R ÜDIGER Z ILL Metaphors as Migrants: Towards a Cultural History of Rhetorical Forms I Towards a Cultural History of Metaphors The theory of metaphor is very often bound to basic, culturally independent structures. 1 This is to be found even where the author is driven by a hermeneutic interest, as for example in the writings of Hans Blumenberg who tried to combine phenomenology and anthropology. 2 This seems, however, to contradict Blumenberg’s main concern: to write a history of “metaphoricity.” If we look for anthropological structures, there is hardly any scope for historically changing meanings. But it is man’s very historicity that, according to Blumenberg, constitutes his anthropological heritage. Blumenberg follows Arnold Gehlen’s concept of man as a deprived being (‘Mängelwesen’) - deprived of biological instincts which must be compensated for by culture. Blumenberg thus never gave in to investigating the instruments human beings have invented to fight “the absolutism of reality.” One of these instruments is rhetoric. The development of rhetorical devices is the history of man’s struggle for self-assertion and we must therefore reconstruct this history. But even here where history is a constituting part of anthropology, the influence of different cultures remains unclear. 3 Over the last few years, the theoretical preoccupation with metaphors in German philosophy has been very much along the lines of Blumenberg’s practical endeavours, although not of his theoretical reflections. Several plans for editing a historical encyclopaedia of philosophical metaphors have been debated, sketched out, and even accomplished. 4 But since they were very suspicious of the anthropological underpinnings, these histories of particular 1 For comments and helpful suggestions I would like to thank Catherine Bindman, Martin Schaad, and Angela Spahr. 2 Hans Blumenberg, “Anthropologische Annäherung an die Rhetorik,“ Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981). 3 See Rüdiger Zill, “’Substrukturen des Denkens’: Grenzen und Perspektiven einer Metapherngeschichte nach Hans Blumenberg,“ Begriffsgeschichte, Diskursgeschichte, Metapherngeschichte, ed. Hans Erich Bödeker (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2002) 243-45. 4 The first one to appear was Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern, ed. Ralf Konersmann (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007). R ÜDIGER Z ILL 48 metaphors tended to go to the other extreme and very often amounted to nothing more than a tracing of the history of the textual usage or the constructional relevance of the examined metaphors within their particular philosophical system. I would like to take a passage which avoids the Scylla of a universal theory as well as the Charybdis of a mere recounting of the facts. This passage leans towards what I have already called a “historico-cultural reformulation of metaphorology.” 5 But if we look for such a cultural history of rhetorical forms, we have to reconstruct the particular contexts, the historically changing life world in which the concepts exist, and develop their meanings. Therefore I would like to suggest a new reading of an influential although heavily criticised theory in the light of cultural history: Max Black’s interaction theory of metaphor as it was first developed in his fundamental article “The Metaphor” of 1954. 6 To begin with a very simple fact: A metaphor is not a word. To be a metaphor, a word must be confronted with a second one, and between these two there must be a certain tension. Ivor Armstrong Richards in his Philosophy of Rhetoric was the first to insist on using the term “metaphor” only for the double unit of what he called the “tenor” and “vehicle” of a metaphor. 7 Black reformulated this distinction as the “frame” and “focus” of a metaphor; in his famous example ‘man is a wolf,’ wolf is the focus and man the frame of the metaphor. In the decisive passages of his article, he never speaks of words as metaphors but of “metaphorical statements.” Therefore metaphor - at least in the interesting philosophical instances - is always a relationship or, as Black puts it, a “metaphorical theme.” This will be a serious problem for dictionaries of philosophical or other metaphors, because on this basis their lemmas could not simply be concepts or even words but themes. Instead of simply ‘border,’ for example, we might have among others ‘man as border’ (a concept of medieval philosophy where human beings incorporate the line between the brutish and the divine) and ‘borders’ or better still ‘bounds of sense.’ 8 A second important feature in Black’s approach that we must remember in the context of a cultural theory of metaphor is the fact that he calls the elements of these themes a “system of associated commonplaces.” They are not clearly defined ‘things’ whose meanings we can find in a dictionary (as, for example, a definition of the species ‘wolf’) but patterns of implications 5 Rüdiger Zill, “Substrukturen des Denkens“ 252-54. 6 Max Black, ”Metaphor,“ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55 (1954): 273-94. Reprinted in Max Black, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1962) 22-47. 