Action and Motion and more from Ted Kennedy

Perhaps I’ve developed a sort of trained incapacity where I see Kenneth Burke in everything I read, but I find it very difficult not to be reminded of Burke when I read Latour. When Latour talks about “actors” I’m recalling the distinction between action and motion that Burke has laid out, as well as his pentad as a means for understanding people’s motives or accounts of events.

This week in qualitative research methods over in the Communication Department we debated whether or not communication scholars ought to be considered scientists. I see this same discourse in Latour’s book. In class, I argued that we shouldn’t be considered scientists, nor should we want to be. For me, social sciences tend to reduce everything humans do to motion. The idea of motion seems divorced completely from that of free will, and would render all human action completely controllable and predictable. But Latour writes that when people “engage in providing controversial accounts for their actions as well as for those of others,” “traces become innumberable and no study will ever stop for lack of information on these controversies” (p. 47). This sounds to me like action. Burke too believed that human action was far more complex than social scientists might have us believe. I think it is absolutely crucial that we understand that actions require thought and motive, motion however does not. Human beings have incredibly complex reasons and purposes for acting as they do, and I feel that Latour is sufficiently appreciative of this idea.

When Latour talks about appreciating the accounts people provide for events in this world, it is hard not to think of Burke’s pentad (act, agent, agency, scene, purpose). These terms were suggested by Burke as a means for understanding the way people account for events and acts in our world. One excellent study that utilized Burke’s pentad described how when accounting for the death of his young female passenger at Chappaquiddick, Ted Kennedy privileged elements of the scene in order to minimize his own involvement or fault (here's the speech). But while Burke’s system would seem to compliment Latour’s philosophy, one must also heed Latour’s suggestion that “we have to resist the idea that there exists somewhere a dictionary where all the variegated words of the actors can be translated into the few words of the social vocabulary” (p. 48). Latour might very well object to using just five key words to explain any one individual’s account of an action. For that matter, it seems that Latour’s problem might lie more generally with the limitations put upon us by language itself.

In short, I like the way Latour appears to be privileging the perspectives of human beings. I also think he’s got something in common with Kenneth Burke. I think a lot of science attempts to impose our own perspectives and understandings on the world. Latour, with all his talk of uncertainties and controversies seems to advocate against this impulse. But this lease Latour to argue against all sorts of criticism and unfortunately, I still don’t think I’m ready to ditch the critical approach I’m so accustomed to. What if the associations we trace from people’s accounts appear to be harmful or destructive to themselves or others? Of course, there is way more at stake in a question like this than whether Ted Kennedy is a boozer and a womanizer.

Ling, D. A. (1970). A pentadic analysis of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s Address to the people
of Massachusetts, July 25, 1969. Central States Speech Journal, 21, 81-87.