The Power of Metaphor: Consent, Dissent and Revolution
Erik Ringmar
Political discourse is necessarily profoundly metaphorical; the language of
politics is knee-deep in and entirely shot-through by different
metaphorical uses. This should not surprise us. Politics, after all, is the
art of using power in order to achieve social goals. While some power can
be exercised through the army and the police, far more can be
accomplished ― and more easily and cheaply ― through the power of
language. Metaphors give you power since they help to organise social
life in a certain fashion. Metaphors tell you what things are and how they
hang together; metaphors define the relationship between superiors and
subordinates and between social classes; they identify social problems
and their solutions and tell us what is feasible, laudable and true.
Perversely, metaphors make sense of things not by telling us what they
are but instead by telling us what things they are like. My love is
emphatically not a ‘red, red rose’ but there is nevertheless something
about love and about roses which makes it possible to compare the two.
What we do when making sense of this image is to draw on the meanings
which roses have in our culture; anything we have ever seen or heard
about them; the role they play in horticulture, social conventions, in art
or in poetry. The rose in question is surrounded by what we could refer to
as a ‘system of reverberations’. By comparing our love to a rose, certain
aspects of this system are highlighted; certain reverberations are picked
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out and in the process ‘my love’ becomes one certain thing rather than
another.
Compare the way in which metaphor exercise power. No one can say
what ‘society’ or ‘the state’ really are. In fact, societies and states are not
'really' anything at all. Yet they come to be something rather than
nothing as they are compared to other things which they are not. Once a
particular definition is firmly established, it will influence our thoughts
and our actions; it will guide and shape our presuppositions and our
theories; it will make some things possible and others impossible. Say,
for example, that the members of a political elite manage to convince a
sufficiently large number of people to embrace a metaphor which
identifies society as sharply hierarchical and social positions as rigidly
fixed. Once this metaphor is perfectly accepted, it will simply describe
‘the way things are’ and as a result it cannot be questioned or altered.
The more entrenched the metaphor, the more invisible the exercise of
power and the more secure the position of the elites.
In this situation a political dissenter has two basic options. The first is to
elaborate on the accepted metaphors and explore their reverberations,
looking for alternative and if possible more subversive interpretations.
This is an internal form of critique which takes the existence of a certain
world-view for granted but which seeks to explore the potentials it
contains. Such an internal critique may be limited in scope but this is not
necessarily the case. Sometimes very radical demands indeed can be
formulated from within a dominant metaphor. The second and more
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obviously subversive option is to seek to replace the dominant metaphor
with an alternative which is more congenial to the dissenter's outlook and
aims. Yet such a metaphorical replacement is necessarily difficult to
accomplish. The people who benefit from the existence of a particular
metaphor will naturally insist on its validity and inevitability. And people
at large will often defer to tradition and to the powers-that-be.
This chapter develops this understanding of metaphors. The first task is
to provide an inventory of metaphors which traditionally have been used
to create political consent. The second section discusses the ways in
which dissenters can elaborate on established metaphors in order to
create a discursive space for alternative interpretations. The third section
discusses the ways in which revolutionaries may establish radically new
metaphorical usages.
A dictionary of consent
ACTOR. This metaphor gained prominence in the Renaissance and it is
still commonly invoked today (Apostolidès, 1985; Nye, 2004; Review of
International Studies, 2004; Ringmar, 1996/2006;Strong, 1973/1984).
The state is an ‘actor’ on the ‘world stage’ ― the state is ‘playing a role’
and ‘inter-acting’ with other states. The implication is that the state is a
unified entity to whom actions can be ascribed and as such it can be
compared to a human being. Just like humans, states formulate
preferences which they act in order to satisfy. The state-as-actor has a
‘national interest’ which its foreign policy is designed to further. The
formulation of such an interest limits dissent. As political leaders never
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tire of explaining, we can only ‘defend our place on the world stage’ if we
all unite behind the official policy.
In the early modern period the state was always impersonated by the
king. This was literally the case in the plays, masques and ritual jousts
put on at court, in which the king himself would play a part. On the small
stage of the king's palace, the events on the large stage of the world
were given a theatrical form. In the persona of Pax, the king would
conclude an advantageous peace or, as Mars, he would defeat an enemy.
Much in the same way summit meetings and international conferences
are today used as stages on which political leaders can be seen acting
and interacting with each other. By watching these dramas unfold,
newspaper readers and TV viewers are taught what world politics is
about; they form allegiances to certain actors and their political goals.
