The first thing that struck me about Keith Tester was his name. I had never heard that particular surname before (finding out later that it was perhaps not all that uncommon) and immediately associated it with a flacon labelled ‘Tester’ intended for customer trial in a perfume boutique. I thought it was a funny name, and also a name difficult to forget. By the time I first read some of Keith Tester’s work in the mid-1990s – perhaps this was his book on animal rights from 1991 or his book on postmodernity from 1993 – little did I did know that he was later to become my friend, confidant and collaborator. When I myself started working in a more focused way on Zygmunt Bauman’s ideas in the early days of the new millennium, I was looking for someone sympathetic to Bauman’s work with whom to discuss ideas and develop international connections. Hence I decided, bold as only such a young scholar can be, to send Keith an email suggesting that we perhaps do something together on Bauman. I was quite sure that he would decline – after all, he had never heard of me, and at the time my list of publications was on the short side. To my surprise, he did not. In fact, he responded very positively, admitting that he himself at the time felt somewhat lonely in his Bauman studies. Since then we stayed connected and wrote quite a few things together, to which I will return below. At some point in our professional relationship, Keith began calling me his ‘Danish twin’ and wrote the personal dedication ‘To my Danish twin’ in his wonderful book The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman (2004a). To me he was thus my ‘English twin’. Not that we were all that similar – in fact, Keith was more than 10 years my senior and, personality-wise, we were very different and had lived very different lives. We agreed on many things regarding the discipline of sociology, but disagreed on just as many things as soon as we moved outside the realm of sociological research. For example, he called my predilection for the 1980s British progressive rock band Marillion downright ‘wrong’, and we did not even support the same football team. Despite this, his suggestion that we were somehow ‘twins’ was not far off the target, as we both shared a concern

中文翻译：

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英国双胞胎：对基思·泰斯特的反思

关于 Keith Tester，让我印象深刻的第一件事就是他的名字。我以前从未听说过这个特定的姓氏（后来发现这可能并不罕见），并立即将其与标有“Tester”的香水瓶联系起来，供客户在香水精品店试用。我认为这是一个有趣的名字，也是一个难以忘记的名字。当我在 1990 年代中期第一次阅读 Keith Tester 的一些作品时——也许这是他 1991 年关于动物权利的书或他 1993 年关于后现代性的书——我几乎不知道他后来成为我的朋友，知己和合作者。在新千年的初期，当我自己开始更专注于 Zygmunt Bauman 的想法时，我正在寻找与 Bauman 的工作有共鸣的人，与他讨论想法并发展国际联系。因此，我决定，像这样一个年轻的学者一样大胆，给基思发送一封电子邮件，建议我们或许可以一起做一些关于鲍曼的事情。我很确定他会拒绝——毕竟，他从来没有听说过我，而且当时我的出版物清单很短。令我惊讶的是，他没有。事实上，他的回应非常积极，承认当时他自己在鲍曼研究中感到有些孤独。从那以后我们一直保持联系并一起写了很多东西，我将在下面返回。在我们职业关系的某个阶段，基思开始称我为他的“丹麦双胞胎”，并在他的精彩著作《齐格蒙特·鲍曼的社会思想》（2004a）中写下了“致我的丹麦双胞胎”的个人奉献。对我来说，他就是我的“英国双胞胎”。并不是说我们都那么相似——事实上，基思比我大 10 多岁，在性格方面，我们非常不同，过着非常不同的生活。我们在很多关于社会学学科的事情上达成了一致，但在我们走出社会学研究领域后，在很多事情上也存在分歧。例如，他称我对 1980 年代英国前卫摇滚乐队 Marillion 的偏爱完全是“错误的”，我们甚至不支持同一支足球队。尽管如此，他关于我们在某种程度上是“双胞胎”的建议离目标不远，因为我们都有一个担忧 他称我对 1980 年代英国前卫摇滚乐队 Marillion 的偏爱完全是“错误的”，我们甚至不支持同一支足球队。尽管如此，他关于我们在某种程度上是“双胞胎”的建议离目标不远，因为我们都有一个担忧 他称我对 1980 年代英国前卫摇滚乐队 Marillion 的偏爱完全是“错误的”，我们甚至不支持同一支足球队。尽管如此，他关于我们在某种程度上是“双胞胎”的建议离目标不远，因为我们都有一个担忧