This essay proposes thinking about civic wounds as assemblages. It draws on the historical case of antebellum Cincinnati, where the physical contagion of cholera entangled with the social contagion of slavery in ways that articulated across both cultural and physical domains of activity at once. Taking this approach reveals the ways rhetoric’s pharmakon mediates the operations of delivery within assemblages; I further suggest that the intersecting figural movements of catachresis and metonymy account for the granular pharmacological work of a given wound/assemblage’s historical emergence. Along the way we see how both rhetoric and liberal democracy are toxic enterprises wherein goods and bads commingle in fateful ways.

本文提出了将公民伤口组合在一起的思考。它借鉴了辛辛那提战前的历史案例，霍乱的身体传染与奴隶制的社会传染纠缠在一起，并在活动的文化和物质领域中同时发生。采用这种方法揭示了修辞学的pharmakon调解组合中传递操作的方式。我进一步建议，网状脱垂和转喻的相交图形运动解释了给定伤口/组合的历史出现的颗粒状药理作用。一路走来，我们看到言论和自由民主都是有毒的企业，其中的货物和货物以命运的方式混合在一起。