BODY. In the Middle Ages the body metaphor applied above all to the
Christian church ( Cassirer, 1946; de Baecque, 1993/1997; Gierke,
1881/1996; Kantorowitz, 1951/1957; Ringmar, 2007; Tocqueville,
1840/1945). Or to be more precise, the Church had two bodies ― one
temporal and one transcendental; one which human beings belonged to
while still on earth and another which they belonged to eternally in
heaven. Jesus Christ was in charge of the eternal church and the Pope
was in charge of the temporal. With the rise of the state as a sovereign
entity in the Renaissance, this corporal language was gradually
secularised and given a political application. The state also consequently
came to be given two bodies ― one temporal and one transcendental ―
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and its subjects were simultaneously members of both. In its temporal
capacity the state was made up of institutions and agencies staffed by
officials but in addition the state was a transcendental idea. This was the
Staat as guided by the Weltgeist of history, la France éternelle or the
government enshrined in the principles of the American constitution.
The body metaphor provides a convincing solution to the problem of
social order. As the metaphor makes clear, the different parts of society
are, just like the different parts of the body, intimately related and
organically unified. Each social class corresponds to a bodily organ: the
aristocracy is the ‘arm,’ the clergy the ‘heart’ and the peasants or
merchants the ‘stomach.’ And naturally the person ruling over this ‘body
politic’ becomes the caput or the ‘head of state’. As the metaphor makes
clear, social diversity is not a problem but instead a requirement for
social order to be established. It is precisely because groups and classes
have different functions that they come to depend on each other. After
all, if we all were the same there would be no reason for us to stay
together. Equality of status leads to isolation and eventually to
indifference and to the break-up of social life.
The body metaphor is not necessarily repressive. It does not legitimate
unlimited kingship since the king in practice always will have to
investigate the condition of the heart or stomach or feet before reaching
a decision. On the other hand, the metaphor makes conflicts quite
inconceivable. Social groups and classes cannot be at war with each other
for the same reason that one hand cannot fight the other or the heart
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rebel against the stomach. Instead groups and classes depend on one
another for the proper functioning of the whole. The body metaphor, in
other words, provides little place for politics; there is nothing much for
the various body parts to discuss; there is only one head and one will.
BUSINESS CORPORATION. This metaphor is popular among some
contemporary politicians, in particular those with a business background
(BBC News, 2001; Beckett, 2000; Collins and Butler, 2003). Having made
their fortune, they come into politics promising to run the country as
‘efficiently as they ran their companies’. Most commonly this implies that
the state bureaucracy should be streamlined and ‘unprofitable’ sectors
should be cut back. People should stop wasting time on discussions and
instead subject themselves to ‘the discipline of the market place’. Not
surprisingly this metaphor is particularly attractive during times of
political stalemate or economic decline.
It is worth reminding ourselves that, although business corporations are
actors in economic markets, they are not themselves markets. Business
corporations are hierarchical systems of authority and subordination.
Bosses are not buying the services of their staff but instead ordering
them about. A corporation is emphatically not a democratic institution.
Although a good boss naturally should consult with the people working
for him, he is the one who makes the decisions. The implications for
politics should be obvious.
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CONGREGATION. This metaphor transposes the image of the religious
community onto the political community (Apostolidès, 1985; Frazer,
1890/1994; Mishra, 2004; Sergeev & Biryukov, 1995). The faithful
united in prayer come to be equated with the subjects united under the
king and the authority of the king is juxtaposed with divine authority. The
metaphorical linkage here goes through the figure of the priest, who in
Catholicism is regarded as God's representative and as a mediator to the
divine. Thus the priest-king may claim to have been chosen by God or to
have special miraculous powers such as the power to heal. His
sovereignty is the sovereignty of omnipotence; his commands are
commandments and his subjects are believers. There is obviously no
arguing with this kind of a ruler.
But there are other ways of imagining a religious community. The
imperial Russian, and later Soviet, definition of society drew heavily from
the Orthodox notion of the sobor. In the Russian church the congregation
as a whole stood before God and the priest was neither a representative
of God nor a mediator to the divine. This reduced the power of the priest
but it strengthened the demand for unity. Soviet leaders drew on this
cultural predisposition in order to silence opposition. By contrast the
Buddhist religious community – the sangha – has inspired quasi-
democratic decision-making procedures. Since Buddhism has no God,
Buddhist priests are neither representatives nor mediators. Unity is not a
requirement among Buddhist laymen since no one is tested on their
religious beliefs. The political community understood as a sangha is self-
ruling and egalitarian. And while this metaphor, as one would expect,
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often has been ignored in practice, it has nevertheless served as a source
of political dissent.'
