KB x 2

The grading of many papers has taken up much space in my life over the past few days. I was so tired on Sunday that I had trouble staying awake during a lovely set by the Kenny Barron trio. That's just silly.

Anyway, in between moments of grading, I keep coming back to the same idea when I think about my RSA paper (which deals with Kenneth Burke and affect). And I quickly write it down on my computer so that I'll remember it. (Yes, I've quickly written down the same idea more than once. Because I forgot that I had the same idea previously. Lord.)

And now I'm blogging it because goodness knows I need something up here.


Burke's many faces are the Burke affect: suggesting possibilities rather than rigid identities. So maybe identification isn't really identification unless we read it through Massumi's theory of non-identification. It's not a fixed meaning. And the reason Burke continues to fascinate is precisely because his texts are not arguments, they are not fixed. The parlor is not simply a parlor. It is many, many parlors. Suggests hypertext. (So goes against the use of Burke to "fix" us into a certain mode of argumentation---Graff and Birkenstein, eg.)

There you go. I'm going to somehow turn that into a 15 minute presentation by the end of the month.

And you do know, of course, that it's his birthday Friday? Just checking.