2.2
To help us understand this, allow me to introduce the concept of metaphor. As described by Zwicky, a metaphor depends on both an ‘is’ and an implicit ‘is not’: a metaphor (which, for us, includes things like similes) says that X is and is not Y.[1] ‘Her eyes are like gems’ —this obviously means her eyes are like gems: they’re breathtaking and rare, catch light, and can be seen through in a way that imparts to everything a particular colouration.
But this also says that her eyes are not like gems: X is like Y implicitly includes the recognition that X is also not like Y. Again, obviously, her eyes are not inanimate, cannot simply be held, are not cold, and so on.
A metaphor creates a temporary hinge or fulcrum that draws two terms from two contexts together.[2] In coming together, it’s like a lens focuses light through them: we see things more clearly than before. But this similarity, this ‘is like’ or ‘what is common’ between the contexts, is only one facet of the metaphor: we also see how the metaphor brings differences into focus, including when it releases the two terms back to their original contexts. There’s commonality as well as irreducible difference (i.e., ‘is not like’).[3]
After a metaphor has been set up, it can change how we view the two terms: we see how eyes are (in some ways) like gems. A metaphor changes not only how we view one term: it changes the other.[4] We see how (in some ways) gems are like eyes. Neither term is left unchanged in the interaction.
A metaphor sets this dynamic exchange up between two contexts, like how a bee acquires pollen from a flower. A metaphor is a dual process: re-seeing/refocusing and releasing/relinquishing. In this way, a metaphor respects both difference and similarity. It doesn’t prioritize one over the other.
The structure of metaphor isn’t primarily literary. Instead, it’s broader: in encounters with others, understanding hinges on the discernment of difference and similarity in relation to ourselves and others. Thus, the metaphoric structure is experiential before it’s communicative: a literary metaphor gestures to an experiential one. If done well, it may help us notice and respect difference and similarity.
And so, when I say that: “It is possible for our world to be transformed. This transformation hinges on what is common between our world and others.” — I mean there’s a way that a different world can be ‘transposed’ as though upon our world, like the shifting of lenses into place, so that commonalities and differences are noted. – There are other ways—similar but different, irreducibly different—that ‘interpret’ the ‘same’ phenomena that we see to make sense of them.
[1] Zwicky, W&M, LH5.
[2] ibid, LH18–9, LH24, LH62.
[3] ibid, LH106.
[4] ibid, LH76–7.