FAMILY. The family is an obvious metaphor to apply to social life
(Englund, 1989; Lakoff, 1996; Trägårdh, 2002). Although families vary
greatly across time and space, we all have a family of some kind or
another and the interaction which takes place within it provides a basic
model for how relations in society at large should be conceived. Again we
are dealing with a metaphor which combines biological and hierarchical
principles. Rulers have often found it expedient to define themselves as
‘fathers’ of the countries they rule and their subjects as ‘children’ of
varying ages, genders and states of maturity. The father in the state, as
in all traditional families, is the one who makes decisions and other family
members are not supposed to question his judgment.
Yet fathers should not be tyrants. Their first obligation is to care for the
members of their family and to make sure that they are happy and well
fed. In addition they should educate their dependents and prepare them
for whatever challenges lie ahead. The ruler is a pater and the state
which has children as its subjects is necessarily paternalistic. The
paternalistic state thinks, plans and acts on behalf of the people; it
disciplines and regulates people in order to protect them from the
unexpected and the disastrous as well as from themselves. In the
paternalistic state, just as in the family, care is inseparable from control.
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Families live in homes and the state understood as a family lives in the
home constituted by the nation. Compare the Japanese kokka, the
‘national home’, or the Swedish folkhem, the ‘home of the people’.
Understood as a home, the state becomes an institution based on
genealogical criteria. The Japanese state was redefined on familial terms
in the 1890s and it was only as a result that it started to make sense for
Japanese soldiers to give their lives to the emperor. Similarly, the
Swedish state employed various practices of eugenics well into the
1960s. This was a socialist-national form of racism rather than a
national-socialist. The national home had no place for people who were
too obviously alien.
GARDEN. This metaphor is another early modern favourite ― compare
the obsession with gardens which spread across Europe in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Englund, 1989; Milton,
1667/2005; Schama, 1995). When applied to the state, the metaphor
expressed a desire for order combined with a stress on social hierarchy.
Social classes corresponded to trees and plants of various sizes,
appearances and degrees of rarity. Aristocrats were like old oak trees,
while peasants were like the wheat they themselves produced. Some of
this language is still with us. Compare our contemporary references to
‘grass roots’ organisations.
The king was the gardener, who planned and maintained the garden.
Plants, just like human beings, were given by nature but in order to reach
their full potential they first had to be ‘cultivated’ ― ‘watered,’ ‘pruned’
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and ‘fertilised’. The state was the greenhouse in which such cultivation
took place. In his garden the king created order and beauty and allowed
some plants the space to grow, while others were cut back. He was
particularly attentive to weeds and to plants that grew away from their
allotted place and he made sure to cut off branches or to pull up plants
that were diseased. If not, pests, mites and fungus might spread to other
parts of the garden.
MACHINE. The machine metaphor suddenly gained in popularity in the
seventeenth-century as a result of a new fascination with mechanical
gadgetry of all kinds, above all clockworks (Hobbes, 1651/1985;
Hirschman, 1977; Koselleck, 1959/1988; Mayr, 1986; Meinecke,
1957/1998; Mumford, 1964; Ringmar, 2007). If the state is a machine,
then the various parts of society become the levers, springs and
cogwheels of which the machine is constructed. This metaphor also
continues to be invoked. We still speak of ‘bureaucratic machineries’, the
‘wheels of administration’ and of ‘social engineering’.
Enlightened autocrats were particularly fond of the machine metaphor.
Just like the body, the machine combined a functional differentiation of
parts with the need for social co-operation. Since the various components
of society are radically different from each other, it is only through co-
operation that they can attain their purpose. A refusal to put the
collective interest above the individual interest is self-defeating. At the
same time not all parts are equally important. While some of the
components are easily replaced, others are unique and crucial to its
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operations. All components should fit neatly with each other and any
wheel that squeaks must be oiled or replaced.
The state-as-machine may seem to have more repressive implications
than the state-as-body. After all, machines are impossible to engage in
conversation; machines are cold and heartless. For many of those who
have confronted the state this mechanical power is only too real. Yet the
machine metaphor also implies constitutionalism. After all, machines
have to operate according to some definite and quite impersonal rules.
