Toward a Bestial Rhetoric
Toward a Bestial Rhetoric
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走向兽性修辞
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发表时间：
2011
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通讯作者：
Debra Hawhee
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作者：
Debra Hawhee
1993 年，我在田纳西大学攻读修辞学硕士第一年，受人尊敬的乔治·肯尼迪访问了校园。他参加了一个众星云集的跨学科修辞研讨会（佩奇·杜波依斯和托马斯·科尔是另外两位嘉宾），如果没记错的话，等待肯尼迪演讲的一大群人都充满了期待；这次活动发生在亚里士多德修辞学急需且现在不可或缺的译本出版两年后。谈话结束后，气氛变得更加困惑。肯尼迪的演讲“黑暗中的叫声”与他前一年在《哲学与修辞学》上发表的一篇文章同一个标题。主题？动物修辞。除了肯尼迪在教堂山的观察乌鸦习惯的开场白之外，我不记得演讲中的太多细节，但我确实记得实时的反应。耳语声、斜视声和嘀咕声，所有这些都表明他对他——以及球场的——方向有轻微的恐慌。肯尼迪在做什么？我们尊贵的领袖，即圣人本人的翻译，是不是走得太远了，并把纪律也带走了？当肯尼迪访问我们校园时，他无疑已经习惯了这种回应，至少有一次，人们用一种讽刺的方式打招呼：“我猜是杜立特博士吧？” 1 事实上，早在《嘘声》出版之前，肯尼迪著作中对这一方向的回应就已经在整个领域流传。维克多·维坦扎（Victor Vitanza）在《写作修辞史》的序言中证实了这种冲击波：“在[这篇文章]出现之前，我通过小道消息听说肯尼迪写了一篇‘狂野’，也许是野蛮的文章。事实上，他写了”（1994，ix）。维坦扎接着将他对这篇文章的阅读描述为“‘不可判定’，因为在重读其标题和文本本身时，我仍然无法确定肯尼迪（或‘能量’）是认真地写的还是带着嘴笑的滑稽的。……也许，像亚里士多德一样，肯尼迪正在探索各种可能的方式或路径”（1994，x）。
In 1993, my fi rst full year as a master’s student studying rhetoric at the University of Tennessee, the venerable George Kennedy visited campus. He was part of a star-studded interdisciplinary symposium on rhetoric (Page duBois and Th omas Cole were the other two guests), and if memory serves, the large crowd awaiting Kennedy’s talk stirred with anticipation; this event was two years after the publication of a much-needed and now indispensible translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric . After the talk, it stirred with something more like befuddlement. Kennedy’s talk, “A Hoot in the Dark,” shared a title with an essay he had published in Philosophy and Rhetoric the year prior. Th e subject? Animal rhetoric. I don’t recall many specifi cs from the talk apart from Kennedy’s opening with his crow-watching habits in Chapel Hill, but I do recall the real-time responses. Th ere were whispers, sidelong glances, and muttering, all of which bespoke a slight panic about his—and the fi eld’s—direction. What was Kennedy doing? Was our distinguished leader, translator of the Sage himself, going off some deep end and taking the discipline with him? By the time he visited our campus, Kennedy had no doubt become accustomed to such responses, having been greeted on at least one occasion with a wry “Dr. Doolittle, I presume?” 1 Indeed, such responses to this direction in Kennedy’s writing had been circulating through the fi eld proper even before “A Hoot” appeared in print. In his preface to Writing Histories of Rhetoric , Victor Vitanza attests to the shockwaves: “Prior to [the article’s] appearance, I had heard through the grapevine that Kennedy had written a ‘wild,’ perhaps savage, article. And indeed, he has” (1994, ix). Vitanza goes on to characterize his reading of the article as “‘undecidable,’ because while rereading its title and the text itself, I cannot still decide if Kennedy (or ‘energy’) wrote it seriously or farcically with beak in cheek. ... Perhaps, like Aristotle, Kennedy is exploring the various possible ways, or paths” (1994, x).