History*. 3rd ed., University of California Press, 1937, pp. 166-179.

## Summary

Ambivalence, for Burke, is "an essentially *comic* notion, containing two-way attributes lacking in polemical, one-way approaches to social necessity. It is neither wholly euphemistic, nor wholly debunking - hence it provides the *charitable* attitude towards people that is required for purposes of persuasion and co-operation, but at the same time maintains our shrewdness" (166).

Debunking is described more particularly in "The Virtues and Limitations of Debunking," from *The Philosophy of Literary Form*. Basically, it refers to the pessimistic tendency to refute popular/master narratives, a form of negative critique that does not establish its own foundations - "In order to shatter his opponents' policies, he adopts a position whereby he could not logically advocate a policy of his own. And the, since there comes a point at which he too must advocate something or other, he *covertly* restores importnat ingredients of thought that he has *overtly* annihilated." (*PLF* 171) A hypocritical and un-self-reflexive critique.

A comic frame allows one to better understand an idea or perspective, without being immediately oppositional to it or believing in it uncritically (for more on this, see Burke's justification for studying the "Documents of Error" and/or Hitler's book). It is a dialectical understanding, focusing on how actions lead to consequences and further action (Burke provides the example of the private appropriation of public domain in the 19th century). The comic frame allows for a transcending of the dialectic, synthesizing our understanding. and "making a man the student of himself," and "should enable people *to be observers of themselves, while acting*. Its ultimate would not be *passiveness*, but *maximum consciousness*. One would 'transcend' himself by noting his own foibles. He would provide a rationale for locating the irrational and the non-rational." (171).

-In this, Burke seems to have a lot of resonance with Hannah Arendt, particularly in her analysis of forgiveness as that which opens the way for newness - though Burke does not go so far as to say that the comic frame requires a new start.

"The metaphorical migration of a term from some restricted field of action into the naming of acts in other fields is a kind of 'perspective by incongruity' that we merely propose to make more 'efficient' by proposing a *methodology* for encouraging still further metaphorical migrations" (173)

-Perspective by incongruity is Burke's term for attempting to transform the not-X into X (for example, ways of not-seeing into ways of seeing) - a dialectical/synthetic process. The comic frame enables this perspective by incongruity by encouraging the swapping between terms, to see what results.

Again on the study of past error - "The comic frame might give a man an attitude that increased his spiritual wealth, by making even bad books and trivial remarks legitimate objects of study. It might mitigate somehwat the difficulties in engineering a shift to new symbols of authority, as required by the new social relationships that the revolutions of historic environment have made necessary. It might provide important cues for the composition of one's life, which demands accommodation to the structure of others' lives." (173-174)