This means that the ruler becomes a clockmaker or an engineer whose
main job it is to oversee the operations of the machine. As such the
machine comes to work quite independently of the ruler's personal will
and whims. There are laws of statecraft, similar to laws of mechanics,
which the king has to follow in order to maintain the state in good
working order and himself in power. As the theorists of enlightened
absolutism made clear, the state and the king are both governed by
reason and this raison d'état can at least in principle be objectively
defined and calculated. In this way the machine metaphor served as a
check on absolutist power. Not surprisingly the regimes where the
metaphor was most popular ― Prussia and Austria, in particular ― were
also the states which first granted rights to their subjects. Constitutional
documents, pioneered in these Rechtsstaaten, were taken as the
blueprints for the construction of the machineries of state.
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE. In East Asia, the metaphor of harmony ― wa in
Japanese, he in Chinese ― has always played an important role (Fei,
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1947/1992; Itô, 1998; Jullien, 2000; Pocock, 1989; Watson, 1993).
Harmony is produced by the sound of instruments that are well
integrated with each other. Each instrument plays its own tune but it is
their combination which makes the music enjoyable. Harmony requires
people to co-ordinate their actions; no discordant voices or awkward
squeals should be heard. In both China and Japan the emperor was the
conductor who made sure everyone played the same tune. In Europe
similar metaphors have been invoked. Europeans too after all are
supposed to ‘keep pace’ with each other and ‘sing from the same hymn-
sheet’.
In a state organised as a musical performance adjustments will happen
more or less by themselves. It is above all other participants who notice
when someone sings out of tune or behaves gracelessly. Overt repression
is for that reason not required, instead some mild form of social
disapproval is usually sufficient to set the clumsy performer straight.
Here politics is not something that you talk about but instead something
that you do. Politics is not about discussions and no confrontations
between opposing views are possible. People can certainly object to the
music but this is always going to be an aesthetic rather than a political
judgment. Music, strikingly, has no contraries. Although you may object
to a certain tune, there is no way of contradicting it. In a society where
harmony is the highest social goal, there can be no dissent, only correct
or incorrect performances.
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SHIP. Before the nineteenth-century ships were the main vehicles of
travel, trade and geographical discovery. In the Renaissance, in
particular, the image of the intrepid sea-captain sailing off into the
unknown captured people's imagination and many contemporary authors
fancied themselves as passengers on these ships. Not surprisingly, the
ship-of-state was another early modern favourite (de Cillia, Reisgl and
Wodak, 1999; Machiavelli, 1531/1983; More, 1516/1965).
As the proponents of this metaphor made clear, the ship has a captain ―
the king ― and passengers and crew members of varying dignity and
rank. The separate decks on which they live are sealed off from each
other. The authority of the king-as-captain is absolute, he determines the
direction in which the boat is sailing and mutinies are dealt with swiftly
and mercilessly. At the same time everyone is dependent on the
contributions of all others ― they are ‘all in the same boat’ ― and this is
particularly the case if the weather is bad and the ocean stormy. As the
kings never tired of point out, it was only by following their direction that
they could ‘get off the shoals’, ‘onto an even keel’ and ‘avoid treacherous
rocks’.
TEAM. This is a contemporary metaphor invoked by politicians of a
populist streak (Semino and Masci, 1996; Russo, 2001). ‘Italy is a team,’
such a politician might say, and we all have to ‘work together’ in order to
‘win’. ‘Winning’ here is usually taken to mean ‘to be economically
successful’ or ‘to remain in the top division of successful countries’. We
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can do it, we are assured, as along as we ‘think as a team’ and ‘never
give up.’ ‘Forza Italia ― Go Italy!’
This metaphor also makes an appeal to unity and deference. Individual
efforts make a difference to the outcome but self-serving behaviour is not
allowed. Everyone has to be a ‘team player’ and co-operate for the
benefit of the team as a whole. At the same time players have different
ranks and abilities. Some are important goal scorers or play-makers,
while others are far more easily replaced. The coach ― the prime
minister ― is the one who selects the players and decides on the tactics
― although some consultations with the players certainly may take place.
A sports team, however, is not a democracy.
ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTION. There is a long-standing metaphorical
connection between political power and exotic animals (Burckhardt,
1860/1958; Foucault, 1982; Fu, 1996; Ringmar, 2006). Already in
medieval times kings used to keep rare beasts at their courts ― lions,
leopards, eagles, elephants, rhinoceroses and giraffes. The awe inspired
by such curious collections helped exalt the position of the rulers. All
European monarchies used lions in their heraldry and put up statues of
lions outside palaces and government offices. Some republics did the
same ― Finland is one example ― while other republics considered lions
to be tainted by their monarchical associations and preferred instead
large birds of prey ― compare the American bald eagle.
