...centuries the realization that the "you" is an essential correlate of the "I." This "discovery," Laing contends, revolutionized modernist accounts of selfhood; since



social life is not made up of a myriad I's and toe's only, but of you, he she, we, and them ... the experience of you or he or them or us may indeed be as primary and compelling (or more so) as the experience of "me." (Laing, Phillipson, & Lee, 1966, p. 3)

Indeed, central to contemporary theorizing is this embedding of other perspectives within the self. One of the most influential such examples is George Herbert Mead's (1934) Mind, Self, and Society, which argues powerfully that the self is not given at birth, but arises as a result of social interaction. The self, for Mead, is created through symbolic exchange, as an individual becomes aware of herself as an object. As I take the other's perspective on myself, I learn who I am by internalizing the other's attitude (Mead, 1934, p. 171). However, the self is only fully formed when I can take the perspective of the "generalized other," the overall attitude of society, on my own actions (Mead, 1934, p. 155).

The self forged in this interaction is not, though, reducible to the internalized opinion of others, for it has two facets: the set of internalized social roles characteristic of the symbolic self (or "me"), and the spontaneous, unique attitudes each individual takes toward that social content (the "I"): "The 'I' is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the 'me' is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself [2] assumes" (Mead, 1934, p. 175). Indeed, though some scholars of identity continue to focus upon structures or characteristics of the individual self (e.g., Kihlstrom & Klein, 1994; Klein, 2001; Markus, 1977; Markus & Sentis, 1982), Mead's impact can be seen in the extensive research tracing this relationship between the 'private' and 'public' self (e.g., Baumeister, 1986; Sedikides & Brewer, 2001; Suls, 1993).

One of the most widely cited examples from this literature is Erving Goffman's (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which articulates a dramaturgical view of identity: an actor working to sustain a desired definition of self and situation in the presence of others (Goffman, 1959, pp. 1-16, 252-255; cf. Goffman, 1967, 1974). Like Mead, Goffman views the performance of self as deeply relational, for it indicates both the actor's recognition of her audience, and of the proprieties central to communal conceptions of normality (Goffman, 1963a, 1963b, 1971).

Goffman's vocabulary is not universally accepted (e.g., Tice & Baumeister, 2001), but his focus upon self-presentation has solidified itself as a mainstay of research in social psychology and communication. Within social psychology, for example, numerous empirical studies have explored the process of self-presentation (Arkin & Baumgardner, 1986; Bangerter, 2000; Baumeister, 1982a, 1982b; DePaulo, 1992; Giacalone & Rosenfeld, 1991; Gilbert & Jones, 1986; Hill, Weary, & Williams, 1986; Jones & Pittman, 1982; Leary, 1993; Leary & Kowalski, 1990; Rhodewalt, 1986; Schlenker, 1980; Schlenker & Pontari, 2000; Tedeschi, 1981; Whitehead & Smith, 1986). In like fashion, communication scholars have closely investigated 'facework' (Cupach & Metts, 1994; Kerssen-Griep, 2001; Oetzel et al., 2001; Rogan & Hammer, 1994; Ting-Toomey, 1994; Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2002) and strategic presentations of self (Allen, 1986; Allen & Caillouet, 1994; Clark & Delia, 1979; Dillard, Segrin, & Hardin, 1989; Ellis & Wittenbaum, 2000; Leathers, 1988; Riess & Rosenfeld, 1980; Wilson, 1990).

Though readily recognized for his work in rhetoric, many would find it strange to find Kenneth Burke's name included in the above citations; he is not readily identified as a scholar of self-presentation, nor is he celebrated as a symbolic interactionist--despite the references to Burke in Goffman's work (e.g., 1959, pp. 25, 67, 136, 164, 165, 175, 194), and despite an account of selfhood that resembles Mead's (e.g., Burke, 1984b). [3] This essay, accordingly, has a dual purpose. The first is the explication of Burke's contribution to these scholarly conversations. Second, this essay articulates Burke's interactional rhetoric of identity, discourse aimed at gaining another's cooperation in the creation or defense of the rhetor's desired identity.

In order to achieve these goals, the essay first argues that a Burkean account of selfhood addresses two central weaknesses in interactionist accounts. Linking Burke to the work of Ernest Becker, I then reinterpret Burke's "basic rhetorical situation," and discuss identity as armor against existential anxiety--the result of a rhetorical performance, addressed to an audience. Next, reading Burke's work through Laing's vocabulary, I develop a neglected aspect of Burkean rhetorical theory: interactional rhetoric, or the strategic symbolic action of identity-in-relation. [4] Finally, I conclude by considering the implications of such rhetoric; as action with potentially dire consequences for the other, as well as the self, it alerts us to the ever-presence of evil, Burke's "malice and the lie," within the everyday struggle over identity.

