Burke and Helen Keller's Construction of Radical Change

      From Ann George's  Mr. Burke, Meet Helen Keller an audience  perceives a correlation between Helen Keller and Burkean ideology. Instead of focusing on the pure miracle of Helen Keller, Ann George states "I want Burke to meet one whom surprisingly few have met-the radical Keller, a feminist, early advocate of birth control, and lifelong socialist who supported leftwing political candidates, marched in socialist parades, and cheered on strikers" (George 340). For purposes of this blog post I want to briefly analyze the similarities between Burkes' and Helen Kellers' philosophy and then discuss the challenges Helen Keller faced as a rhetorician. 


      On page 340 George states that Keller was a powerful rhetor, "she published 200 works (including 14 books), gave countless speeches, raised millions of dollars as a lobbyist for the American Federation for the Blind, and became one of America's most effective goodwill ambassadors." Along with Keller, Burke participated in advocating radical change, socialism and creating identification and "boring from within." Burke has written about Helen Keller and can agree with Keller's ideas regarding early twentieth-century capitalist culture as unstable. When looking at the instability of the twentieth century capitalist culture Burke used terms such as 'incapacity' and 'peity.' Although containing a view within society is fair, both rhetoricians decided that rhetorical strategies needed to be in effect. "Both, however, remained determined to press a leftist agenda and so often used the same three rhetorical strategies for their resistant audiences: what Burke called boring from within, translation, and perspective by incongruity" (George 342). Although both  identify with the concept of 'boring from within' this concept has caused a multitude of problems within rhetorical strategy.

      From these rhetorical strategies and the practice of voicing them, Keller gained much scrutiny as to whether she had the full capacity to be considered a rhetorical theorist. "Critics then and now dispute Keller's account of her experience because in Judith Shulevitz's words, Keller 'puts what she has been told on the same epistemological plane as what she has learned through direct observation'"(Shulevitz 345). However, is it fair to say that because she was born with these conditions that it's her fault thus making her not a person with ideas? If this is the case then Helen Keller is a victim of hegemony. We discussed throughout class discussion forms of hegemony. We've watched Helen Keller's video of her speaking and from that can take that she is capable of processing her own thoughts. Burke argues for Keller in Language and states that Keller argued against this 'naive verbal realism.' From this Keller releases the statement:

         
       "Of course, I am not always on the spot when things happen, nor are you. I did not                                 witness the dreadful accident at Stamford the other day, nor did you, nor did most                                 people in the United States. But that did not prevent me, anymore than it prevented                               you, from knowing about it" (A New Light).

      
      From this statement, it's fair to say that Keller and Burke bring up the concept of realism and a 'word of mouth' theory. From gained knowledge, we perceive a reality and can challenge the rhetorical canons that we are surrounded by every day.  

-Anjelica MacGregor-