Abstract

100 RHETORICA Hui Wu, “Guiguzi," China's First Treatise on Rhetoric: A Critical Trans­ lation and Commentary, Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, xiv + 180 pp. 2016. ISBN: 9780809335268 "Guiguzi," China's First Treatise on Rhetoric: A Critical Translation and Commentary consists of Hui Wu's translation of the classical Chinese text of Guiguzi, accompanied by an introduction to the original text, notes on the translation, and a glossary of the key terms in Guigucian rhetoric. C. Jan Swearingen also contributes a concluding commentary on the similarities and differences among the rhetorics of Guiguzi, the sophists, and the PreSocrates , as well as Plato and Aristotle. This book offers the field a muchneeded direct encounter with indigenous Chinese rhetorical theories and concepts. In the past two decades, both comparative and Chinese rhetorical studies have significantly remapped our sense of "the" rhetorical tradition. Mary Garrett, Xing Lu, Arabella Lyon, LuMing Mao, and C. Jan Swearingen (to name a few) have reinterpreted key Chinese rhetorical concepts, terms, and modes of meaning-making in order not only to understand Chinese rhet­ oric in its own contexts but also to change the paradigms of rhetorical criti­ cism in the present age of globalization. However, not much scholarly attention has been paid to translations of classical Chinese treatises. Limited primary textual evidence and inaccurate translation have contributed to ori­ entalist (mis)readings of Chinese rhetorical theories, in which the Chinese tradition is held to lack rhetorical thinking. Such a deficiency narrative has spurred comparative rhetoricians to study Chinese rhetoric without the bur­ den of the Eurocentric model, and here I am thinking of Xing Lu's Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E.: A Comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric. I am also thinking of LuMing Mao in his "Essence, Absence, Useful­ ness: Engaging Non-Euro-American Rhetorics Interologically." Being well aware of the "paucity of primary texts and inadequate trans­ lations," Hui Wu allies herself with attempts to remake the Chinese rhetorical tradition (p. 7). In particular, Wu distinguishes the Guigucian rhetoric from Confucian rhetoric. The latter expresses a strong mistrust of eloquence and stresses a strict connection between language use, action, and moral orders. In Wu's estimation, the addition of Guiguzi to the landscape of rhetoric "offers an opportunity for critical studies of an indigenous rhetorical theory and practice excluded from the rhetorical canon in both China and the West" (p. 9). By bringing Guiguzi back into conversations of non-Greco-Roman rhe­ torics, the translation and commentaries of Wu and Swearingen redefine the scope of rhetoric, innovate with Guigucian rhetorical terms and concepts, and offer us language to think outside of Eurocentric logic and rationality. In order to situate her translation in the sociopolitical context of the orig­ inal, Wu first takes her readers back to the pre-Qin Warring States period (475-221 BCE). In so doing, she reassesses Guiguzi by critiquing the dominant receptions of the book in both Chinese and Western contexts. While Guiguzi is conventionally seen as a magic book on war strategies, Wu dissociates it from issues of military deployment. According to Wu, although Guiguzi, Master Guigu, is the presumed teacher of the zong-heng practitioners (who Reviews 101 were travelling persuaders famous for eloquent military consultations), his rhetorical theory is "independent" from that of his students, because "the entire treatise [Guiguzi] hardly develops any notions or terminologies directly related to the school's [the zong-heng school's] war strategies" (p. 20). Further, instead of accepting that Guiguzi is unfathomably difficult or enigmatic, Wu portrays it as a "profound theory of rhetoric" (p. 20). Closely related, she rejects the common Western characterization of Guiguzi as a "Chinese Sophistic," as if it intends to teach manipulation and distrust. She further points out that such a Western understanding forces us to understand Guiguzzi in terms of the debate between Plato and the sophists about communi­ cative ethics. In Wu's English translation, Guiguzi is neither a magic book on military affairs nor a mysterious or deceptive anti-rhetorical doctrine. It is instead a treatise about a rhetorical theory that relies on yin-yang philoso­ phy, the Dao, and moral doctrines to develop rhetorical tactics for building human...