To my knowledge, applications of Burke’s comic frame to particular examples of conflict resolution focus primarily on social movement rhetoric—none on understanding intractable
conflict. While useful in understanding how the comic orientation influences the methods of
successful resistance movements, other applications of the comic framework are pragmatically
focused on the resisting party and overlooks the consubstantial relationship that exists be-
tween resisting and resisted. Using Burke’s comic framework, Carlson and Powell both unpack
particular social movements: respectively Gandhi’s resistance movement against British rule in
sistance movements, Burke’s comic frame is especially well-suited because it reveals a move-
ment’s logic as based on ritual drama (Carlson) and its goal is maximum awareness of the fail- ures in the overall system (Powell).
Carlson deconstructs Gandhi’s non-violent resistance movement using the principles of
the comic frame to establish “ritual drama” as a compromise posture between compliance and
revolution. Central to Carlson’s argument is her revision of Leland Griffin’s familiar application
of Burke’s dramatistic method to social movements by extracting Griffin’s approach from the
tragic frame and resituating it in Burke’s comic framework. Doing so enabled Gandhi (and Carl-
son’s analysis) to ignore the tragic frame’s demand for a scapegoat and outright rejection of the
social system (Carlson 446-448). Unfettered by the more revolutionary objectives demanded by
the tragic frame, Gandhi could re-write the rules of resistance to fit his own plans that actually
included the retention of aspects of the British system. Although the comic frame retains revo-
lution as an option, it does not mandate it. Instead, as Carlson argues, it asks only adherence to
a ritual form: drama. The ritual form conceived through the comic frame does not seek to over-
throw a system, but to capitalize on its flaws (446). This is one example of the fluidity inherent
in the comic frame that may be appropriate in my application of it to understanding intractable
conflict. There are two other contrasts between the tragic and comic frames that are relevant
to this study: homeopathic with allopathic treatments of conflict and open contrasted with
closed systems.
As a footnote (albeit a four-page one) to his discussion of elegy in Attitudes Toward His-
tory, Burke distinguishes between homeopathic and allopathic styles. This distinction is im-
as well as my own forthcoming proposition an upcoming next section regarding the lessons
from Oslo. A homeopathic style considers conflict with an eye toward accommodation, while the allopathic seeks direct refutation, if not obliteration, of the conflict. Burke offers an anec-
dote about Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod experiment where the rod served as a homeo-
pathic remedy for lightning. The rod channeled the risk posed by the lightning instead of elimi-
nating it outright (Burke, Attitudes Toward History 45). In effect, Franklin accepted the risk of
lightning as a natural condition of the environment. Therefore, considering his environment
through the comic frame provided necessary constraints on Franklin’s desired ends. However, if
there was a potential to stop lightning, then as Burke further argues, “the stylistic homeopath
tends to become ‘psychologically unemployed’, because his strategy becomes a bad fit for the
situation at hand” (Ibid 45). Worse is when a homeopathic style is unilaterally usurped by an
allopathic one. In such a case, it is unlikely that the allopathic solution was really right; the allo-
pathic style simply shifted the problem so the available solution would fit. As an example, mag-
ic, according to Burke, regressed from its homeopathic principles when its “rituals became bu-
reaucratized, they shifted towards the ‘allopathic’ category of spell, antidote” (Ibid 47). As it
applies to understanding intractable conflict where a solution may or may not exist, one might
be better served to encourage a balance of styles.
When balanced, or sequenced in some cases, the two styles can make up for the other’s
shortfalls. The homeopathic style with its propensity for attenuating a negative condition, ex-
pectation management, and comfort with uncertainty may work to reveal potential in an oth-
erwise intractable situation. It does not directly address the aspect of the perceived problem
ery of the problem. Avoiding significant risk by working in the periphery becomes a way to
maintain connection, create momentum, and perhaps reveal potential as the intractable situa- tion is perceived to be more porous, i.e. less intractable. The numerous iterations of the MEPP
are prime examples of avoiding the core problems in exchange for tenuous lines of communica-
tion. On the other hand, the allopathic alternative is quick to provide an antidote to the per-
ceived problem. When dealing with well-structured problems, the allopathic approach is of
course appropriate. No one prefers an auto-mechanic comfortable with uncertainty. However,
while one may not be comfortable with a homeopathic auto-mechanic, there may be times
when uncertainty is an acceptable temporary condition as the problem is reduced to its essen-
tial logic. Even the most expert of mechanics may resort to a “let’s see what happens” approach
until the real problem is uncovered.
Social phenomena (of which conflict is one) are rarely well-structured because for the
most part they function as open systems. I could associate well-structured problems with
closed systems, for example: automobile-as-system, but I would not consider an automobile a
pure closed system because it still requires an input of energy and direction. I contend that the
formal efforts to resolve aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Oslo 1993, Hebron 1997,
Camp David II 2000, Aqaba 2003, Annapolis 2007, and Kerry 2013-2014) began as open systems
as belligerents near the negotiation table, but become increasing closed as the actual negotia-
tions take place. Paradoxically, a conflict devolves into intractability due in part to repeated at-
tempts to resolve it (Crocker et al. 8, Northrup 63, Cohen 350). As each attempt to resolve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict fails, or is perceived to fail by its constituents, the intractability of the
tion. It is not surprising that in a sixty-year-old conflict, hope and optimism must be carefully
earned and can easily be lost: a dynamic I will address further in a later section.
In their analysis of social movements as interpretive systems, Stewart et. al outline B.
Aubrey Fisher’s systematic view of communication; the warp and woof of which is the differ-
ence between open and closed systems. For Fisher, closed systems are governed by the “prin-
ciple of equilibrium—the final state of the closed system is determined by its initial state be-
cause a self-contained system must sustain balance without any help from the outside” (Stew-
art et al 31). Moreover, a closed system has few response options when faced with “the princi-
ple of entropy” which exposes a system to an “irreversible process of disintegration” (31). It can
only offer a counterforce—Fisher calls it negentropy—to slow down the process. There is a cor-
relation between the propensity for antidote in Burke’s allopathic style and the use of a coun-
terforce in Fisher’s description of a closed system. There is also a correlation between an intrac-
table conflict where “the sources of intractability are not the same as the original causes of the
conflict” (Crocker et al. 5) and the determinism inherent in the “principle of equilibrium.” Argu-
ing the opposite, Fisher notes that an open system adheres to a “principle of equifinality
[where] you can get anywhere from anywhere else, and you can get there from a variety of
paths” (31). And as expected, an open system would assume a homeopathic posture toward
the principle of entropy that triggered an antidote response before.