Empathy and Abjection after Burke (2): Embodied Narrative and the Resistance against Persuasion
James S. Baumlin | Missouri State University
Publication: Volume 5 Issue 4
Abstract | This present essay continues a two-part survey devoted to Kenneth Burke’s agonistic model of rhetoric—specifically, its binary of identification/division among speakers and audiences—and its permutations throughout late-20th century theory. Like Part 1, Part 2 of this double essay asks, What is it in rhetoric that leads it to succeed, or fail, as an instrument of persuasion?
The latest advances in cognitive science have rhetorical implications, in that the neurophysiological effects of language (written as well as spoken) can be mapped with seeming precision via the brain’s “mirror neuron system.” This discovery reinforces the role of empathy in contemporary models of “embodied narrative.” Yet a further discovery, the neurophysiological basis of abjection—that is, of visceral responses of rejection, expulsion, and disgust (Kristeva)—reinforces, in some audiences on some occasions, one’s strength of resistance to opposing discourses. It seems that we must learn to speak of persuasion, not as a change of mind, but as a change of brain chemistry. One’s politics, it turns out, often correlates to specific personality traits, which are themselves “hardwired” into individuals’ brain functions where cognitive-affective “triggers” of empathy dominate in some, of abjection in others. It’s not an empathetic “listening-rhetoric” (Booth) so much as a rhetoric-of-resistance that dominates in American popular/political culture. This insight undergirds the political philosophy of “agonistic pluralism” (Mouffe), an emerging theory in politics and the social sciences; Burkean in implication, it’s a theory custom-made for contemporary models of rhetoric.
Returning to ethical/ethotic themes introduced in Part 1, this present essay ends with a meditation on public discourse in the United States today.
Key words | Abjection, Embodied Narrative, Empathy, Ethos, Identification, Mirror neurons, “Listening-Rhetoric,” Neurorhetoric, Rogerian Argument, Wayne C. Booth, Kenneth Burke, Marco Caracciolo and Karin Kukkonen, Julia Kristeva, Carl Rogers
James S. Baumlin (jbaumlin@missouristate.edu) is Distinguished Professor of English at Missouri State University, USA, where he teaches coursework in early-modern English literature (Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton), critical theories, and the history of rhetoric, having published extensively in these fields. He has also widely published in rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy. His current research focuses on the history of Western ethos from antiquity to the present day.
MLA Citation for this Article:
Baumlin, James S. “Empathy and Abjection After Burke (2): Embodied Narrative and the Resistance against Persuasion.” Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 5, no. 4, 10 Nov. 2023, pp. 2.55–2.75, http://ellids.com/archives/2023/11/5.4-Baumlin-2.pdf