sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu (Celso Alvarez) (01/17/91)
The personalization of metaphor
Comments to Lakoff's paper on metaphors and war
I've read George Lakoff's paper on the `metaphor system' utilized
in the dominant political discourse to justify the need to wage
war in the Persian Gulf. As I agree with him and with others
that the danger of conflict is in and of itself a sufficiently
relevant topic to be discussed within academic discourse, I have
decided to present some ideas to a forum that unfortunately is
not always open to accept critically its own role in the formation
of opinions and elaboration of policies that will, in turn, affect
our lives. We (and `we' here is not a metaphor, but a
documentable, existing group, a community linked, if anything, by
interests, communication channels, and frequent interaction
through this network) are not immune from the problematization of
issues of vital importance for us as social subjects. In our
recent daily life, `war' is not just a word but an evidence. It
is a gruesome, palpable reality, whether it will eventually
become such a reality or will, fortunately, remain at the level
of discourse [this was written earlier; unfortunately, we already know].
We are constituted by the way we anchor ourselves
within discourses. We generate them, polish them, and establish
through them symbolic-ideological, and then, material
relationships. Why divorce one's private identity from the
academic or professional identity which structurally confers upon
us and burdens us with the responsibility to question? Lakoff
has taken with his paper a first step in that direction, I
believe. What follows are my own reflections on his paper. They
are also triggered by my refusal to divorce myself from myself.
I would not want to argue against Lakoff's systematization of
current political `thinking' on the Persian Gulf crisis.
Politically (and here politics comes first), I agree with his
overall view of the crisis, and I also take a stand against armed
intervention of any sort.
On the academic side, on the contrary, I fail to see how
Lakoff's analysis connects in an explanatory way metaphors with
social structures, fairy tales with chemical weapons. This (lack
of) connection has troubled the social sciences to the point of
crippling them with a continuous debate on the articulations
between the `micro' level (immediate discourse, action, and
behavior) and the `macro' level (the broader social and
structural conditions); this lack of connection is often found in
research on rhetoric, pragmatics, discourse, and ideology --
event in that research that claims to be addressing such issues.
Lakoff's paper might be one of such cases. I would genuinely
like him to explain his standpoint on the issue, or any other
reader to disconfirm my impression.
There are two interpretations to Lakoff's opening statement,
`Metaphors can kill'. I would like to think that he
intelligently intended it to be read, precisely, as a metaphor.
The alternative explanation would lead us to think about what
I've referred to as `the personalization of metaphor': the
`agentization,' so to speak, of what is actually a product of
human action, and the parallel de-agentization of human subjects.
Correct me if I'm wrong. But the use of two other important
metaphors in Lakoff's text makes me think that, indeed, the text
(if not the author) fails to articulate the relationship between
human agents and language in discourse formation. These two
related metaphors are social categories that subsume collective
identities: the `we' (also `America,' `the U.S.') and the
`public' or `public at large'.
Perhaps Lakoff himself preferred to give in to the temptation of
inscribing himself, as an author and as a voice, within the
dominant discourse that makes people and social groups see
themselves as part of a `we'. Lakoff repeatedly refers to `our'
attack on Iraq, to the fact that `we' should not intervene, etc.
His other option would have been to reposition himself as author,
voice, and producer of expert discourse within what he calls the
`internal structure of the state' by questioning the validity of
such categories.
Lakoff's (not always explicit) reference to the role of the
economic, cultural, and political elites in constructing the
rhetoric of war and its metaphors is, in my view, very
appropriate. At least I personally can read what I'm by
background biased to read in between the lines of his text: that,
in the unequal access to and position in the production and
circulation of discourse, certain social groups enjoy the
benefits of constructing if not the people's world view, at least
the people's ways of expressing their relationship to the social
world, their subjectivity (I believe metaphors are ways of
expressing such relationships between subjects and objects. But
I wouldn't refer to them as `metaphorical thought'; `metaphorical
discourse' would be more appropriate, as it is discourse what is
accessible to us and documentable).
But, on the other hand, why, then, fail to see that the way
people and social groups use the referent term `we' and see
themselves in relation to that `we' is mediated by the same
ideology that produces the metaphors of War as Game, War as Fairy
Tale, or War as Business? Who is that `we'? How is that `we'
constructed? Traditionally, social science has presented the
`we/they' dichotomy (to which Lakoff alludes) as a given state of
affairs, and as a predetermined frame for the actualization of
personal and group identities. In other words: one either
`belongs' (in which case one is part of `us') or one `doesn't
belong,' he or she is part of `them'. How is, then, possible, to
explain that at times one crosses the boundaries between these
mutually exclusive social categories? The `we/they' scheme lacks
dynamism, as it rests on a decontextualized notion of identity.
