The Truth in Metaphor
The truth
in metaphor is situated in bodies, places, spaces, and times. It creates the potentiality for the
hermeneutic fusion of horizons and reifies power from discursive regimes of
truth, put simply it creates the potential for both contact with others and
dehumanization. It is important then
that we cultivate an awareness of the metaphors we use so that we can metaphorize
well, reviving old metaphors, creating new metaphors, supporting situated
knowledges, working towards understanding and respecting others so that we may
better understand ourselves.
The focus of this
section will be on the situatedness of metaphor. Let us first define metaphor. Lakoff and Johnson authors of Metaphors We Live By
argue that “Metaphor is principally a way of conceiving of one thing in terms
of another, and its primary function is understanding” (14%). We use metaphors both consciously and
unconsciously everyday, they are embedded in the etymologies of our words, they
constitute our allegories, and they give us a means of expressing some of the
ineffable qualities of being.
(Odd angle quote
discussing Heidegger’s use of Being as the shortest allegory ever told http://www.stanford.edu/group/csp/phi60/janicaud.pdf ).
The truth in
metaphor, or possibly the truth in metaphor concerns us here because as
Lakoff and Johnson argue “We have found that metaphor is pervasive, not merely
in our language but in our conceptual system. It seems inconceivable to us that any phenomenon so
fundamental to our conceptual system could not be central to an account of
truth and meaning” (78%).
Within this paper I
hope to highlight and bring to awareness to the saturation of metaphor in
everyday life. The title of this
paper is in itself a metaphor. It
is a “container metaphor”, which proposes that metaphor somehow holds, binds,
or transports truth. Lakoff and
Johnson argue that we project truths of our own experience onto the things in
the world that lack those truths as inherent properties. (61%). Lakoff and Johnson argue that our metaphors are situated
contextually in our embodied physical experience.
“We are physical
beings, bounded and set off from the rest of the world by the surface of our
skins, and we experience the rest of the world as outside us. Each of us is a container, with a
bounding surface and an in-out orientation. We project our own in-out orientation onto other physical objects
that are bounded by surfaces.” (Lakoff and Johnson 12%)
We experience containers everyday, we
are containers in some sense and we use this understanding when we apply it to
more abstract concepts(Lakoff and Johnson 13%). We speak of being out of
our minds in love; which metaphorically
makes our minds and love containers and because of our shared cultural
experiences with containers we are able to understand what it means.
It is important
that the metaphors we use highlight certain aspects of the things that we are
comparing. James Geary, author of I
is an Other, argues that
“Metaphor is a lens that clarifies and distorts. It focuses our attention on a specific
set of associated commonplaces, but in so doing also narrows our view” (40%). Therefore we can speak of the mind as a machine or as a
brittle object and the difference is that of ‘running out of steam’ and
‘grinding out’ ideas or being ‘fragile’ possibly having ‘snapped’ (Lakoff and
Johnson 11%). Our metaphors in
part define what we consider to be real or true so the truth is not necessarily
in the association between the things being compared but is situated in a
particular lived experience and culture.
Lakoff and Johnson argue “Truth is always relative to a conceptual
system that is defined in large part by metaphor” (60%)
Place as a side
note “Thus ‘objectification’ itself is abstraction; since no actual thing is
‘objectified’ in its ‘formal’ completeness” (Whitehead 25-26)
Lakoff and Johnson
argue for an experientialist account of truth which is a realism lacking an
absolute truth but gaining an acceptance of multiplicities of knowledges and
ways of knowing. This means that
the understanding of a statement is always based in the situation in which the
statement is made (Lakoff and Johnson 68%). Sharing in this debasement of absolutist objectivity is
Donna Haraway, who suggests instead the idea of partial perspectives or
situated knowledges. Haraway
suggests,
“That is one of
the reasons the debates about objectivity matter, metaphorically and
otherwise. Immortality and
omnipotence are not our goals. But
we could use some enforceable, reliable, accounts of things not reducible to
power moves and agonistic, high-status games of rhetoric or to scientistic,
positivist arrogance.” (Haraway 580)
The question of
the truth in metaphor is also very important to Haraway who notes, “We
need the power of modern critical theories of how meanings and bodies get made,
not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to build meanings and
bodies that have a chance for life”
(580). We shall
contextualize metaphor as a situated knowledge or way of knowing. This is not so that we may deconstruct
it, but so that we can more effectively use metaphor to build meanings and
bodies that have a chance for life.
