Tragedy and comedy, outrage and reconciliation: exploring the insurrection of January 6, 2021, through Burkean frames

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I rhetorically analyze the Final Report by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 th Attack on the United States Capitol, released in January 2023, as a jumping off point to explore possible limitations of and opportunities for rhetorical responses to political crises in the wider U.S. public discourse. In contrast to the Report’s tragic centering of Trump as agent, I argue that using a comic frame in the wider political discourse could help bring the scene, or the state of democracy, to a place of interrogation, and allow for a broader accounting of agents and agency, as well as their relationships to one another. Rather than deny an ultimate reckoning of a tragic situation, this article examines the importance of comic processing in service of elevated democratic discourse. By providing a space to reinterpret and resituate the pentadic motives underlying an act of democratic crisis like the insurrection, a comic frame’s pentadic vision can potentially open up new and transformative ways of understanding citizens’ public selves, their political relationships, and democracy, while still allowing for the expression of warrantable outrage.