Metaphorical Place Research Articles

“The Music of Being”: a note on a metaphor from Giorgio Agamben’s last volume of <i>Homo Sacer</i>.

The article attempts to clarify the place and meaning of musical-acoustic metaphors that appear in the last volume of Homo Sacer, The Use of Bodies, in connection with the project of modal ontology. The definition of philosophy as the “supreme music,” increasingly common in the pages of his later texts, suggests that this is not just a figurative meaning of musical images but an attempt to give them conceptual weight. To clarify the musical basis of philosophy, the article offers an analysis of a number of statements from The Use of Bodies in the context of Agamben’s early reflections on language and voice (most notably in Language and Death). The analysis allows us to show that musical metaphors mark the direction of Agamben’s positive program, particularly the project of modal ontology, which seeks to resolve the aporia of the ontological apparatus thattraces back to Aristotle. Although the aim of the article is mainly technical — to fit only apparently incidental musical metaphors into the logic of Agamben’s entire philosophical project — it seems that this analysis may be useful in clarifying the basis for understanding and critiquing the thought of the Italian philosopher.

Everybody's Maybes: Reproducing Feminism's Bad Objects

In this introduction, we reconsider how we can tell the stories of Black feminist thought and institutional feminist study through uncertainty and incommensurability rather than clear reproducibility of good and bad objects. We then consider the speculative place of reproductive history, metaphor, and technology vis-à-vis intersectionality as a foundational object of worry for and in feminist thought. Taking seriously the sustained focus on white women and white feminism as the quintessential bad objects and actors in the present of US feminism, we engage how the reproductive in Black feminism has been both an occluding and elucidating genre to refract Black women as subjects of a “white” field of feminism and the academy at large. We pay particular attention to the social reproduction of race in analyses of gestation, birth, and motherhood and the opportunities these sites represent for disorienting intersectional analysis rather than shoring up its contours. By challenging feminism's critical attachments to self-evidently ethical objects, this introduction, and this issue, offer a way forward in feminist study that imagines uncertainty as a core method and value of feminist inquiry.

Cosmohistories and pluriversal dialogues: The future of the history of geography

When it comes to the ‘History of Geography’, many still think of something descriptive and conservative, which has virtually no links with the ‘future’, a metaphorical place where ‘progress’ and ‘advancements’ are usually located. The existence of such feelings exposes how some lingering positivistic views still remain in parts of the discipline that claimed to have got rid of positivism. In this commentary, we contend that the history of geography can play an important role in re-imagining the future of the discipline. First, drawing upon our own research experience and extending recent literature on ‘geographical futures’, we expose why the history of geography is making increasingly important contributions to key discussions in a plural and evolving discipline. We especially focus on the ongoing pluralistic and multilingual rediscovery of ‘other geographical traditions’ that is enriching critical, radical, and feminist approaches to geography. Next, we propose to enrich the field of geography and its prevailing ‘Western’ origin stories by engaging in pluriversal dialogues with Indigenous knowledge and practices, focusing on Latin America and on decolonial notions such as cosmohistory, which show that there are many histories of geography, and they all matter for the futures of the discipline.

Cognitive model of anthropomorphous metaphor

This article discusses the theoretical concept and function of the terms metaphors and anthropomorphic metaphors. The nature of the metaphor and its artistic and figurative existence were determined. The author conducted a comprehensive study on the theory of conceptual metaphor, based on scientific research in the field of a number of sciences devoted to the existence and essence of metaphor. Many scientific studies devoted to the identification of various variants of various metaphors in modern linguistics are shown. The features inherent in the anthropometric principle in the nomination and modeling of the surrounding world are analyzed. The place of metaphor as a means of thinking and association in scientific research is formulated. The meaning of an anthropomorphic metaphor in which objects and phenomena of objective reality are in associative connection with the forms and properties of a person is determined. As a result of the analysis, it is shown that the physiological properties of a person, somatic symptoms, mental properties are grouped in the anthropomorphic metaphor. The novelty of the study shows that until now there has not been a detailed classification of anthropomorphic features of the cultural concept. The study shows that when naming or describing the environment, natural objects through an anthropomorphic metaphor, the worldview of the people is represented through language. A person forms a picture of the external world, creates its concept, and it is represented in the language through anthropomorphic metaphors.

