Early Readers of Kenneth Burke: Contradiction Within Community as a Means to Knowledge

Kenneth Burke has often been read as providing an antidote to the imperialistic encroachment of science on the humanities. An examination of Burke's readers in the 1930s and early 1940s shows that his place in this debate was not obvious to his first critics. Some readers found Burke "soft" in his opposition to science; these readers castigated Burke for standing in the way of progress. Others considered Burke too scientific: his language was too technical, devoid of the emotional nuance that characterizes the best literary and critical writing, and he appeared to share the assumptions of positivism even when he claimed to oppose it. These first readers failed to see the variety of definitions of science that Burke was using, and therefore the exchanges between Burke and his readers focused as much on the rhetorical function of arguments about science as on precise definitions of terminology.