For the Love of Rhetoric, with Continual Reference to Kenny and Dolly

摘要

Few contemporary scholars have explicitly discussed the relationship between love and rhetoric. This essay draws on the insights of Lacanian psychoanalysis to argue that rhetoricians have been reluctant to theorize love for two reasons: first, it is already implied in the widely accepted concept of identification; and second, any explicit discussion of love tempts kitsch. Once we understand love and kitsch as homologous constructs, it is argued, we are better able to engage rhetoric more directly as a form of love or, alternately, as a form of deceit.