Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 09:08:14 +0000
Subject: metamorphosen 2
From: "Michael Pennamacoor" <pennamacoor-AT-enterprise.net>


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Jud recently on metaphor:

"Metaphor is the employment of other word-symbols which do not necessarily correspond with
the generally agreed idea-symbol equivalence, but is a figure of speech in which an
expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to
suggest a similarity which can often throw a new light on a subject and simplify its
explanation"

Thus a metaphor is a signifier that substitutes for another signifier whilst occluding it
in referring to the 'original' signified, thus there are two signifieds, the 'original'
(that one could de-signate the 'literal') one missing/absent in the chain of signifiers.

Thus, let us take the term 'figure of speech' (which shall include extended metaphorical
'figures' such as metonymy, synecdoche, catachresis, oxymoron, etc): it, itself, is a
'figure of speech' (note the word "figure" here... manifold significations); what and
where is the 'original', the virgin 'literal' signifier here? [I am, of course, gently
operating within a somewhat ironical mood/trope here]. What on earth does "literal" mean
(in its opposition to "figurative")? Can a formulation of the meaning of "literal" be
itself literal (or would it needs be figurative)? Can this difference be articulated
without recourse to metaphorical figures?

I'd like to say again that language is inescapably metaphoric (in the extended sense, as
above), even in the white virginality of mathematical proof writing (say, in the use of
"let" in such as: "let x=1", or "therefore" in "therefore n is prime"; and is not proof by
'reductio ad absurdum ' not some form of mathematical irony?). I am basically disputing
the notion that metaphor (etc) is a pleasant (and informative) 'colouration',
'ornamentation', 'prettification' [themselves painterly, musical and design metaphors],
etc, of language (although it can be in any instance).

Jud on being:

"the word [being] is [sic] no more than a syntactical tool that entails or attributes  an
action or state to another word or words, and has no state or modality  of its own.

(Most?) signifiers point to  signifieds that are other than, differing from, themselves,
(otherwise language could not signify, could not produce meaning, could not say) concepts
(as in "trees", or "this") or things (beings) (as in "(this) tree" or other signifiers (as
in metaphors), etc. Only being/"being" is its own signified, being [sic] the basis for the
linguistic difference (between signifier and signified), it [is] difference itself, this
difference that permeates language and linguisticality...

Moreover, Derrida says, writing of imagination in literary art works:

"... notion of an imagination that produces metaphor -- that is, everything in language
except the verb to be -- remains... what certain philosophers today call a naively
utilized operative concept." [Derrida 1978, 'Force and Signification' in 'Writing and
Difference', p7][Derrida's italics rendered here in red]

The word "being" (as employed in Heidegger and the metaphysical tradition {which means the
inescapable horizon of all western philosophy, thinking, science, commonsense, theology,
etc, the entire edifice} does not name anything, does not conceptualise anything, etc.,
but [is] the very basis for all naming, conceptualising, labelling, signifying,
metaphorising, etc.

Enough already.

michaelP

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HTML VERSION:

"Metaphor is the employment of other word-symbols which do not necessarily correspond with the generally agreed idea-symbol equivalence, but is a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity which can often throw a new light on a subject and simplify its explanation"

Thus a metaphor is a signifier that substitutes for another signifier whilst occluding it in referring to the 'original' signified, thus there are two signifieds, the 'original' (that one could de-signate the 'literal') one missing/absent in the chain of signifiers.

Thus, let us take the term 'figure of speech' (which shall include extended metaphorical 'figures' such as metonymy, synecdoche, catachresis, oxymoron, etc): it, itself, is a 'figure of speech' (note the word "figure" here... manifold significations); what and where is the 'original', the virgin 'literal' signifier here? [I am, of course, gently operating within a somewhat ironical mood/trope here]. What on earth does "literal" mean (in its opposition to "figurative")? Can a formulation of the meaning of "literal" be itself literal (or would it needs be figurative)? Can this difference be articulated without recourse to metaphorical figures?

I'd like to say again that language is inescapably metaphoric (in the extended sense, as above), even in the white virginality of mathematical proof writing (say, in the use of "let" in such as: "let x=1", or "therefore" in "therefore n is prime"; and is not proof by 'reductio ad absurdum ' not some form of mathematical irony?). I am basically disputing the notion that metaphor (etc) is a pleasant (and informative) 'colouration', 'ornamentation', 'prettification' [themselves painterly, musical and design metaphors], etc, of language (although it can be in any instance).

Jud on being:

"the word [being] is [sic] no more than a syntactical tool that entails or attributes  an action or state to another word or words, and has no state or modality  of its own.

(Most?) signifiers point to  signifieds that are other than, differing from, themselves, (otherwise language could not signify, could not produce meaning, could not say) concepts (as in "trees", or "this") or things (beings) (as in "(this) tree" or other signifiers (as in metaphors), etc. Only being/"being" is its own signified, being [sic] the basis for the linguistic difference (between signifier and signified), it [is] difference itself, this difference that permeates language and linguisticality...

Moreover, Derrida says, writing of imagination in literary art works:

"... notion of an imagination that produces metaphor -- that is, everything in language except the verb to be -- remains... what certain philosophers today call a naively utilized operative concept." [Derrida 1978, 'Force and Signification' in 'Writing and Difference', p7][Derrida's italics rendered here in red]

The word "being" (as employed in Heidegger and the metaphysical tradition {which means the inescapable horizon of all western philosophy, thinking, science, commonsense, theology, etc, the entire edifice} does not name anything, does not conceptualise anything, etc., but [is] the very basis for all naming, conceptualising, labelling, signifying, metaphorising, etc.

Enough already.

michaelP