Change agents are poets, in a Burkean sense, who give meaningful symbolic form to experiences and (re)shape possibilities. In developing his dramatistic perspective, Burke (1941) used the metaphor of the parlor to describe the human condition, or what he termed the unending conversation in history. We enter the parlor on birth and encounter stories, or equipment for living, that offer cultural idioms and livable truths. Those truths give rise to partial perspectives or trained incapacities (i.e., one's training results in one's incapacities). For example, Loeb (1999) poignantly argued that in the United States we live by a meta-narrative that social movements are made by heroic individuals, moments, or uprisings. Activists are people with more time, resources, courage, vision, or insight than the average person-mythic characters who remain larger than life. Heroism does not feel like the work of ordinary human beings. Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her bus seat-a heroic and tremendously consequential moment-was preceded by 12 years of participation on her part in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. These local, deliberate, and incremental actions represent persistent efforts to create a better world, allow for the turning points that story our collective histories, and ultimately remind us that the parlor is contested terrain. Yet, they often go unrecognized in dominant discourses of activism. We enshrine our heroes, and then fall short as mere mortals, defer our involvement in public affairs, and leave social change to distant but more capable others. We fail to exercise our poetic imaginations.
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