Nietzsche’s famous statement that “there are no facts,” and Cloud’s claim that “there are no facts without mediation” (5). Per Cloud, the difference between these two statements lies in the latter’s concern with the “primacy of human interpretation” in turning facts into beliefs (5). However, only the most fervent social constructionist would dispute “reality,” or, at least, some radical exteriority akin to the “Real.” Agreeing with Cloud, most poststructuralists would argue that mediation is the central and unending struggle of human communication. Thus, the key difference between positions would be that poststructuralists might contest Cloud’s definition of mediation as human interpretation, looking instead to the tropes and technologies that mediate the world for the subject. Last, poststructuralists might take issue with Reality Bite’s insistence on validating truth claims by assessing their fidelity to ordinary people’s interests. While Cloud liberates truth and reality from a correspondence theory of language, the author also turns human interest into the measure of truth. However, closing the system around the people’s interests forecloses a lot of the problems plaguing rhetoric and politics today: What (and who) is the people? How do they know what their interests are? How are said interests communicated? Although these questions might be postmodern gibberish, they highlight that mediation always involves confronting the more (and less) than human. Despite these critiques, which Cloud acknowledges in the conclusion, Reality Bites is a much-needed guide for how to make “our reality bit[e] back” in the long post-truth era (168).

中文翻译：

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修辞的实用主义：修辞诠释学随笔，史蒂文·梅卢

尼采的名言“没有事实”，克劳德的“没有调解就没有事实”（5）。Per Cloud，这两个陈述之间的区别在于后者关注将事实转化为信念的“人类解释的首要地位”（5）。然而，只有最狂热的社会建构主义者才会质疑“现实”，或者至少是一些类似于“现实”的激进的外在性。大多数后结构主义者同意克劳德的观点，认为调解是人类交流的核心和无休止的斗争。因此，立场之间的主要区别在于，后结构主义者可能会质疑 Cloud 将中介定义为人类解释的定义，而是着眼于为主题中介世界的比喻和技术。最后的，后结构主义者可能会质疑 Reality Bite 坚持通过评估他们对普通人利益的忠诚度来验证真理主张。在克劳德从语言的对应论中解放了真理和现实的同时，作者也把人类的兴趣变成了真理的尺度。然而，关闭围绕人民利益的制度排除了今天困扰言论和政治的许多问题：人民是什么（以及谁）？他们怎么知道自己的兴趣是什么？利益如何传达？尽管这些问题可能是后现代的胡言乱语，但它们强调调解总是涉及面对比人类更多（和更少）的事物。尽管有这些批评，克劳德在结论中承认，