تبلیغات 
تبلیغات
Metaphor
It might now be possible, in the light of what I have already said, to move
to consider the whole of the literary text under the heading of _metaphor_,
in the speci_c sense of a question: of asking whether the text is always in
some rather peculiar _ or uncanny _ sense other than itself, whether it
stands in not only for an absent referent but also for the body of textuality
which it is not. What we need to consider is whether the text would thus
be the metaphorical condensation of a host of failed or obscured alter-
natives; it would stand at a crossroads of identi_cations, as the obfuscation
of a broader and less de_nite metaphorical _eld which is held down, staked
out on the model of what might be considered an _imperial_ reterritorial-
isation of textual lands wrongly perceived as previously unpeopled. This
might appear abstruse, but consider what happens when we describe a
scene or tell an anecdote to others; often we might prearrange what we are
about to tell, or how we are about to tell it. There would have been dozens
of other ways in which we might choose to recount the incident; the one
we choose is designed to maximise the force of what has impressed us. Just
so _ yet, obviously, even more so _ with the written text. Seen in this light,
we might thus say that metaphor in the Western sense becomes itself a
metaphor of _Western sense_, inextricably involved with linguistic and
nialisms, in the sense that the implications of hierarchy are always to do
with establishing what is taken to be at the centre and what is at the
margin).