‘To be’ or not ‘to
be’ Metaphor situated
Metaphors are
situated. The act of comparison
for metaphor is situated in the verb ‘to be’. Metaphor lacks the obvious ‘like’ that functions similarly
in simile. Hermeneutic philosopher
Paul Ricoeur notes “Herein lies metaphor's superiority over simile, that it is
more elegant" (6%). Ricoeur
is the author of The Rule of Metaphor and extensive philosophy of
metaphor and the creation of meaning in language.
"I
conclude that the 'place' of metaphor, its most intimate and ultimate abode, is
neither the name, nor the sentence, nor even discourse, but the copula of the
verb to be. The metaphorical 'is' at once signifies both 'is not' and
'is like.' If this is really so,
we are allowed to speak of metaphorical truth, but in an equally 'tensive'
sense of the word truth" (Ricoeur 2%).
I believe this ‘tensive’
sense of the word truth affirms Haraway, Lakoff and Johnson’s push against
objectivity and absolute truth.
Truth here can be shown to be non-absolute, situated, partial, and
finite as truth. This strikethrough
is to signify that it is a truth lived in a body by a person. This is not the absolute, infinite, and
objective sense of the word. It is instead a partial, finite, situated sense of
the word so that it may be held more gently, let go of more often, and shared
more readily. This is because all things need eventually to be able to decay,
in order to make both room and nutrients for new knowledges and ways of knowing
to grow forth. It comes with a
sense of humility and the responsibility of self-reflexive awareness of the
historical contingency for all knowledge claims and our methods for making
meanings. This is not to
deconstruct all truths, it is so that we may re-cognize and think again about
what truths we are keeping alive through cultural reification and what truths
we need to let go of. When I
describe the truth in metaphor, truth is situated, contextual,
syntactical, historical, and embodied.
In the Foucaultian sense it is only true insofar as persons within a
culture reify it; truth is what a society takes and makes function as true (Foucault
131). This is a more organic
representation of truth, open to change, interpretation, introspection, others
and is more relevant to life.
There
is always already a historicity present within metaphor. Therefore the truth in metaphor
is situated historically. Some
etymologies trace the metaphorical reference of days and even societies long
past. Even the word ‘metaphor’ has
a metaphorical etymology it comes from the stems meaning to carry or bear and
beyond, transformation or substitution.
Appropriately, metaphors are carried into new time periods. Geary argues "This is the primary
purpose of metaphor: to carry over existing names or descriptions to things
that are either so new that they haven't been named or so abstract that they
cannot be named" (6%). This
is a naming of a new technology in terms of a preexisting one, such as
horsepower in cars, or viruses on computers.
It
makes sense for people to attribute known words to new unknown things. This also happens in subcultures, a
known word will be used to describe a new relatively unknown thing or action. This leads to major variance on the
meanings of certain words. For
example a flower for a fire performer is much different than for a painter. In a fire performance flowers are
geometric designs that are made when the prop is moved in a certain way and a
camera takes a long exposure photo.
In painting flowers are still in part geometric but in this medium there
is more play in representation of actual flowers and intricacies of color and
design. Even within a particular
subculture metaphors can be applied to new emergent technology. For instance DJs which stands for Disk
Jockeys do not even use disks anymore they use digital files and programs. However some still practice beat
juggling and scratching known as turntablism, although they use jog wheels and
not turntables.
Metaphor is to a
major degree open to social construction and reconstruction. As Lakoff and Johnson say “Metaphors
may create realities for us, especially social realities” (59%). This is important within academia
because science may be more metaphorical than we thought, and in that way the truth
in metaphor is reflective of the underlying assumptions of a culture or a
sub-culture that which it has taken and made to function as true.
Tatsuo
Motokawa was visiting Biologist at Duke from Japan, he was astounded at the
difference in the two cultures they ways they expressed themselves, they way
they cook, and especially the ways they thought about and practiced science
differently. In his article Sushi
Science Hamburger Science, Motokawa describes the two ways of practicing
science by way of a metaphor about the traditions style of cooking. He notes that western science is like
western food the chef applies lots of ingredients and cooks it in the right way
forcing the thing to be true food; in the same way western science is
hypothesis driven and lots of words are used to spice up and force things to be
absolutely true. On the other hand
eastern science is like sushi, the point is not to add anything it is to let
the fish speak for itself and the utmost care is necessary not to spoil it with
ones own ego; therefore eastern science is fact oriented but they never express
their final all encompassing thoughts.
