Rejoinders

Kenneth Burke wisely remarks that “Every document bequeathed us by history must be treated as a strategy for encompassing a situation,” an “answer or rejoinder to assertions current in the situation in which it arose.” He goes on to compare our entry into history to a late arrival to a parlor conversation – things are already underway, we don’t know all that’s been said before, we listen for awhile and make our contribution, and then have to leave when the debate is still in full swing.

When we forget this, we reify historical statements (let us say, Confessions) into timeless, contextless axioms instead of the “answers and rejoinders” they actually were.