Skulsky, Harold

Metaphorese

1986

"On the view of imagery I am sketching, the imagination systematically misinterprets in the interests of interior cinema."

On the view of imagery I am sketching, the imagination systematically misinterprets in the interests of interior cinema. Either it interchanges figurativeness and literalness, or it creates hybrids: the unbridled ship gets an equine prow. If one identifies this subversive graphics with figurative interpretation, then metaphor is fiction-either the world-creating fiction of L-J or the subjective "truth" of Hugo Meier: "Objectively considered, that seeing-ofone- thing-in-another or fusion of two concepts in which metaphor makes us believe is ultimately always false, of course. . . . Metaphorical transference is truthful only in the sense of our subjective, human awareness, not of external reality" (Meier, 1963). If my earlier argument is right, this misdescribes the justification conditions of metaphorical assertion, which are determined by figurative sense. One is warranted in believing that x is light-fingered if and only if one is warranted in believing that x is a habitual thief. On the other hand, the first of the two descriptions of metaphoric image-making offered by Meier is worth exploring. I think it can usefully supplement the demon theory. According to Carnoy (Meier's source), the parties to figurative communication "see one thing in the other, through the other, or by the other (Carnoy, 1927). Is this simply an anticipation of the Wittgensteinian notion? I think not; seeing-by is not seeing-as. What is it then?
(pp. 367-8)

Visual Arts::Cinema

Reading

Harold Skulsky, "Metaphorese." Nous 20, no. 3 (1986): 351-69.

11/19/2012