Motokawa argues that this is representative of the dominant religious
culture. In the west Christianity
seems to suggest that words are a way back to God a sort of mediator. In Zen, words are distrusted and seen
as egoic and only serve to further remove oneself from the possibility of
enlightenment. (498-504)
Metaphors
or the truth in metaphor can help us to be aware of the culture
assumptions that make up not only the way we think, but also how we think, and
even experience the world. Lakoff
and Johnson make the point “A metaphor can serve as a vehicle for understanding
a concept only by virtue of its experiential basis” (8%). Lakoff
and Johnson argue that there is always a ‘direct physical experience’ that
underlies metaphors, and metaphors ‘make sense’ in places where people share
some ‘direct physical experience’.
However not everyone experiences the world in the same way. Again Lakoff and Johnson argue for the
situatedness of metaphor embedded in the direct experience presupposed by a
culture. “What we call ‘direct
physical experience’ is never merely a matter of having a body of a certain
sort; rather, every experience takes place within a vast background of cultural
presuppositions” (23%). We embody
these social constructs, we embody our metaphors, and the truth in that is
reified in our actions and a felt sense when we ‘get’ a metaphor that ‘makes
sense’.
(Place Whitehead
Quote here as a side note)
“symbolism is an
essential factor in the way we function as the result of our direct knowledge”
(Whitehead 6).
Metaphors
are situated in bodies and the truth in metaphor can be seen acted
out. The New York Times recently
posted an article about research from the University of Aberdeen that found
when people were asked to image events in time they subconsciously moved their
body in tune with their metaphorical presuppositions. (New York Times article?). We project a front-back orientation onto time which is then
though of as a moving object, I look forward to our meeting in the weeks
ahead. Thinking back
about that makes me glad that is all behind us now. (Lakoff and Johnson 17%). Not all cultures make the same
association between front as future; actually some place the back as the future
because you can see into the past but you cant see the future, makes more
‘sense’ to them. This is also an
argument for the idea of embodied cognition.
KIKI Bouba test here
Everyone
is synesthetic to some degree, Geary argues that synesthesia may be one of the
neurological building blocks of metaphor especially in childhood. We metaphorize attractive people as
‘hot’ the in kids as ‘cool’ and wild ideas as ‘far out’. However it appears in varying degrees, some
synesthetics see colors when they hear certain notes of music and others
perceive taste when they see shapes (Geary 21%). The Oxford English Dictionary defines Synesthesia in part as
“The use of metaphors in which terms relating to one kind of sense-impression
are used to describe sense-impressions of other kinds” (Oxford English
Dictionary). Geary agrees with
this definition and in the example of vision as understanding I see what you
mean he notes “Metaphor is synesthetic, equating the concrete experience of
vision with the abstract experience of understanding” (24%). This is inline with Lakoff and Johnson’s
arguement that metaphors are based on culturally preconfigured ‘direct physical
experiences’ “The structure of our spatial concepts emerges from our constant
spatial experience, that is, our interaction with the physical environment. Concepts that emerge in this way are
concepts that we live by in the most fundamental way” (Lakoff and Johnson 23%). It makes sense to use our concrete experiences to describe
our intangible abstract experiences, much like applying existing words to new
technologies. Love can be burning,
and my computer has a mouse, even though it is a touch sensitive square and no
longer looks like a mouse.
The
use of metaphor helps us to describe our indirect experiences in terms of our
direct ones and because of that Gestalt Therapist Dave Mann notes "The use
of metaphor expands our capacity to convey our felt sense verbally" (135). Metaphors help connect us to those
emotional abstract realms of experience and give us the tools to describe how
we feel in a way that ‘makes sense’ to others. The structure of our metaphors are socially constructed and
situated in our ‘direct physical experience’, which is presupposed by our
culture. Metaphors are situated
historically, hidden in the etymologies and in words used to describe new
technology in terms of old.
Metaphors are situated in the verb ‘to be’. The truth in metaphor is that it is a situated
knowledge and that there are multiplicities of situated knowledges, ways of
knowing and ‘making sense’ of the world.
The social construction of the truth in metaphor is seen in the
ways groups of people take and make it function as true within their
culture.
Metamorphine: A Powerful Pharmakon
at the Horizons of Interconnection and Dehumanization
In order to further
describe the truth in metaphor I shall now turn to Michel Foucault. Foucault, like many late 20th
century philosophers is hard to classify. His philosophy will be important for us here in defining what
we mean by truth and the power of metaphor. For Foucault power is situated in discourses, which are
reified as true.
“In a society
such as ours, but basically in any society, there are manifold relations of
power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these
relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor
implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning
of a discourse. There can be no
possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth
which operates through and on the basis of this association.” (Foucault 93).
