Burke and Gates,Jr. Terministic Screen and Race

Once I read Gate's Writing "Race" And The Difference It Makes and Burke's Terministic Screens both theorists intersects race, identification, language, and it became very interesting to see how they each play a different role with terministic screens and how they function. Burke states how terministic screens are, "what we see is dependent on the filter, but terministic screens are not only filters; they become frames that mediate our immediate experiences within a collective consciousness," (45). This helps me have a better understanding to what Burke was trying to explain about how terminstic screens are connected to man or in this case race, "can position differences of degree and those based on differences of kind," (50), so screens can distinguish the way species differ from each other.

After reading Gate's Writing "Race" And The Difference It Makes, I found it interesting about how he mentions how in works of  literature "race" has been either presented or ignored, "The question of the place of texts written by the Other (be that odd metaphorical negation of the European defined as African, Arabic, Chinese, Latin American, Yiddish, or female authors) in the proper study of "literature," "Western literature," or "comparative literature" has, until recently, remained an unasked question, suspended or silenced by a discourse in which the canonical and the noncanonical stand as the ultimate opposition," (2). He thoroughly explains how other theorist such as Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine, see "race" as a language that is representing an individuals actions, "race was the source of all structures of feeling and thought: to "track the root of man," (3). This relates to what Burke said about how people act and that screens allow us to analyze their actions, " (53), people act, but things have motion; “dramatistic” screen helps us analyze the action relies on the idea that “identification” is compensatory to division.

Burke explains how the term " logology" being the study of words and forms of language that is a bridge between faith and language, "words about God might be studied as words about words...," (47). The realization of how reason follows faith, "relation between faith and reason. That is if one begins with faith, which must be taken on authority, one can work out a rationale based on this faith," (47). However, Gates argues how "race" constructs society, "race has both described and inscribed differences of language, belief system, artistic tradition, and gene pool..." (5). Language has many different patterns and shifts through the perception of the individual based on that persons culture, "Race has become a trope of ultimate, irreducible difference between cultures, linguistic groups, or adherents of specific belief systems which more often than not-also have fundamentally opposed economic interests. Race is the ultimate trope of difference because it is so very arbitrary in its application," (5). As we continue to see how race leads our behavior and patterns, we can also come to terms with how we can have a better understanding on how it could be used.