Winterowd wants to give Burke "the centrality he deserves" in a discussion of the epistemological realms of literature. He makes his point that Burkes's theory of dramatism "provide[s] an essential kind of knowledge" through a more non-logical language, tropes. As Winterowd says, "Humans live not by enthymemes (thesis, topic sentences) alone" (197).

Burke names himself a dialectician, and through that naming, situates himself. "Instead of viewing words as names for things, we should view them as abbreviated titles for situations" LASA (294). Winterowd names him an appositional writer and thinker, insisting (need better word and explanation here) Burke's notions of "consubstantialty" provide a temporary relief to questioning, but the inevitable, "yeah but," always returns.

Winterowd constructs his own scenario of the "unending conversation" in A Bibulous Interlude where Burke, Derrida and Freire get together for a copita on the beach. The three reach a certain consubstantialty and then the "yeah, but," the differences come in (309). This is a droll example of dramatism in action. Winterowd sets the scene of agreement, pinpointing and synthesizing common areas of agreement, letting things rest for a short sigh of enjoyment, then reintroduces the "yeah, but." The exact point that Bakhtin would call "."

Momentary consubstantiality, the ultimate goal of all talk, the one many, the many one. In heaven the moment is eternity, but time-doomed creatures live in the illusory Now between Then and Then, stopping psychological time briefly until someone utters the inevitable observative: "But...." And the loom of discourse clacks on, warp and woof of statement and counterstatement" (309).

This particular example of anecdotal reasoning further affirms or bears out Winterowd's earlier contention that some of us "think our world" this way. Yes, metaphor is a powerful epistemology.

Winterowd also maintains:

Burke did not invent the representative anecdote. He discovered it in his own work and thought...And I suspect that apposition and representative anecdote imply one another...[B]urke has outlined a non-traditional method of argumentation and uses that method consistently in his own work. We have the dramatistic way of knowing, explaining, and arguing: a method that is based on synecdoche, not enthymeme (210, 201, 199).

Winterowd concludes that Burke's writing practice runs counter to standard notions of thinking and writing where the thesis is backed up by examples, insisting that Burke turned this notion "on its head" by "follow[ing] the leads of (check this part of quote) his own example to their limits" (199). Winterowd also "suspects" that Burke's methods kept him "outside the traditional mainstream. Certainly Derrida and Fish, both of whom unwittingly recapitulate much of Burke's thought, do not mention him as far as I know (LINK TO SOURCE 200).
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