This is, I believe, the scheme that Lakoff not only applies to
his discussion of the dominant rhetoric in the American public
sphere nowadays, but also uses when he speaks with his own voice.
Methodologically, it is dangerous to reduce matters of identity
to dichotomies or flow-charts. One may fail to see from where he
or she sees things. Such a reductionism may be tantamount to
accepting acritically the other dichotomies that are, instead,
implicitly questioned in Lakoff's text, like the Hero-Villain
opposition.
There is, however, a way to view critically `our' identity. With
the phrase `the unifying we,' or similar expressions, some
authors refer to the category in which, in a complex process,
political and economic elites in western democracies attempt to
inscribe the citizens. The notion is dynamic in the sense that
`the unifying we' is constituted through practices of (forced,
imposed, or voluntary) identification with moral directives such
as `the common good,' or `the national interests,' in a process
aimed at the building of consensus. In other words: in a
participatory system (in the `bourgeois public sphere') each
individual is also supposed and expected to be `we,' to incarnate
`America'.
However, strategies of resistance exist in order to prevent one's
being inscribed easily within this `we'. Among such strategies
is the production of alternative, non-dominant discourses by
subaltern social groups. Lakoff refers to ethnic minorities,
gender groups, and classes as existing social groups. But,
paradoxically, he then refers exclusively to `the public,' `the
general public,' or `the public at large' as the counterpart to
the elites, the military and economic experts, and the political
classes that apparently carry out the task of rendering
pervasive, common sense metaphors about war a matter of public
discourse and international policy. Nobody (I hope) among the
readers of this forum seriously believes that George Bush or
other political figures see and discuss technically the Gulf
crisis as they do in public. The elites' apparent success in
making `us' co-participant in the project of killing and
destruction rests on the fact that the elites have known how to
*selectively appropriate* common sense knowledge (`metaphors,' if
you like) and turn it into political truth.
To be sure, this common sense is generated and reinforced within
what is, to the lack of a better expression, often called the
`white middle-class,' particularly the male population. However,
although this sector of the population is what is commonly
identified with `the public,' there exist, as Lakoff suggests,
alternative metaphor systems that circulate among other social
groups within the `public at large'.
In Lakoff's paper there is not a discussion of `metaphor systems'
among such publics. We cannot, again, reduce the issue to a
dichotomous model such as `the elites' vs. `the public'. The
social territory of words, where metaphors are *created*, and not
merely exist in thought, is multifarious and conflictive. One
would expect that only by looking into alternative discourses
(alternative, simply in the sense that they are not
institutionally sanctioned at this point) one would also arrive
at the meanings of the dominant metaphors of war.
I don't know now if my final argument will now come across as
solidly or convincingly as to generate the rebuttals that are
needed to enliven this debate. But my reasoning goes along the
following lines. If we fail to reveal the connections between
`metaphor systems' and the human actions that generate such
systems within and among encountered social groups (as I believe
Lakoff fails to reveal, beyond his rudimentary juxtaposition of
facts, terms, and categories belonging to each level of
analysis), then we are left only with two things: de-agentized
human subjects, on the one hand, and personalized metaphors, on
the other. The explanatory and justificatory force in the
perpetration of madness is a `metaphor system,' or the
`metaphorical thought' whose `role in bringing us to the brink of
war' Lakoff wants to understand. A system, to be sure, where
discourses (that is, configurations of ideological statements
produced under given historical conditions) are atomized, reduced
to well-organized series of conceptual relations. A
`metaphorical thought' that I personally cannot see outside of
the specific linguistic actions that channel it: the constant
threat to which we all, `Iraqis,' `Americans' and other peoples
of the world have been subjected for the last few months. This
threat is real: it is socially constituted, it consists of
statements, communicative events, interactions between audiences
and expert public speakers, dialogues like this one.
I very much liked Lakoff's serious paper for what it is,
including the author's genuine concern for what matters most:
peoples and human life. I don't expect that someone from a
different discipline (if I have any defined) frames a given
problem from a perspective that is not his or her own. But I
missed a discussion that could justify the statement, even
metaphoric, that `metaphors can kill'. While reading the paper,
sometimes I got the feeling that, in turn, the term `metaphor'
was (perhaps in a non-technical way), simply a metaphor -- The
Agent, the primary inhabitant of the world of ideas, not of
actions.
Celso Alvarez
U.C. Berkeley, USA
sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu
celso@athena.berkeley.edu