Rhetoric, Cybernetics, and the Work of the Body in Burke's Body of Work

Abstract

This article examines the development of Kenneth Burke's early rhetorical theory in relation to the coterminous cybernetic research to which Burke was often responding. I argue that recuperating Burke's early attempts to construct a rhetorical subject embracing nonrepresentational vectors is salutary for intervening in ongoing debates over subjectivity and affective experience in contemporary critical, rhetorical, and cultural theory.