After Burke lays out his method of Dramatism, in his second book, Permanence and Change, Burke introduces the term, perspective by incongruity, but in the next book, Attitudes Toward History, he clarifies it. He calls perspective by incongruity an act of “metaphorical extension” (ATH, 309).
A word belongs by custom to a certain category—and by rational planning you wrench it loose and metaphorically apply it to a different category (ATH, 308).
What we do is create intentional (or planned) incongruity, sometimes oxymorons, and thus challenge or extend our understandings of both terms involved–a process he calls casuistic stretching.
It is designed to ‘remoralize’ by accurately naming a situation already demoralized by inaccuracy (ATH, 309).
Such extension clouds, problematizes, and thus interrogates the way the terms work. Rather than confusing us or making things less clear–what some argue is the laugh that comes from incongruity: the signal that we’ve given up trying to figure it out–Burke argues that the process clarifies both of the original terms through a process of “weighting and counter-weighting.” Basically, by taking the term out of a context where we think we know what it means, we put it into a new context that calls that previous meaning into question, and we’re encouraged to arrive at a new understanding.
Though Burke doesn’t restrict its use to humor, it is the primary tool for adopting his comic frame.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
