Saturday, February 15, 2014

Communication and Mysticism

To what degree is an act of communication also an act of mysticism?

And what do I mean by asking that question?

At the very least, when we communicate we have to, to some degree, get outside of ourselves. When we listen, we think the thoughts of another person, and the degree to which we understand that other person depends on the degree to which we feel what they feel and see what they see. Communication is about cooperation and acting in common. It is about finding common ground. Otherwise the speaker will not transmit a message, nor will the hearer receive what the speaker is trying to give.

Communication is verbal and also non-verbal, so we can define communication as symbolic action. Rhetorician Kenneth Burke writes that a "symbolic act is the dancing of an attitude" (Philosophy of Literary Form 9, Burke's emphasis), and "The dance," he continues, "was originally religious" (qtd. in Hawhee Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language 43). Dancing is conscious and deliberate. It is intending to do what is being done, and it is done in and with the body.

This helps us understand the following post, where Burke writes about his dog as a dancer . . .

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