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Also in the animal kingdom there are differences of rank. In the popular
image, ‘the lion is the king of the animals’ and the king is for that reason
‘the lion among men’. By contrast, most ordinary people are compared to
some herding animal of little or no individuality ― most commonly sheep.
Ordinary people sound like sheep, are scared like sheep and like sheep
they let themselves be led to the slaughter. Varying the metaphor and
giving it a pastoral interpretation, the king becomes a shepherd who
looks after his sheep, protecting them from ferocious animals and finding
pastures for them. Such pastoral power of care and control is similar to
the power of the father. See FAMILY above.
In imperial China, scholars of the Legalist school compared the emperor
to a huntsman. The emperor hunted down his enemies; some he killed
and consumed immediately, others he domesticated and kept as chattel.
To assist him in these tasks he had his eagles ― the state officials and
his secret agents ― who tracked down the prey and prepared it for the
kill. A main task was to exterminate the ‘five vermin of the state’ ―
scholars, freelance politicians, independent knights, persons with
connections to senior officials and merchants/craftsmen. What these
groups had in common was the fact that they had access to independent
bases of power ― ideas, money, weapons ― and for this reason alone
they were seen as challenges to imperial supremacy.
Metaphorical elaboration
The metaphors in this short inventory describe society in a meaningful
and more or less complete manner. With their help we make the world
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make sense. The consent we give to the established social and political
order ― and to the elites who dominate it ― is merely a by-product of
this general quest for meaningfulness. Yet consent is not produced in all
cases. There will always be those who for one reason or another disagree
with the established order of things. Such dissenters may conclude that
society is unfair, that the direction of social life must be altered and its
elites overthrown. In order to be successful in these tasks the dissenters
need access to power. Organisational resources and manpower are
certainly crucial in this respect ― sometimes also soldiers and guns ―
but in addition they need power over language. A way has to be found of
replacing, or at least questioning, the entries in the official inventory of
metaphors.
One strategy here is what we could call metaphorical elaboration.
Metaphors, we said, are interpreted as one system of reverberations is
made to interact with another. Thus a word like ‘the state’ means nothing
until we confront it with the reverberations associated with some other
thing to which it is compared. Yet only parts of these systems are ever
employed. Many, perhaps most, reverberations are left unused since they
are plainly inapplicable, ridiculous or perverse. Thus we may nod
approvingly when someone identifies the state as a ‘business corporation’
but still shake our heads if they go on to talk about the ‘lunch room’ or
the ‘water-cooler’ of the state. Businesses have lunch rooms and water-
coolers but states, by common consent, do not.
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The fact that large parts of any system of reverberations remain
unemployed opens an opportunity for political dissenters. By
investigating these unused references and by making them explicit, they
can encourage people to think differently about the metaphors through
which they organise their lives. People can be invited to discover more
about their world-views and to think more creatively about themselves. If
nothing else, dissenters can make fun of the official language and
thereby seek to denaturalise it. The great advantage of this strategy is
that no fundamental shift in metaphorical commitments is required.
There is no need to radically change people's perceptions. The official
metaphors are not replaced, only tweaked, recoded and decentred.
Consider briefly the following two examples:
MUTINY ON THE SHIP OF STATE. The well-established image of the ‘ship-
of-state’ provides interesting opportunities for dissenters to explore
(Walzer, 1965). One obvious possibility here is to dispute the direction in
which the ship is going. Perhaps the king is ignoring the safest or most
direct route, missing a safe harbour or perhaps he is running the ship
onto a rocky shore. Another possibility is to make comments on the
weather. If the argument can be made that a big storm is approaching,
then maybe everyone would be better off abandoning the ship or at least
abandoning the rigidly hierarchical division of labour which characterises
interaction on-board. Another possibility is to question the unlimited
powers granted to the captain. Mutiny has of course always been
regarded as a crime and in early modern Europe it was punishable by
death. However, as the law of the seas also made clear, crew members
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and even passengers had a right to question the judgment of the captain
if they could prove that he was drunk, insane or otherwise incapacitated.
Indeed, under such circumstances it was their obligation to relieve the
captain of his responsibilities. Not surprisingly this was the precise
argument relied on by several early modern dissenters.
WEEDS IN THE GARDEN. Similar strategies can be employed in the case
of the state understood as a garden (Englund, 1989; Gernet,
1972/1999). There are different kinds of gardening after all, governed by
different aesthetic sensibilities. Like the Daoist recluses of ancient China
we could alter the value given to different plants and compare ourselves
not to stately oaks but instead to withered old pine trees clinging on to
mountain-sides. Or we could prefer the hardy grass to the frail flowers,
the indigenous flora to the exotic and the rough to the too highly
cultivated. After all, weeds have a power and a beauty unto themselves.
