Rhetoric’s Unconscious: Freud, Burke, Lacan

Despite seemingly broad acceptance within rhetorical theory, the category of the unconscious has remained understudied and misunderstood ever since Kenneth Burke first appropriated the concept from psychoanalysis, and his unquestioned commitment to conventional anthropocentric binaries continues to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophy & rhetoric 2024-09, Vol.57 (2), p.141-165
Main Author: Cowan, Jake
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Burke
cybernetics
digital rhetoric
General Interest
Philosophy
psychoanalysis
unconscious
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Summary:Despite seemingly broad acceptance within rhetorical theory, the category of the unconscious has remained understudied and misunderstood ever since Kenneth Burke first appropriated the concept from psychoanalysis, and his unquestioned commitment to conventional anthropocentric binaries continues to obscure the role and function of the unconscious within communication into this century. Offering a corrective reanalysis of the Freudian apparatus for contemporary rhetoricians, this article shows where Burke went wrong in his early encounter with psychoanalysis and suggests a vital alternative approach in the cybernetic recasting of Jacques Lacan, which suggests the possibility of an unconscious without Dramatism’s traditional humanist assumptions. In a lateral turn bringing this imagined dialogue between Burke and Lacan into our era, the article demonstrates how a Lacan-inflected posthumanist revision of rhetoric’s unconscious is better suited to address contemporary issues of mediated communication, such as the pedagogical import of AI and ChatGPT.
ISSN:0031-8213
1527-2079
DOI:10.5325/philrhet.57.2.0141