This is of utmost importance in
metaphor because as Ricoeur says “Metaphor is the rhetorical process by which
discourse unleashes the power that certain fictions have to redescribe reality”
(2%). These ‘certain fictions’ for
Foucault are regimes of truth and for us will be metaphors or more precisely
the truth in metaphors. “Each
society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is, the
types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true” (Foucault
131).
Foucault’s regimes
of truth are the types of discourse a society takes and makes function as true,
for us metaphors operate in the same way.
Cultures take and make metaphorical projections from our culturally influenced
direct experiences and we apply them to abstract concepts. The truth then is in the use of
the metaphor itself as a discourse that a society has accepted and made to
function as true.
These are not
absolute or transcendent truths they are situated within the discursive use of
the metaphor itself and its power to elicit an experience that ‘makes sense’ in
reference to a shared culturally influenced perception. However they are so pervasive they have
become like water to the fish and we are often unaware of the truths we are
presupposing with our metaphors.
It is better to think of the truth in metaphor as the truth in
metaphor so we can re-cognize our participation and responsibility in accepting
and making it function as true as well as to highlight that truth is actually
situated within the metaphor as a discursive function that has the power to
redescribe and reorder the world.
It
is an expression of these regimes of metaphorical truth that we say I
see what you mean, using vision as the primary means of knowing the world in a
hierarchy above the other senses.
These regimes of truth can also be seen as the expression of power
physicalized in discourse, and these discourses are powerful. One issue of particular importance is “the
status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true“ (Foucault
131). If we take our metaphors as
truth and not as truth we risk the subjugation of other cultures ways of
knowing and being that underlie their metaphorical structure, possibly to the
extent of dehumanizing them. In
Geary’s book on metaphor, which inspired a lot of this paper, he notes, “But
‘seeing is knowing’ only makes sense if you’re a member of a species for whom
vision is the primary source of information” (25%). Geary obviously has had a lot of experience with metaphor
and may be making a very clever reference that I am unaware of. He could possibly be referencing Donna
Haraway being inspired of the idea of situated and differential knowledge while
walking her dog (Haraway 679). However,
he seems to be referencing an English author named Olaf Stapledon who wrote a
novel about a race of “Other men” which could be truer than intended when
thinking of the Othering process of dehumanization on the grounds of metaphor
usage. This could be an insidious
slip of the metaphorical tongue because to say that other than visual metaphor
users are not in the same species is to subjugate and dehumanize a great many
human beings. For the Ongee smell
is the primary sense for knowing the world and for the Tzozil it is heat and
their metaphors are physicalized representations of this shared cultural
belief. The Ongee give directions
in smell and the Tzotizl talk about time of day as half heat (Classen, Worlds
of Sense, 122). What a society
takes and makes function as true comes out in everyday metaphorical expressions
that seek to reify the underlying cultural beliefs.
This Othering
process on the grounds of metaphorical usage also happens within cultures and
within subcultures where groups seek power through their definition of truth
based on their discursive metaphorical formations. This epistemocracy of metaphor can be seen in Academia in the
subjugation of body knowledge and embodied ways of knowing. Barbara Stafford addressed this in her
Book Body Criticism,
"Among my
several aims is to expose how the visual arts, and bodily-kinesthetic
intelligence in general, were damned to the bottom of the Cave of the
humanities. In today's text based
curricula, sensory and affective phenomena continue to be treated as
second-rate simulations of second-class reflections. The strength and reality-quotient of metaphors is evident
negativity in the capacity that certain tropes had and have in subjugating
whole classes of physical experience" (Stafford 2).
Metaphors are
rooted in direct physical experience which makes the subjugation of metaphors
at the same time a subjugation of the experience that underlies that metaphor. It is possible to see in the dominant
metaphors a regime of truth, which seeks to reify, even if unconsciously, a
particular metaphysics. Metaphor
becomes a metaphysics in its assertion of certain truths "The act of
comparison becomes a metaphysics" (Stafford 3). Subjugation and dehumanization is not however the only
metaphysics or function of metaphor.
I want to argue that metaphor can also function as fusing and
interconnective.
The Interconnective Horizons of
Metaphor
Metaphor is a medium that facilitates
the hermeneutic fusion of horizons.
What I mean by the fusion of horizons can be summed up in this quote by Vessey
"Either new
information or a new sense of the relative significance of available
information leads, and ideally to a new agreement between the two parties about
the subject matter. In any case,
the original understanding is surpassed and integrated into a broader, more
informed understanding. Our
horizons are broadened; we have a new perspective on our old views, and maybe
new views as well. This is the
meaning of the 'the fusion of horizons'" (Vessey 534).