7 Ivor Armstrong Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York: Oxford UP, 1936) 123. 8 Rüdiger Zill, “Grenze,“ Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern, ed. Ralf Konersmann (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007) 135-46. Metaphors as Migrants 49 shared by the ordinary man in the street of a particular society (wolf as a wild beast, hungry, always fighting each other etc.). Different societies may have different systems of associated commonplaces but within a given society at least, at a certain point in history, these commonplaces should be traceable, although even here parts of the system might not be shared by all of its members. (Paul Ricœur pointed out - and Black agreed - that literature in particular very often constructs separate realms of metaphorical implications for certain words.) A very basic element of any particular culture is, of course, its language. In the case of ‘wolf’ a translation into other languages is fairly easy, but even here, foreign expressions for ‘wolf’ might - as we have seen - allude to very different cultural commonplaces. Compared to the history of philosophical concepts, ‘wolf’ might be an easy case. For if we want to write, for example, the conceptual history of the German term ‘Freiheit’ and extend it to other languages, we must include at least the English terms ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty.’ Nevertheless, even in these cases it should be possible to write the history of such a philosophical concept without too much difficulty, whether the texts we are dealing with speak of ‘Freiheit,’ ‘liberté,’ or ’freedom/ liberty.’ The more the concepts are terminologically coined as elements of a professional jargon, the easier this is. But metaphors normally use words from everyday language as their focus. In these cases, the translation itself is mostly non-linear; the original term has a number of equivalents, and each of these cover in themselves a broader field of meaning than the concept of their departure. The German word ‘Grenze,’ for example, translates into English as either ‘border’ or ‘bounds’ or ‘boundary’ or ‘frontier’ or ‘limit.’ But while the German word suggests a continuity an English translator is working with different notions that effectively serve to break this continuity and to fragment the field. In other words, the expression ‘Grenze’ incorporates a range of different concepts that become visible when we translate the word into another language. As in literature, philosophical metaphors travel poorly; they have severe problems crossing the borders between cultures. That which might appear as problematic, however, turns out to be to our advantage if we want to investigate the cultural dependence and development of philosophical metaphors. In comparison to other languages they openly display their peculiarities. For my present purpose I will deploy the differences in another, philosophically very prominent example: the German twin concepts of ‘Grund’ and ‘Boden’ (2) and how they are used in the texts of some prominent German-speaking philosophers (3 and 4). But ‘Grund’ and ‘Boden’ are not only the material for a metaphor among others; they point into the direction of ‘metaphor’ itself. They serve as key metaphors for the concept of metaphor. Along these lines, I will suggest not a definition but a meaning for metaphor: R ÜDIGER Z ILL 50 the metaphor as migrant (5). And finally, I will suggest that the migrant is a metaphor itself, just as the metaphor is a migrant (6). II The Word ‘Boden’ and Its Concepts ‘Boden’ literally translates into English as either ‘bottom’ (the bottom of a bottle is ‘Flaschenboden,’ for example) or ‘floor’ (to clean the floor is ‘den Boden wischen’), or any sort of base, but it also means ‘soil’ (as it is famously-infamously known in the phrase ‘Blut und Boden’ or ‘blood and soil’) or ‘land,’ or, most generally, ‘ground.’ On the other hand, if we retranslate ‘ground’ into German we might also use ‘Grund.’ ‘Grund,’ however, is not only ‘ground’ but also - among other minor possibilities - ‘cause’ or ‘reason,’ i.e. ‘grounds for.’ To further complicate matters: when certain German legal texts use the phrase ‘Grund und Boden’ they are referring specifically to ‘land,’ real estate. But why do we need two words for one concept? What is the difference? Is there any? Since this is legal language we would expect it to be very precise. In fact, there is no difference at all. The phrase simply means ‘land.’ One possible explanation says that the formula ‘Grund und Boden’ was used as early as the fifteenth century in legal terminology and the duplication only indicated the significance and seriousness of the notion; it puts a special stress on the phrase to make the act even more legally binding. This is already then a special type of rhetoric, one used as an affirmative act. In other, non-legal appearances of the phrase ‘Grund und Boden,’ ‘Boden’ is explained as the lowest part of a thing, as, for example, the bottom of a barrel or the floor of a room. ‘Grund’ has an additional meaning: it is not only the lowest part, but the one that carries what is above, like the foundations of a house. 