Metaphor

I was talking to Eben Moglen a couple days ago. In addition to saying many insightful and inspirational things, Eben used the word "physical" metaphorically.

I am looking for suggestions on sensible way to use the word "metaphor" metaphorically.

4 Replies to “Metaphor”

  1. [student infron of the blackboard, dragged by teacher mode]Um.. it’s, you can say.., methaphorically.. like in this sentence: is this. Umm.

    Sit down, F.

  2. I recall that Antonin Artaud used the word “literal” metaphorically, saying that some phenomenon or other  — Culture, say — “literally hit you on the head with a hammer”.  An intensifying gesture, using a metaphor that refuses to accept just being a metaphor.

  3. “The application uses the URL as a metaphor for a filehandle.”

    “Autoimmune disorders erase the immune system’s metaphorical understanding of the body as Self.”

    Any information-processing system that relies on analogous pattern-matching can be said to rely on “metaphors”, or signifiers whose signification relies on the homology of their structure to the significant. Or something. (Except that if I define “metaphor” that way, my use of it in the two preceding sentences ceases to be metaphorical and becomes literal. Hmm. I need a dictionary and a semiotician, stat!)

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