Metaphors are a
“co-operative act of comprehension” (Geary 38%). In this co-operative act, we are at times enabled to fuse
horizons with others. This is one
of the major elements of metaphor and the important role it plays in our
everyday lives. Through metaphor
we are able to describe one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff and Johnson
3%) which allows us to share in an understanding of a new concept based on a
metaphor. If one person is really
familiar with carpentry and another is really familiar with cars, but they both
are really familiar with music they could both learn about the others specific
interests through metaphors about music.
For example ‘Carpentry is a symphony orchestra, you need a conductor or
it all falls apart.’ Or ‘Cars are a instrument, when tuned they work
well.’ It does not so much matter
that cars are not musical instruments or that a foreman is not a orchestral
conductor when a metaphor is understood we make it function as true in our
discursive regimes of truth. These
discursive regimes can vary drastically in size and overlay from subcultures or
overarching states but one thing is common, we are participants. We reify our metaphors.
Metamorphine the Pharmakon
Odd angle top quote? "One of
the ironies of etymology is that the less conscious we are of a metaphor as a
metaphor, the more literal it becomes, a paradox observed by Nelson
Goodman: 'with progressive loss of
its virility as a figure of speech, a metaphor becomes not less but more like
literal truth'" (Geary 7%)
Pharmakon means at
the same time means medicine and poison (Derrida 70). Metaphor is a pharmakon because it is at the same time a
medicinal fusing and interconnective as well as poisonous subjugating and
dehumanizing. As Lakoff and
Johnson point out, “’The ham sandwich wants his check,’ she is not interested
in the person as a person but only as a customer, which is why the use of such
a sentence is dehumanizing” (14%).
We often associate people with metaphors about their lifestyles or
hobbies, hippies, punks, jocks but also about their race, sexual preference,
and mental states.
The thematization
(Levinas) of a person or a group of people with a metaphor can be subjugating
discriminating and even dehumanizing.
Not necessarily just of the person being labeled as the metaphor, it can
have implications in the social regime of truth and thus power for the entire social
group both labeling and being labeled.
This can be seen in the plethora’s of metaphors about subjugated groups
of people. These can range from
racial slurs and gender roles, ‘that’s girly’ or a ‘macho man’ to metaphors
about mental states ‘retarded,’ ‘crazy,’ ‘insane’.
The same word can
be used both to build a sense of communality and connection as well as can be
used to subjugate discriminate and even dehumanize the group it is
referencing. “Metaphor has a
paradoxical power. It distances an
experience by equating it with something else, but in doing so actually brings
that experience closer” (Geary 60%).
The truth in metaphor and therefore the power in metaphor is
paradoxical, it is a pharmakon that can be used as medicine and a poison.
Cultivating an awareness of
metaphor.
I hope I have been
able so far in this piece to persuade you that metaphor is important and
relevant, for now I shall attempt to persuade you to take note of the metaphors
you hear and the metaphors you use so as to be conscious of the metaphors we
live by. I this section I will argue that some of our metaphors have become
dead and dusty and it is our responsibility to either dust them off or create
new living metaphors; I will argue this specifically situated in roses and
academia. Lastly, we shall ponder
how to ‘metaphorize well’ may be the great task we are called to. Because as Whitehead says,
“The
art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and
secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those
purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their
symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or
from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.” (Whitehead 88).
We shall begin again with
Nietzsche’s famous passage “God is dead. God remains dead. And we killed him”
(Thus spoke Zarathustra). However
this time god was slain only metaphorically, in the steady decline of the word
awesome. Awesome, from awe, which
represented Yahweh, the divine and all of the fear, dread, reverence, and wonder,
that came with the divinity (Oxford English Dictionry). Has lost its throne of great reverential
reference and is subjugated to the description of mundane materialist products
in such common statements as ‘those sneakers are awesome’, on par with
‘cool’. At urban dictionary a site
where anyone can write a definition and they are voted up or down based on
modern relevance and applicability; the definitions for awesome range from
“Something Americans use to describe everything” to “an overused
adjective intended to denote something as ‘cool’ or ‘great’ but instead winds
up meaning ‘lame’” (Urban dictionary).
Metaphors actually die
all the time and eventually we bury them, Geary notes “Etymology is often said
to be the final resting place for dead metaphors” (7%). Which often makes searching for words
etymologies a fascinating venture.
Geary references the philosopher and etymologist Owen Berfield in
saying, "every modern language, with its thousands of abstract
terms and its nuances of meaning and association, is apparently nothing, from
beginning to end, but an unconscionable tissue of dead, or petrified, metaphors" (7%).
Side note “a man cannot
utter a dozen words without wielding the creations of a hundred named and
nameless poets.” (Geary 7%).
