Re: MCA and Burke's parlor

Russ Hunt (HUNT who-is-at academic.stu.StThomasU.ca)
Tue, 25 Jun 1996 19:10:48 AST

I hadn't intended to raise the issue Eugene attributes to me, but I
think it's there, all right, in the differences between what Burke
wrote and how the passage was remembered (maybe at third hand?) by
Gordon.

> Russ seems to raise an interesting question about different ways
> of how people join communities. However, I'm not sure that Gordon
> and Kenneth Burke are so different in ways of people's joining
> academic conversations but rather they are different to what people
> are joining.

Absolutely. That was what I noticed as I was transcribing the Burke:
all that stuff about being on one side or the other, getting allies,
winning. I hadn't noticed it before (in my racket, that quote is
passed around like an old stone; everybody's handled it and hardly
anybody looks at it any more).

> I think this way of joining is a white middle class one. Compare
> Gordon and Kenneth Burke's descriptions with the following
> principles for successful joining of play in white middle class
> kindergarten children taken from Garvey (1984):

I'm not sure, though, that in the two cases the "way of joining" is
all that different. It's _what_ they're joining. Seems to me
Garvey's model describes both cases about equally well.

-- Russ
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