We could even argue that the garden should be left to its own devices.
Before long it will be completely overgrown and eventually it will revert
back to nature. Anarchists prefer anarchic gardening!
Political dissenters would also do well to explore the gardens of other
countries than their own. Comparing various European traditions we find
that there is a rough analogy between the repressive tendencies of
politicians and the repressive tendencies of gardeners. The more liberal
the regime, the more freely growing the plants. The gardens of the rulers
of autocratic regimes are more regimented, with clearer borders and
more tightly pruned hedges, than the gardens of constitutional monarchs.
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Compare the gardens of Versailles with those of Windsor. Not surprisingly
a French radical like Jean-Jacques Rousseau regarded English garden art
as a far better metaphor for social life.
Another way of creatively reimagining too-well-entrenched metaphors is
to look for ways of expanding the system of reverberations to which they
refer. Rather than being content with the existing set of possible
interpretations, we try to come up with new ones. With more and new
reverberations to chose from, new ways of conceptualizing politics
become available. Any new development can help in this respect – social,
cultural or legal changes, scientific discoveries or new technical
inventions. The role of the dissenter is to point these changes out to the
general public and to explain what political implications they have. In this
way the interpretation of society will change as the result of completely
unrelated changes taking place elsewhere. Again consider two examples.
DIVORCING THE FAMILIAL STATE. In early modern Europe the received
interpretation of the patriarchal state was profoundly undermined as a
result of changes in the definition of the family. According to the
Protestant interpretation of the Bible, marriage was not a sacrament but
instead a contract freely entered into by two independent parties. If one
of the parties violated the terms, the contract could be annulled. The
political implications of this reconceptualisation are obvious and they
were quickly identified by seventeenth-century Puritans as they rebelled
against the paternalistic English state (Walzer, 1965). Or as French
revolutionaries argued in 1789, if the father is tyrannical enough,
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‘patricide’ may indeed be justified (Koselleck, 1959/1988). Such a crime
may bring the ‘brothers’ more closely to each other and thus constitute
the basis for a new form of ‘fraternity’. Even after the father was
beheaded, in other words, the metaphor lived on.
Contemporary redefinitions have altered the meaning of the family
metaphor at least as radically (Lakoff, 1996). Families are today quite
egalitarian; their members are regarded as separate individuals with their
own wants and aspirations; they discuss things together and reach
decisions through consensual methods. Not surprisingly a contemporary
society modelled on a family will allow a great measure of debate and
dissent. The power of patriarchy has also weakened as a result of the
increase in divorce rates. Today mothers rather than fathers provide the
unifying force which keeps families together. Compare the feminisation of
the state, which is evident at least in some countries in northern Europe.
Here women constitute an ever-larger proportion of the state's workforce
as well as of its leading decision-makers.
NEW DEAL AT WORK. Business corporations have changed too, at least in
Europe. Companies are today less hierarchical, more democratic and
more participatory. One trend here is what Germans call Mitbestimmung,
or co-determination, whereby representatives of the workforce are asked
to join in crucial decisions and trade union officials are given legally
guaranteed representation on corporate boards. A political dissenter may
point to these changes and encourage people to re-evaluate the state-as-
business metaphor. A prime minister-cum-CEO who fails to understand
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these shifts may be offered a ‘severance package’ by the citizen-
shareholders.
Another contemporary trend points to the end of traditional notions of a
career (Capelli, 1999). Employees are no longer staying with their
companies as long as was the case in the 1950s or 60s; people work on
shorter contracts, they switch jobs more often and often shape their
careers outside of corporate ladders. Employees, in short, are more
demanding and more independent; if they do not like a particular
company, they leave. Compare the far more tenuous relationship which
many people have developed with the countries to which they ostensibly
belong. This trend is most obvious within the European Union. If you do
not like the country where you were born, you simply go elsewhere. As a
result you are inevitably less likely to bother with politics, to engage with
social issues and local concerns.
Metaphorical replacement
The alternative option open to a political dissenter is to try to break with
contemporary uses and come up with completely new metaphors through
which society and the state can be conceptualised (Ringmar, 1996/2006).
