Rhizomic screens?

Burke’s Terministic Screens opens a chasm of exploration in terms of perception and observation. Screens must necessarily presuppose that there is matter to be grappled with, and that these screens direct and affect the end result, according to the preexisting realities or circumstances. Terministic screens direct the attention, based on nomenclature, directing down one channel as opposed to other possibilities seeming form the requisite. (Terministic Screens, 45) Among these, Burke distinguishes from the scientific, as well as dramatistic. The scientific is distinct in that it has a more technical nature by naming and defining what is and is not (Burke, 44).

The opposing idea here is the dramatistic approach, in which there is the vital question of what should and should not be. Already one can identify that there is an objective approach when reflecting on the dramatistic approach. The former technique is empirically-based, simply informing constructions as they are, while the latter dialogues and constructs around some theoretical pillar, whether obscure or visible, thus is logic-based. Beyond this, there is a plurality, in that Burke would implicitly admit the acceptability of multiple conclusions that can be drawn, or more than one logical answer to a linear progression or singular problem. The screen’s primary function is that of direction, which might be equated to media portrayal of events circumstances, and therefore the truth itself.  In law, a witness is prompted to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. In advertising, in order to harness the most power over the consumer, one it’s imperative to tell “The truth, and nothing but the truth” while crucially leaving the whole truth out. The critical mass of human perception lies not simply in observing information, but to gather all the pertinent information to make decisions. A voter may vote for a politician based on a single issue they agree with, yet the politician may not be able to have any affect in regards to that issue if they have poor foreign policy planners or economic advisors.

Superficially, in a contrasting way, the rhizome works as an un-attributable matter (Deleuze & Guattari, 5), which is defined in its multiplicity of origin or even lack thereof. “any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be.” This is very different from the tree or root, which plot s appoint, fixes an order. (Deleuze & Guattari, 7) To think of it analogously, where Burke’s terministic screen is predicated upon a trunk of prerequisite from which the branches grow, the rhizome, well, it’s been named after its analogy; it’s like a rhizome. To go along with this, it’s important to note what Deleuze & Guattari offer as sort of a condition on the rhizome: “The point is that a rhizome or multiplicity never allows itself to be overcoded, never has available a supplementary dimension over and above its number of lines, that is, over and above the multiplicity of numbers attached to those lines. All multiplicities are flat, in the sense that they fill or occupy all of their dimensions: we will therefore speak of a plane of consistency of multiplicities, even though the dimensions of this plane increase with the number of connections that are made on it.” Therefore, despite this seemingly open principle of multiplicity, there is still an analogous branch, in order for some kind of sense to be made from it.

While the rhizome seemed to be superficially contrasted, upon deeper inspection, it seems that at the most base levels of the rhizome and terministic screens, there is the agreed upon prerequisite that is a scope for understanding. In terministic screens, the nature of terms inherently affects the nature of observation (Burke, 46) while the nature of the connection and relation of one thing to another is what affects the nature of observation. In this way, a rhizome might even be thought of as a terministic screen with its distinguishing feature that the observation is defined by multiplicity.