C.
Nadia Seremetakis has written about memory and material culture, which I
believe, is relevant to this discussion of ‘dead’ metaphors. She uses the metaphor of dust to
explain why we become numb to some of our experiences; such as when an air
conditioner shuts off and you suddenly become aware that it was even on. The things that we get used to and
therefore pay little attention to because it becomes background noise. Seremetakis notes that Dust is “the
form that residual culture takes once it is compartmentalized as the archaic
and sundered from any contemporary pertinence and presence” (35).
This is the
process of dying metaphors, metaphors that have lost their contemporary
life. This process also affects
the sensory world in which we live.
Seremetakis notes, “Dust is the perceptual waste material formed by the
historical-cultural repression of sensory experience and memory” (35). Our metaphors emphasize some of our
senses and denigrate others.
Constance Classen
author of Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Culture
argues that since the enlightenment we have seen a rise in the importance of
sight and vision as the primary means of knowing the world and have also
experienced the decline of olfactory sense (15). This has led to the persistence and saturation of visual
metaphors in our modern world and has been the historical-cultural repressive
‘dusting’ of olfactory sensory experience. Classen argues that in the sixteenth century the odour of
the rose played an important role in society from perfumes to medicines and
this showed in the designs of their gardens (17-26). However by the nineteenth century, “Odour was bred right out
of certain new breeds of roses” (29).
In this shift from olfactory to visual “it follows that it would express
not only a shift in sensory preferences, but also a shift in corresponding
cultural and conceptual paradigms” (16).
This relates back to metaphor because as Lakoff and Johnson argue,
metaphor structures our concepts and this is determinate of our sensory
experiences.
“But
metaphor is not merely a matter of language. It is a matter of conceptual structure. And conceptual structure is not merely
a matter of the intellect – it involves all the natural dimensions of our
experience, including aspects of our sense experiences: color, shape, texture,
sound, etc. These dimensions
structure not only mundane experience but aesthetic experience as well” (Lakoff
and Johnson 87%).
There was a contemporary
ethnographic movement in anthropology in the 90’s that sought to bring an awareness
to these other modalities of sensory orientation; this was termed by David Howes
as ‘anthropology of the senses’ (167).
The proposition of this movement was that in order to understand a
culture we had to stop interjecting our visual bias onto their culture. This allowed the cultures own sensorial
orientation to play a role in the structure by which they were ethnographically
understood. It is thought that
visual culture is the result of literacy so non-literate cultures can be more accurately
portrayed as oral or aural cultures (Classen 121).
For example the Suya
people of Brazil do not have a world view rather a world sound. “The Suya word for hearing, ku-mba, means not only ‘to hear (a
sound)’ but also ‘to know’ and ‘to understand.’” (Howes 176). So like our visual metaphor for
understanding ‘I see what you mean’ the Suya metaphor for understanding is
aural they say “it is in my ear” (Howes 176). It is the same for the Ommura in Papau New Guinea, the verb
“Iero” means “’to hear’ and ‘to know’ or ‘to understand’” (Howes 180).
However there are other
sensorial orientations, for the Tzotzil of Mexico “everything in the universe
is thought to contain a different quality of heat” (Classen 123). They speak of illness a depleting heat,
their power arrangements between gender and age are signified with the most
powerful being the hottest.
The directions of east and west are known as ‘emergent heat’ and ‘waning
heat’ (Classen 122-123).
It has been argued
also that a study of the body also requires this sensual awareness. Paul Stoller argues for a ‘sensuous
scholarship’ because “ Discussions of the sensuous body require sensuous
scholarship in which writers tack between analytical and the sensible, in which
embodied form as well as disembodied logic constitute the scholarly argument”
(Stoller, xv). This takes us back
to Donna Haraway , Lakoff and Johnson and the idea of truth in metaphor
originally presented in this paper.
Haraway, Lakoff
and Johnson are all pushing for an embodied stance of knowledge and ways of
knowing; Haraway through the reclamation of visual metaphors in situated
knowledges and partial perspectives; Lakoff and Johnson through the embodiment
of metaphors structuring our concepts.
Both argue we need to move beyond the current scientific myth of
disembodied objectivity. Lakoff
and Johnson argue “Giving up the claim to absolute truth could make scientific
practice more responsible, since there would be a general awareness that a
scientific theory may hide as much as it highlights” (84%). Much like all metaphors the metaphors
rooted in objectivity such as “SCIENCE PROVIDES CONTROL OVER NATURE” (Lakoff
and Johnson 84%) come with their own assumptions. In this metaphor is the idea that “Man is separate from his
environment” (Lakoff and Johnson 84%).