Метафорические номинации, характеризующие концептуальную сферу механизм (на материале английского научно-популярного биологического дискурса)

The paper aims at identifying the connection between the target domain and the source domain (represented by the PARTS OF MECHANISM, MECHANISM REPAIR, MECHANISM ACTIVATION). The author uses continuous sampling method, as well as methods of conceptual and component analysis, in order to elicit multiple target domains and the mapping principle. The sentences under research (512 metaphorical expressions) were taken from various British and American popular science journals on Biology. The author considers the key works written in the field of conceptual metaphor (G. Lakoff, E. Maccormac), linguistic picture of the world (D. Berdnikova, S. Dracheva), written by the Russian linguists. The theoretical analysis is finished by a review of the works in the sphere of the popular science and scientific discourses and the place of metaphor in them (O. Desyukevich, S. Chistyukhina, E. Mazyar, E. Mityukova). In the course of the material description the author has drawn some conclusions about the way the English conceptualize biological processes. It is important to note that most frequently the metaphorical meaning is a broader, more general one, whereas in other cases, it alternatively makes the object or a process more specific, or it can have a completely opposite meaning. Molecule, cell, bacteria, fungi and viruses serve as target domains, which can be explained by the immense significance of the processes that lay the “foundation” of human life. A very extensive metaphorical thesaurus of the mechanism conceptual domain is indicative of this conceptual domain being well-structured. It is worthy of note that the lexemes with the denotational meaning of stopping are barely present in the research which means that the described genes, molecules and cells are doing a never-ceasing job of maintaining life on earth.

'At the Mercy of the Metaphor': C. S. Lewis and the Nature of Theological Language

Whether or not there is a God has been a perennial question for philosophy. What may be said about God is a central concern of theology. That anything meaningful can be said about God has been challenged in the course of Western philosophical thought from different sides. Plato has his character, Timaeus, in his book of the same name assert that “to find the maker and father of this universe is hard enough, and . . . to declare him to everyone is impossible” (28c). In a famous passage from his Philosophical Investigations (§610), Ludwig Wittgenstein muses about the impossibility of describing the aroma of coffee. But if this already exceeds human capabilities, how much more the task of speaking about something or someone as unfathomable as God? As an outstanding and influential representative of Christianity in the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) had something to say about this problem. In this paper, I will explore his particular approach to the issue at hand. In five sections, I shall first briefly examine Lewis’s existential context and how it sets the stage for his giving primacy of the poetical over the analytical or abstract. Second, I will look at the central place metaphor takes in his overall understanding of language. In a third and fourth step, I shall look at his dealings with a central point of criticism as raised by the father of modern atheism, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872). Finally, I will look at Lewis’s use of certain Christian tenets and how their appropriation rationally grounded his assuming a basic reliability of Christian God-talk.

‘I wouldn’t trade this country of ours for anything’: place, identity and men’s stories of the 2016 M7.8 Kaikōura/Waiau earthquake

ABSTRACT There is an emerging area of research that examines men’s personal disaster accounts, including how gender identities and sets of understandings about masculinities shape response and recovery. This paper adds to the literature through providing a geographic enquiry into men’s sense of place and identifying the impacts of the Kaikōura/Waiau (7.8 Mw) earthquake sequence on rural men. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 19 men across Marlborough and North Canterbury who experienced the earthquake. Findings explored how rural masculine identities, exemplified in the Southern Man trope, were integral to rural men’s earthquake stories. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and doxa and using field as a geographic metaphor for place, the research identified that participants relied upon rural skills and local knowledges to navigate the changing dynamics of place. More broadly, this paper illustrates how post-disaster impacts on individuals and communities may be traced through examining a gendered sense of place.

О КОГНИТИВНОМ ПОТЕНЦИАЛЕ МЕТАФОРЫ В НАУЧНОМ ДИСКУРСЕ

The article is devoted to metaphor: its definition, classification, and various approaches to its study. The author attempts to analyze metaphor outside the research field of rhetoric (which traditionally interprets it as a tool of efficient communication) and uses a linguo-cognitive approach to consider it. Within the framework of this approach, metaphor is equated with the cat- egory of thinking and is interpreted as a way of exploring the world and one of the most important cognitive mechanisms used by an individual in the process of his spiritual growth. Since the role of metaphor was completely re-estimated from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, metaphor was no longer considered as a factor inhibiting the formation of scientific knowledge. It was discovered as a unify- ing principle, a semantic potential, which eventually revealed in it the signs of anthropometry that, in turn, served as an impetus for the development of cognitive science. Re-estimation of the role and place of metaphor in the post-nonclassical epistemological field presupposes the evolution of its status: from a common linguistic technique to a meaning-making center, a bridge between being and knowing, subject and object, language and world, science and culture.

Changing Climate, Changing Terrain: The Stasis Metaphor and the Climate Crisis

Rhetorical theory has frequently relied on metaphors of place and positioning as heuristics to build better arguments. This article utilizes one such metaphor, that of stasis theory, as a method by which we might change the terrain of the conversation surrounding the climate crisis. As an example, the author does a rhetorical analysis of a recent agricultural report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment and finds that, rather than using traditional questions of conjecture and quality, the authors of the report focus on questions of procedure and definition to reframe the discussion surrounding the climate crisis. Drawing from the rhetoric in this report, the author suggests that technical communicators might similarly produce more fruitful conversations around the climate crisis if they focus on what to do (procedure) and redefining the crisis as a local issue (definition).