The 'Universal Rhetorical Situation'

Though Mead's splitting of the self into the "I" and the "me" accounts for both the unique and shared aspects of the self, it also reflects a seemingly intractable problem in interactionist accounts: the relationship between individual and social aspects of identity (e.g., Arkin & Baumgardner, 1986). This problem is not limited to Mead; Goffman's critics similarly argue that his vocabulary fails to clearly conceptualize the relationship between public and private self. Some contend that Goffman's dramaturgy presumes that there is a true identity lurking behind the presentations-though Goffman's discussion of such a self is contradictory at best (Wilshire, 1982). Gergen (1991) thus concludes that Goffman's core vocabulary is both ethnocentric and incoherent: "If there is no consciousness of what it is to be 'true to self,' there is no meaning to 'playing a role'" (p. 150). Goffman also receives rough treatment at the hands of empirical researchers, who argue the converse: that Goffman's dramaturgical perspective problematically undermines the idea of a unified self (e.g., Tice & Baumeister, 2001, p. 76). [5]

The difficulties associated with the "I" and "me" are compounded by their intersection with the question of embodiment. Mead (1934) defines the body as an object, separable from the socialized self: "The body can be there and can operate in a very intelligent fashion without there being a self involved in the experience" (p. 136). Such a demarcation is shared by Goffman, who, for example, equates the embodied identities of race and gender with insignia on a uniform: performative constraints, but not themselves products of a performance (e.g., 1959, p. 24). [6]

The problem here is that the separation of social creation from biological reality reinforces the notion that there must be a stable self--a biological one--beneath Mead's and Goffman's role-playing (Gergen, 1991; Wilshire, 1982). However, since even an empirical account of biological "reality" relies upon symbol systems, the only private, "natural" aspects of the self identified will be those that are socially recognizable (Gergen, 1987; Thayer, 1997). Thus, because social materials separate that which is natural from that which is constructed, our conceptions of "nature" inevitably reflect the normative conceptions of society (Crable, 2003; Laing, 1971). Since Burke explicitly makes this argument in his later work (cf. Burke, 1978), his rhetorical theory can, in this way, make a valuable contribution to the interactionist literature--and to the work on self-presentation--because it features two central assumptions: first, that the relationship between individual and group is dialectical, not dualistic; and, second, that a vocabulary that accounts for human embodiment and symbolicity must be dialectical as well.

A Dialectical Account of Human Existence

At the root of all rhetoric, Burke writes, is a paradoxical relationship between conflict and partisanship: "put identification and division ambiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, and you have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric" (1969c, p. 25; cf. 1973b). To speak of the "rhetorical situation," then, is to speak of an ambiguous context where cooperation can easily shatter into a chaos of individuals. As Burke (1969c) reminds us, absolute separation between persons would allow no room for rhetoric, while absolute unity would render such efforts superfluous. Burke contends that the rhetorical situation is thus rooted in the nature of human existence--that the relationship between merger and division characterizes the whole of human history. For Burke, human beings are simultaneously united and separate because our existence is twofold, a dialectic of symbolic action and nonsymbolic motion.

Burke summarizes this relationship through his three "axioms" of dramatism: "There can be motion without action... There can be no action without motion ... [S]ymbolic action is not reducible to terms of sheer motion" (1978, p. 814). To be human, in other words, is to have motivations that cannot be reduced to one source; as Burke writes, "Some of [our] motivation must derive from our animality, and some from our symbolicity," while still other motivation arises in the interaction between them (1969b, p. 6). We experience ourselves as bodies, and have needs that cannot be eliminated; Burke wryly reminds us that "one cannot live by the word for bread alone" (1973a, p. xvi). These needs, however, are shaped, redirected, by symbols (as in anorexia)--while other needs arise solely from the symbolic realm (Burke, 1969b, 1978). To this extent, a vocabulary that separates bodily features and drives from the symbolic realm (as in the interactionist literature discussed above) is inadequate for the treatment of human life as a whole.

More significantly, the action/motion dialectic is the foundation for the rhetorical situation's dialectic of unity and division; to be a creature characterized by both the symbolic and nonsymbolic is to exist simultaneously as an individual and as thoroughly social. To be born into a body, Burke contends, is to be born into an individual existence; to be a symbol-user is to always live in a shared world (1978, pp. 809-810). [7] Thus, the roots of the rhetorical situation are in the composite nature of the human being, the action/motion dialectic:

from this indeterminate mixture of cooperation and division there emerge the conditions for the "basic rhetorical situation:" an underlying biological incentive towards private property,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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