However, it is obviously very difficult to successfully carry out such a
metaphorical replacement. What needs to be changed are not only
people's opinions but also the basic categories in which their opinions are
lodged. Most people do not want to have their world-views undermined in
this manner ― and this resistance may often include people for whom an
alternative metaphorical conception would constitute a great
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improvement. Moreover, the people who benefit the most from the
contemporary social order are also the ones who are best placed to block
any changes. And still, despite the odds, metaphorical reversals do
occasionally happen. Consider briefly two examples.
CONSTRUCTION SITE. Modern politics began when naturalistic metaphors
were replaced by constructivist ones. That is, instead of seeing society as
a natural organism ― a body, family or garden ― or as an impersonal
mechanical device, it came to be regarded as something man-made,
something constructed, most commonly as some kind of a building
(Arendt, 1977; Becker, 1932; Lakoff and Johnson, 2003; Tully, 1980;
Vico, 1744/1986). This metaphorical switch opened up a world of exciting
new possibilities for political entrepreneurs to explore. If society is a
building made by us, we should be able to fully understand it, including
the most obscure of its nooks and crannies. And the better we
understand society, the better we will be at reconstructing it in
accordance with our preferred design. Politics, governed by this
metaphor, will be a question of drawing up ever more appealing
blueprints which can be presented to our fellow citizens. Political conflicts,
accordingly, will be a question of which among many competing plans
that should be implemented.
The rationalistic pretensions of this metaphor should be obvious. The
construction plans are drawn up by us, not by God or by tradition, and
there is in principle no limit to the kinds of projects we can decide to
embark on. Before we can start building, however, we need building
208
materials and we need machinery but above all we need an opportunity
to impose our plans on society taken as a whole. To this end we need
access to state power since only the state can coerce people into
following the instructions we give them. The state, with its monopoly on
the legitimate use of violence, is the contractor with the greatest
entrepreneurial capability. Controlling the state becomes crucial if you
want to see your plans implemented. Obviously, if the projects are
particularly ambitious, some pretty serious forms of coercion may be
required.
CYBERNETIC DEVICE. The other main metaphor of modern politics
conceptualises society as a self-organising mechanism or what we could
call a 'cybernetic device.' The idea of self-organisation gained popularity
thanks to early modern inventions like the thermostat and Watt's famous
steam engine. In Newton's cosmology the universe itself was understood
as a self-organising system. Order here, as in all cybernetic systems, was
produced through the interaction of contradictory forces whereby a push
in one direction automatically triggered a pull in the other direction,
which restored the overall balance. This was also the model famously
adopted by Adam Smith in his description of the economic system as
governed by an ‘invisible hand’, a metaphor he had initially applied to
Newtonian cosmology ― as ‘the invisible hand of Jupiter’ ― in an early
essay. The economic system, Smith explained, maintains itself in balance
as the self-serving actions of one party are counteracted through the
self-serving actions of another party.
209
The cybernetic metaphor is appealing in many respects. As it makes
clear, little central direction or repression is required. In a self-organising
society people are able to settle their differences by themselves. Diversity
is not a threat but instead a precondition for social order to be
established; the mutual antagonism of opposing interests and groups is
what keeps society in balance. Outside intervention by a ‘balancer’ such
as the state risks jeopardising this decentralised harmonisation. In a
society which regulates itself, the king can be abolished and the state
scaled back. This is the liberal idea of ‘freedom’, the freedom to pursue
one's own interests constrained only by other actors who pursue theirs.
The main problem is the distribution of resources which self-regulation
requires. If some people or groups have far less than others, their
preferences and aspirations will play no role in determining the overall
outcome. Meanwhile any redistribution of resources violates the
requirement of self-equilibration which the metaphor stipulates.
Constructivism and self-organisation are the two main metaphors of the
modern era. It is with their help more than anything that contemporary
politics has come to be conceptualised. Yet the metaphors are at the
same time incompatible with each other. For each individual this is not
immediately obvious since the plans he or she makes readily can be
combined with self-organisation on a social level (Hayek, 1988). If we let
each person build whatever buildings they like, our cities will simply
become the aggregate of all these buildings. The problem arises when
both metaphors simultaneously are taken to apply to social life in the
aggregate. If someone tries to reconstruct society as a whole, individuals
210
will have to be convinced, coerced or cajoled into contributing to the
common project.
Compare the proverbial clash between central planners and the laissez-
faire market. The old Soviet Union was a gigantic construction site on
which the Communist Party tried to erect its vision of the future; the
free-market, as described by American libertarians, is a cybernetic device
with which politicians tamper only at their peril. Although most societies
have sought to strike some balance between these two models of social
organisation, this has been notoriously difficult to do. The metaphors do
not mix very well. Rather than trying to combine them, they have been
applied sequentially ― to different sectors of society or perhaps to the
same sector over the course of time. Over the last thirty or so years, the
self-organising metaphor has gradually become more influential than the
constructivist.