Healing cultural trauma and its application to the Router programme

This paper explores the issue of cultural trauma, which is an area of concern in psychology generally and has emerged as one within the International Association for Analytical Psychology's Router training programme. A summary of responses to the issues of cultural trauma and complexes (alongside cultural differences) within analytical psychology are presented, followed by an overview of findings from the IAAP's evaluation of the Router training programme. These findings are then aligned with contemporary sociological research. The significant issues involved in healing cultural trauma seem to be 'working through', as well as the place of imagination, dreamwork, symbolism and metaphor. Research in Poland has specifically highlighted the importance of good governance, economic vitality, personal and social capital (as in education and social participation), a meaning system, certain external contingencies, channels of mobility and ritualism.

Doctor Zhivago by B. Pasternak in Chinese Literature Studies: The Role and Place of Metaphor in the Artistic Whole of the Novel

Doctor Zhivago by B. Pasternak in Chinese Literature Studies: The Role and Place of Metaphor in the Artistic Whole of the Novel

Creating and Abandoning “Homeland”: Cahokia as Place of Origin

“Diaspora” is typically used in reference to large-scale population dispersals across borders of modern nation-states. This concept has particular connotations with regard to political dynamics and the creation of social identities of difference; however, similar movements of people who retain an identity of a collective “homeland” may be useful for understanding some aspects of cultural influence and complexity in the Mississippian Southeast. Here, we consider the debate over concepts of “diaspora” and “homeland,” identifying aspects of diaspora theory that provide a useful lens through which to understand Cahokia’s impact in the greater Southeast, specifically in the construction of a physical, ancestral, and/or metaphorical Place of Origin as referential “homeland.” We then consider the implications of this Central Place in the context of abandonment and small-scale out-migrations within the Greater Cahokia region. While certain non-human bodies and material practices are “carried away,” others are abandoned altogether. We consider what these choices can tell us about the process of dissolution of this once-created Place of Origin, Cahokia.

Walking, Frontier and Nation: Re/tracing the Songlines in Central Australian Literature

ABSTRACTCentral Australia is widely characterised as a frontier, a familiar trope in literary constructions of Australian identity that divides black from white, ancient from modern. However, recent anthropological and literary evidence from the Red Centre defies such a clear-cut representation, suggesting more nuanced ‘lifeworlds’ than a frontier binary can afford may better represent the region. Using walking narratives to mark a meeting point between Aboriginal and settler Australian practices of placemaking, this paper summarises and updates literary research by the author (2011–2015), which reads six recounted walks of the region for representations of frontier and home. Methods of textual analyses are described and results appraised for changes to the storied representation of Central Australia from the precolonial era onward. The research speaks to a ‘porosity’ of intercultural boundaries, explores literary instances of intercultural exchange; nuances settler Australian terms for place, including home, Nature and wilderness; and argues for new place metaphors to supersede ‘frontier’. Further, it suggests a recent surge in the recognition of Aboriginal songlines may be reshaping the nation’s key stories.

The cinematographic representation of social frames

The author of the essay titled «The Cinematographic Representation of Social Frames» analyzes images in the context of representing physical and ontological aspects of reality. He considers Albanian Communist Cinema (1952–1991) taking into consideration the viewer’s perspective in which cinema is treated as a metaphorical place when people learn to read images and can think through images. The author also focuses on following issues: processes of individualization, representation and the problematisation of subjectivity.

Productive perils: on metaphor as a theory-building device

AbstractMetaphors constitute a relevant method for both building and making sense of theories. Semiotics is not exempt from their influence, and an important range of semiotic theories depends on metaphors to be meaningful. In this paper, we wish to examine the place of theory-constitutive metaphors considering the interaction view and the extent to which some areas of semiotics, particularly, the semiotics of culture and biosemiotics, are enriched by having metaphors dominate the way we think about them. The intention of the paper is not to document the different metaphors that have built semiotic theory, but rather to observe through a number of examples that semiotic research contains theory-building metaphors and that these are productive means of developing semiotic thinking further, with the caveat that theory change can be unexpected based on how we build metaphors for our theories.

