Consubstantiation

=Definition:=

This term comes from Kenneth Burke’s //A Rhetoric of Motives//. This is a key term in his development of the idea of identification. As he notes, identification occurs when a person shares or believes he/she shares similar goals, beliefs, etc. with someone else. However, this does not mean that two people who identify with each other become identical. “In being identified with B, A is ‘substantially one’ with a person other than himself. Yet at the same time he remains unique, and individual locus of motives. Thus he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another” (Burke 21).

Related to identification is division. Burke notes that the separation of people, the fact that we are “not of one substance” (22), we need rhetoric and language to bring us toward identification. Consubstantiation is the process (a necessary one according to Burke) by which we might bridge divisions: “in acting-together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes that make them //consubstantial//” (21). Such a process may be especially appealing today as we try to address notions of the social and the individual. Consubstantiation (and identification) allow us to understand how we can identify ourselves as part of and influenced by social factors while still being able to identify ourselves as individuals operating within a social context.

=Related/Competing Term(s):=

Identification, Division

=References=

Burke, Kenneth. //A Rhetoric of Motives//. Berkley: U of California Press, 1969. Print. (See especially 20-23.)