Regardless of the contradictions between them, both metaphors
constituted radical breaks with previous ways of conceptualising society.
The question is how and why they came to be accepted. An obvious
answer is that the respective metaphors were backed by powerful groups
employing a powerful rhetoric. In the eighteenth century, philosophers
and radical reformers did everything in their power to convince people to
tear down the ancièns régimes, maintained only by the force of prejudice
and the inertia of tradition. Similarly the proponents of cybernetic
models, often sponsored by assorted right-wing think-tanks, have
211
recently launched campaigns against the ‘central planning’ and ‘socialism’
which the constructivist metaphor is said to imply.
Yet it is obvious that the real causes of the metaphorical revolutions are
to be found in far deeper social, economic and cultural changes. In both
cases the revolutionaries benefited from developments which they in no
way can be said to have been responsible for. Above all their success
depended on a gradual undermining of the previously dominant
metaphors. The world had changed in ways the official rhetoric had been
unable to notice. As a result society and its representation in thought had
become ever-more separated. Again this is a consequence of the logic of
metaphors. Since metaphors highlight certain aspects of reality while
hiding others, there will always be things which we fail to see; there will
be dark corners, as it were, which our concepts cannot illuminate. If
dramatic economic, social or cultural changes take place in these dark
corners, outside of the purview of the metaphor, the official
interpretations will become less and less relevant. Eventually they can
simply be brushed aside. Hence the unexpected ease with which the old
regime in France ― and in the Soviet Union ― eventually were toppled.
What really determined the success of the constructivist metaphor was
thus not the rhetoric of the eighteenth-century philosophers but rather
the dramatic social, cultural and economic changes taking place at the
time. The construction-site metaphor became believable inter alia
because of the weakening of the intellectual hegemony of the Church;
the success of rationalistic science; the commercial, financial and
212
industrial revolutions; the creation of new media, including printing
presses; and the emergence of the state as an entrepreneurial power.
Similarly, the cybernetic metaphor gained credibility above all as a result
of the all too obvious failures of constructivism. After all, the
constructivist plans rarely worked out the way they were intended. Many
of the buildings were quite impossible to realise and far too many people
died on the construction sites. The buildings, even if completed, turned
out to be impossible to live in, to alter or refurnish, and in any case the
constructivist projects always gave far too much power to the architects
and the contractors.
The making and unmaking of consent
No one lives in the world as it 'really is.' There are no such real worlds.
Instead everyone lives in a world that is interpreted, made meaningful,
and meaning is created as things are compared to things which they are
not. Meaning is made through metaphor. The metaphors applied to
social life determine how interpersonal relations are defined and how
political authority and economic resources are distributed. In this way
metaphors come to exercise power. Since different metaphors interpret
the world differently it makes a great difference which metaphors a
society has come to embrace.
For each individual the situation never presents itself in quite this
way. The world we are born into is already made meaningful for us; it is
pre-interpreted, and as we come to master the interpretative codes of
our societies we come to accept these meanings. Metaphors constitute
the conceptual furniture of our everyday lives which we use without
213
thinking too much or too deeply about. Very occasionally, however, even
the sturdiest conceptual furniture breaks; the metaphors stop making
sense if they are stretched too far. A broken, over-stretched, metaphor
has to be replaced by another. This accounts for the revolutionary shifts
that take place in the history of our societies; a political revolution is a
consequence rather than a cause of these revolutions in metaphor.
Yet such metaphorical replacements are quite impossible to
consciously bring about. Metaphorical shifts – from organic to
constructivist metaphors, say – are always deeply embedded in large-
scale social, economic and epistemological transformations. Such
transformations no individuals can carry out no matter how fervently they
try. Metaphorical revolutions are rare and if we hope to take part in one
we will almost always be disappointed.
The alternative open to dissenters is to take the world as it is
presented to them -- to accept the leading metaphors of our age as good
enough but to reinterpret them in a subversive fashion. The aim is to
explore and expand the systems of reverberations looking for ways to
undermine, recode and decentre the accepted meanings. This may
sound like a limited, reformist, agenda, and this may indeed be the case.
Yet very powerful statements can often be made in this way and since
they use rather than seek to replace existing metaphors, this is a
strategy which is far more likely to meet with success.
214
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