The Rites of Identity
The Religious Naturalism and Cultural Criticism of Kenneth Burke and Ralph Ellison
Chapter One
IDENTITY AND THE RITES OF SYMBOLIC ACTION
The skin is a line of demarcation, a periphery, the fence, the form, the
shape, the first clue to identity in a society (for instance, color in a
racist society), and, in purely physical terms, the formal precondition
for being human. It is a thin veil of matter separating the outside from
the inside.
-Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse
Closed societies are now the flimsiest of illusions, for all the
outsiders are demanding in.
-Ralph Ellison, Going to the Territory
Identification is compensatory to division. If men were not apart from
one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim
their unity. If men were wholly and truly of one substance, absolute
communication would be of man's very essence. It would not be an ideal,
as it now is, partly embodied in material conditions and partly
frustrated by these same conditions.
-Kenneth ... read full excerpt from The Rites of Identity: The Religious Naturalism and Cultural Criticism of Kenneth Burke and Ralph Ellison ebook