9 In this sense ‘Grund und Boden’ might allude to the land as the base on which a structure could be built but also as the surface on which something grows. This is where soil comes in. If we put some stress on the fact that ‘Grund’ is something that carries a structure above it, then we clearly see the metaphorical origin of ‘Grund’ as reason or cause. The ‘Grund’ of an event or a chain of actions is the ‘cause’ for everything that follows: The ‘Grund’ in a line of thought is the ‘reason’ for my deductions and conclusions. But, of course, we do not use it as metaphor anymore; at this point it is a simple concept, and we usually remain unaware of its origin. 9 Johann August Eberhard, Synonymisches Handwörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (Leipzig: Grieben, 1910). Metaphors as Migrants 51 III On Solid Ground: The Fate of ‘Boden’ in Philosophical Metaphors After a while, if metaphors become very common, they lose their tension, they no longer consist of a double unit but revert to mere concepts, but now with a new meaning. But it is always possible to revive a metaphorical context. This is what Karl Marx did, for example, when he wrote in the chapter on the “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectics and Philosophy in General” in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: “Die Erde ist die natürliche Form des logischen Grundes.” (“The earth is the natural form of the logical ground.”) 10 Marx uses the word ‘Erde’ but he might equally well have used ‘Boden.’ Of course, the terms ‘Boden’ and ‘Grund’ can be found in quite a lot of philosophical texts, but normally they are used in a rather weak, general sense. Nonetheless, they have a very important position in phenomenology. Edmund Husserl uses ‘Boden’ quite regularly. Again, it is cognition which needs firm ground. He promises to lead his readers along a path he has walked himself and which he has tested not only for its feasibility but also for its soundness, its ‘Bodenfestigkeit,’ literally for its “solid groundedness.” 11 And he sometimes speaks of an ‘absoluten Erkenntnisboden,’ an absolute ground of cognition. 12 For him ‘die Lebenswelt,’ the life-world is the ‘Boden’ for all action and theory. But it is not only a normative demand that science and philosophy must build on solid ground. All of us have a ‘Boden,’ a ground from which we start: this is the ‘Lebenswelt.’ Heidegger also held the term ‘Boden’ in high esteem. And he very often uses Boden in its negative form: ‘bodenlos, ‘literally meaning ‘bottomless,’ but maybe better translated as ‘groundless,’ ‘without foundation.’ The most prominent passage of his early work in which the term ‘Bodenlosigkeit’ - a word referring to the condition of groundlessness - appears is in paragraph 35 of his Being and Time of 1927 titled Das Gerede (Idle Talk). It is, of course, difficult to talk about this concept without explaining the whole structure of Heideggerian thinking. Nevertheless, I would like to give at least an impres- 10 Karl Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844, vol. 40 (Berlin: Dietz, 1968) 587; Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, trans. Martin Milligan (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959). 11 Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, (1936; Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992) 16; ”In the following I shall attempt to show the paths that I myself have taken, the practicabiltiy and soundness of which I have tested for decades.“ Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences, trans. David Carr, (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1970) 18. 12 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences 81: “[…] an absolute ground of knowledge.” R ÜDIGER Z ILL 52 sion of the metaphoric elements he uses as far as ‘Boden’ is concerned. ‘Gerede’ in German is normally used in a pejorative sense and refers to something like gossip, chatter, idle or mindless talk. And although Heidegger insists on a purely neutral use of the term, a native German language-reader cannot ignore the negative taste of the word. In Being and Time, ‘Gerede’ is sort of public opinion. We do not usually understand the meaning of the things themselves but what we hear and read about them. We do not pass judgement on them based on our own first-hand observations. ‘Gerede’ is what governs a conversation because of its ‘Bodenlosigkeit,’ its absence of ‘Boden.’ As Heidegger writes here: “Die Sache ist so, weil man es sagt. In solchem Nach- und Weiterreden, dadurch sich das schon anfängliche Fehlen der Bodenständigkeit zur völligen Bodenlosigkeit steigert, konstituiert sich das Gerede.“ 13 Macquarrie and Robinson translate this passage in their Blackwell edition of Being and Time as follows: “Things are so because one says so. Idle talk (‘Gerede’) is constituted by just such gossiping and passing the word along” [or as I would translate it: “is constituted by such a repeating and keeping on talking: Nach- und Weiterreden”] “a process, by which its initial lack of ground to stand on (‘Bodenständigkeit’ [down-toearthness]) becomes aggravated to complete groundlessness (‘Bodenlosigkeit’).” The repeating is not only founded in hearsay but also in what we have read (‘das Angelesene’). The result is not necessarily wrong but it represents a merely “average intelligibility.” 