The Center of the Earth in Ancient Thought

AbstractThroughout the annals of history, many societies have imagined that places integral to their religious, political, or cultural life should be considered “centers.” These centers are often represented by symbolic constructions, mythologies, and ideological statements. In many cases, notions of centrality are accompanied by claims that a particular space should be considered the “center” or “middle” of the earth; in the Classical World, such a place may also be referred to as the “navel of the earth,” with theomphalosconnected to the oracle at Delphi being the examplepar excellence. Yet Delphi did not hold a monopoly on Classical notions of centrality. From the archaic period to Late Antiquity, critical responses to Delphi emerged, sparking the appearance of other, competing, centers throughout the Mediterranean. New centers show striking similarities to one another in their associated ideologies, physicality, and mythography, and could be represented through programmatic cartographic, literary, and architectural statements. Regardless of the medium, all avenues of representation are indicators of the myriad ways in which these societies understood their physical and metaphorical place in relation to other civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean. This paper will argue that, through intense cultural contact, societies of the ancient world created imagined centers as a direct—and oftentimes competitive—response to other imagined centers in the Mediterranean, and beyond. All of these reconfigurations and manipulations of fictional and real space can be associated with fundamental shifts in the socio-cultural operations of the society in which the new “center” appears.

Dangerous liaisons: Metonymic effects between school and education

This paper considers the ways in which the words “school” and “education” are conflated in the social imaginary, and what the effects of this conflation in meaning and purpose are both theoretically and in practice. It is not difficult to see the ways in which these two terms are used almost synonymously, and uncritically. Yet “school” and “education” operate in a double-bind, as both are interchangeable in meaning while simultaneously opposed to each other: education is often defined as a traditional process, whereas school is a formal, updated structuring of that process. This paper looks first at the place of metaphor in terms of the construction of knowledge, and how that produces both a “proper” as well as a forgetting within and through discourses. Following Nietzsche’s concept of metaphoricity, note is then taken of the distinctions between both the meaning and uses of metaphor and metonymy, in that the former creates conditions of applicability between concepts, while the latter allows one thing to stand in for another, effectively subsuming meaning altogether. These various notions are then applied to a trio of case studies, specifically from the region in Oceania commonly known as Micronesia, where interplay of metaphoricity and its effects on and in purportedly decolonizing contexts can be seen. Finally, a pair of schools in a Dr. Seuss tale are visited that provide a positive reticulation of spaces of education that is not beholden to the pernicious effects of metaphorical forgetting, substitution, and erasure, nor to a search for origins and latency.

Remote Islands as Fictional and Metaphorical Places in Cervantes, Fletcher and Shakespeare

Islands have always occupied a significant place in literature and have been a source of inspiration for the literary imagination. Fictional islands have existed as either lost paradises, or places where law breaks down under physical hardships and a sense of entrapment and oppression. Islands can be sites of exotic fascination, of cultural exchange and of great social and political upheaval. However, they are more than mere locations since to be in a place implies being bound to that place and appropriating it. That means that the islands narrow boundaries, surrounded by the sea and cut off from mainland, can create bridges between the real and the imaginary as a response to cultural and social anxieties, frequently taking the form of eutopias/dystopias, Edens, Arcadias, Baratarias, metatexts, or cultural crossroads, deeply transforming that particular geographical location. This article is concerned with insularity as a way of interrogating cultural and political practices in the early modern period by looking at the works of Cervantes, Fletcher and Shakespeare where insular relations are characterized by tensions of different sort. The arrival of Prospero and Miranda, Periandro and Auristela (The Trials of Persiles and Segismunda), and Albert and Aminta (The Sea Voyage) to their respective islands take us to a different world, revealing different political and cultural interests and generating multiple perspectives on the shifting relationship between culture, society and power.

Место метафоры в репрезентации концептов (на материале концепта «сосед»)

Место метафоры в репрезентации концептов (на материале концепта «сосед»)

An Examination of Cross Sectional Change in Student’s Metaphorical Perceptions Towards Heat, Temperature and Energy Concepts

In science instruction, metaphors are an important means of realizing meaningful learning and conceptual formation. The current study aims to evaluate how the concepts of heat, temperature and energy are perceived by students in secondary school science classes and how the perceptions of these concepts vary depending on grade level (5 th , 6 th , 7 th and 8 th grades) based on the metaphors generated. The study group of the present research consists of 226 students selected from among 5 th , 6 th , 7 th and 8 th graders through criterion sampling method. Employing the descriptive method, the presents study collected its data through a metaphor questionnaire. The findings of the study revealed that there is a total of 176 metaphors were generated by students under four categories “Phenomenological-conceptual metaphors”, “Abstract metaphors”, “Environmental/daily metaphors” and “misconception metaphors”. When the findings were examined, it was seen that though there were some misconception detected about the concepts of heat, temperature and energy, conceptual changes in the other three categories vary depending on grade level. This variety needs to be discussed in relation to cognitive development and daily life. Some suggestions were made about the place and importance of metaphors in concept teaching for researchers and practitioners.