Haraway, speaking of her chapter On the Persistance of Vision in Primate
Visions, says, “this chapter is an argument for situated and embodied
knowledges and against various forms of unlocatable, and so irresponsible,
knowledge claims” (679). Both are
arguing that the situatedness in an embodied person is the way out of the myth
of disembodied objectivity. Lakoff
and Johnson note, “What legitimately motivates subjectivism is the awareness
that meaning is always meaning to a person” (84%). And Haraway argues,
“So I think my
problem, and “our” problem, is how to have simultaneously an account of radical
historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subject, a critical
practice for recognizing our own “semiotic technologies’ for making meanings,
and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a ‘real’ world, one that
can be partially shared and that is friendly to earthwide projects of finite
freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering, and limited
happiness. Harding calls this
necessary multiple a desire for a successor science project and a postmodern
insistence on irreducible difference and radical multiplicity of local
knowledges.” (Haraway 579)
If, as Lakoff and Johnson have
argued, metaphor is one of our main tools for creating conceptual structure and
therefore making meaning then, metaphor becomes of utmost importance in Harway’s
search for a new situated knowledges perspective. A critical practice for recognizing that method of making
meaning is in our cultivation of awareness of the metaphors we use and the
assumptions that come with them.
This also means studying and being aware of the metaphors that others
use and how their sensorial orientations are different. As Lakoff and Johnson say, “At a
minimum, the skills required for mutual understanding are necessary even to
approach self-understanding” (85%).
We need to be aware that others such as the Tzotzil, the Ongee and the
Suya live in very different worlds of sense and their metaphors are based on
the differing sensorial orientations.
Studying others with this in mind and being aware of our own
metaphorically referent sensorial orientations can be a beneficial practice for
us because as Haraway notes, “We are not immediately present to ourselves. Self-knowledge requires a
semiotic-material technology linking meanings and bodies” (680).
Haraway, Lakoff
and Johnson’s push against objectivity and absolute truth. Brings us back to the idea of the truth
in metaphor. Truth here is be
shown to be non-absolute, situated, partial, and finite as well as situated
within the discursive function of the metaphor which is itself rooted in the
embodied sensorial orientations of the cultures within which it is found. Again I argue that it is better to
think of the truth in metaphor as the truth in metaphor so we can
re-cognize our participation and responsibility in accepting and making it
function as true as well as to highlight that truth is actually situated within
the metaphor as a discursive function that has the power to redescribe and
reorder the world. Because as Gaddamer
says “being that can be understood is language”. (Miles 18). This is why our task of tasks may be to
metaphorize well. As Ricoeur says in referencing Plato,
"But the
greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor [literally: to be metaphorical,
to metaphrik on einai]. It is the
one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius [euphuias],
since a good metaphor [literaly: to metaphorize well, eu metapherein] Implies
an intuitive perception of the similarity [to to homoin theorein] in
dissimilars' (Poetics 1459 a 3-8; see also Rhetoric 1412 a 10). (Ricoeur 6%).
It
is our responsibility to dust off our metaphors so that they may shine with all
the sensorial life they were born with.
It is also our responsibility to create new metaphors where the old have
become buried in the historical-cultural repressive dust because as Lakoff and
Johnson propose, “New metaphors are capable of creating new understandings and,
therefore, new realities” (86%).
This responsibility for socially reconstructing reality may lie only
within the language itself as Ricoeur rhetorically questions,
"The
only functioning of language we are aware of operates within an already
constituted order; metaphor does not produce a new order except by creating
rifts in an old order.
Nevertheless, could we not imagine the order itself is born in the same
way that it changes? Is there not,
in Gadamer's terms, a 'metaphoric' at work at the origin of logical thought, at
the root of all classification?" (Ricoeur 5%).
Through
recognizing the importance of metaphor in our conceptions and experiences of
our world as well as the worlds of others, and by holding a gentler grasp on
the truth therein; I believe we can socially reconstruct and reify
realities that are more coterminous with our shared similarities because as Ricoeur
notes "To apprehend or perceive, to contemplate, to see similarity -- such
is metaphor's genius-stroke, which marks the poet, naturally enough, but also
the philosopher" (6%).
Works
Cited
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adj.". OED Online. September 2012. Oxford University Press. 24
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me>.
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Constance. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across
Cultures. London: Routledge, 1993.
Print.
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Jacques. Dissemination. Chicago: University Press, 1981. Print.
Foucault,
Michel, and Colin Gordon. Power/knowledge: Selected Interviews and
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Geary,
James. I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way
We
See the World. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. Kindle ebook file.
