The Possibility of a Nonpoetic Conversion of Technology

Abstract

Identifying the layer of metaphorical utterances that are always present in media research and distinguishing it from the conscious construction of fabulation and fiction in philosophy, the author turns to the theory of language metaphors to describe a “technique of metaphor.” Locating it through a series of operations allows, first, to discuss metaphor as tension. A comparison of this tension with the intensified lines of drawings involving the appearance and disintegration of forms permits, second, to examine the existence of “couplings” (as in Lev Manovich) rather than of plasticity (as in Catherine Malabou) in the process of interaction with technological devices. At the same time, noncommunicative limits that are also denoted by metaphor can serve as further processes of interaction that reveal their greater operability compared to processes of mediation.