[Hu}Man is
the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal
inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)
separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making
goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order)
and rotten with perfection (LASA 16).


Welcome to the the Digital Parlor, an electronic space which connects you, the reader, to me, the writer. In this space we share a common language, or you wouldn't even be reading this, but we might not share common beliefs about the language we use, that instrument of our making and perfecting. The terms we use, the words, are more often than not, ambiguous, multi-valent, and resonant with the historical occasion of their enactment. These terms can be spun out of their particular context, woven into new occasions, new enactments, and in so spinning, "oscillating" as Lanham would name it, take on new meaning, provide new ways of seeing, a new pentadic ratio of motivation. Burke's dramatism is grounded in the method of the pentadic ratio, a way of investigating the terministic screens of a triadic dialectic.

If key terms are important, so are key theories. If the spinning of a single word can offer insight, then the spinning of theory will as well.