Lakoff,
George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: University of
Chicago
Press, 1980. Kindle ebook file.
Haraway,
Donna and Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Visual Culture Reader, The Persistence
of
Vision. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Haraway,
Donna. "Feminist Studies." Feminist Studies. 14.3 (1988):
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24
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1991. Print.
Lévinas,
Emmanuel, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi.
Emmanuel
Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings. Bloomington: Indiana
University
Press, 1996. Print.
Mann,
Dave. Gestalt Therapy: 100 Key Points & Techniques. New York, NY:
Routledge,
2010. Print.
Mesle,
C R. Process-relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North
Whitehead.
West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Foundation Press,
2008.
Kindle ebook file.
Miles,
Margaret R. Image As Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity
and
Secular Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985. Print.
Motokawa,
Tatsuo. "Perspectives in Biology and Medicine." Perspectives in
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32.4 (1989): 489-504. Web. 24 Nov. 2012.
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Friedrich W, Caro A. Del, and Robert B. Pippin. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A
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for All and None. Cambridge: Cambrige University Press, 2006. Print.
Ricœur,
Paul. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of
Meaning
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Seremetakis,
C N. The Senses Still: Perception and Memory As Material Culture in
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1994. Print.
Stafford,
Barbara M. Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and
Medicine.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1991. Print.
Stoller,
Paul. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
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<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=awesome>.
Vessey, David. "Gadamer And The Fusion Of
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1959. Print.
Threads
Paragraph style arguments
How to read this
text. “There is always a surprise
in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had
mastered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in
wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the
‘object,’ without risking – which is the only chance of entering into the game,
by getting a few fingers caught – the addition of some new thread” (Derrida
Dissemination 63). This text can
be read in any way you see fit, one could read trough skipping all of the
sideways threads and side notes if one saw fit, however if one stops to read
the threads with an open mind one may form new connections that would have
otherwise been impossible with standard linear text. Either way “Reading is writing” (Derrida, Dissemination, 63)
KIKI Bouba Test...
Threads
“To a considerable degree, we have
already said all we meant to say. ["The
only functioning of language we are aware of operates within an already
constituted order; metaphor does not produce a new order except by creating
rifts in an old order (Ricoeur 5%).]
Our lexicon at any rate is not far from being exhausted. [Nevertheless, could we not imagine the
order itself is born in the same way that it changes? (Ricoeur 5%).] With the exception of this or that
supplement, our questions will have nothing more to name but the texture of the
text, reading and writing, mastery and play, the paradoxes of supplementary,
and the graphic relations between the living and the dead: within the textual,
the textile, and the histological. [Is there not, in Gadamer's terms, a
'metaphoric' at work at the origin of logical thought, at the root of all
classification?" (Ricoeur, 5%).] We will keep within the limits of this tissue: between the metaphor of the histos and the question of the histos of the metaphor” (Derrida,
Dissimination, 65).
(Maybe make this a
odd angle quote?) Moving from the
sentence to the ways in which metaphor transforms reality Ricoeur says
this,
“The issue is no longer the form of metaphor as a word-focused
figure of speech, nor even just the sense
of metaphor as a founding of new semantic pertinence, but the reference of the metaphorical statement
as the power to ‘redescribe’ reality” (Ricoeur, 1977, 2%). The power of metaphor is the power to socialy
reconstruct reality. We use or
‘fictions’ or our ‘regimes of truth’ or our truth in metaphors to
structure our society, our cultural interactions, and our sense of what it
means to be-in-the-world.
Alfred Whitehead
notes the importance our linguistic structure plays on our perception of the
structure of reality, specifically in the placement of ‘real,’ ‘enduring,’
‘thing’ in the subject-predicate structure. Ricoeur calls this a ‘semantic kernel’, “The modern reader
certainly has the right to isolate this 'semantic kernel' and, by the same
token, to initiate a purely internal critique of the privileged status of the noun"
(Ricoeur, 4%). We often speak of a
book as being a thing, and that the color, weight, and smell are attributes of
that thing. The book is the
subject and the attributes are the predicate(Measle Process.... Whitehead calls this the “fallacy of
misplaced concreteness” (Whitehead 6% Process and Reality). This is because all of the attributes
can be changed out, new color less pages new weight, etc. Therefore what is real is the
process-relational concrescence of an actual entity being-with the eternal
objects of attribution.
“It is the task
of reason to understand and purge the symbols on which humanity depends”
(Whitehead 7).
“Free men obey
the rules which they themselves have made” (Whitehead, 88).
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