14 And so this very ‘Bodenlosigkeit,’ this being without firm ground (and we can add: without good reason, ‘ohne guten Grund’) “is no obstacle to its becoming public; instead it encourages this.” 15 The ‘Gerede’ that everybody can pick up immediately provides dispensation from the actual task of understanding. Anyone can participate in the conversation and is taken seriously. So in this case, being without a solid ground does not mean that you fall into an abyss. Here something happens that Heidegger sees as being typical of everyday life, what he calls the “freischwebende Auslegung, die keinem und allen gehört,” 16 the free floating interpretation, which belongs to no one and everyone. On the other hand, with the ‘Gerede’ we can not really get to the bottom of things, to the constitution of their ‘being’ (their ‘Seinsverfassung’). Therefore the ‘Gerede,’ by its very nature, “is a closing-off, since to go back to the ground of what is talked 13 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993) § 35, 168. 14 Both Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978) 212. 15 Heidegger, Being and Time 213. 16 Martin Heidegger, “Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs,“ Gesamtausgabe, vol. 20 (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1979) 372. Metaphors as Migrants 53 about [‘der Boden des Beredeten’] is something which it leaves undone.” 17 It is a certain kind of being characterised by an understanding of “being there” that has been uprooted: ‘ein entwurzeltes Daseinsverständnis.’ This kind of ‘being there,’ literally ‘Dasein,’ that exists in and through the Gerede is cut off from an original and true relatedness to the world it “keeps floating unattached” 18 : ‘Es hält sich in einer Schwebe,’ which means literally that it is floating above the ground. As I said, we cannot get into a close reading of Heidegger’s text here, but it should be clear that his description of this type of discourse, the ‘Gerede,’ as ‘bodenlos’ is deeply metaphorical, and that the ‘Boden’ is closely related to being without roots, and being in suspension, in abeyance, floating in the air without touching the ground, having a lack of ‘Bodenständigkeit.’ It activates the ground part of the metaphor (floating without foundation) as well as the soil part (being uprooted) and via the ground metaphor even the meaning of being without any good reason. And although Heidegger would have neglected it - and indeed does several times in the book - ‘Boden’ is basically something positive. It is a minor but nevertheless significant detail that he finishes the whole chapter by writing that his analysis has now revealed the existential constitution of Dasein and therefore the ‘ground is prepared’ for the next steps of his enquiry: or as he literally says: “der phänomenale Boden [ist] gewonnen” - ‘the ground is gained.’ 19 IV Deprived of the Ground: Vilém Flusser in Praise of ‘Bodenlosigkeit’ We might think that ‘Boden’ and ‘Grund’ are very common metaphors in philosophy, although perhaps not with the specific emphasis with which Heidegger endows them. Ground and foundation seem to have been basic concepts at least since Descartes, elements necessary to the architecture of a conceptual structure. But there are prominent counter-examples. Theodor W. Adorno, for instance, very much rejects this search for firm ground. He was always a critic of ‘Verdinglichung’ (reification). And although he concedes that on the surface Heidegger is himself opposed to reification, he nevertheless blames his opponent because he cannot escape it. Or as Adorno puts it in his Negative Dialectics: “Under no circumstances is 17 Heidegger, Being and Time 213. In German “Das Gerede ist sonach von Hause aus, gemäß der ihm eigenen Unterlassung des Rückgangs auf den Boden des Beredeten, ein Verschließen.“ Sein und Zeit 169. 18 Heidegger, Being and Time 214. 19 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit 180. R ÜDIGER Z ILL 54 Being to be a thing, and yet, as the metaphors keep indicating, it is to be the ‘Boden’ (ground) and something solid.” 20 It is no surprise, therefore, that ‘Boden’ has no systematic place in Adorno’s own writings. Of course he uses the word in a colloquial sense: ‘den Boden bereiten für etwas’ - to prepare the ground for something, or: ‘auf gemeinsamem Boden sein’ - to be on common ground. But it is very interesting that even in this respect, he very often applies it in a negative sense or in more-or-less destructive images. He characterizes Kierkegaard’s subjectivism, for example, as something that ‘auf den Boden aufschlägt,’ something that hits the ground; in the same book on Kierkegaard he speaks of his desperation which in its sickness unto death even ‘den Boden der Subjektivität durchschlägt,’ smashes through the bottom of subjectivity. There are also formulas like ‘den Boden entziehen,’ to deprive of the ground, to cut the ground from under somebody, ‘den verdorrenden Boden bereiten für Aberglauben’ - to prepare the dry earth for superstition and so on. 21 I would like to turn to a philosopher who actually uses the metaphor of ‘Boden’ systematically, but with an entirely different intention. Vilém Flusser is probably best known as a media theorist. But his work addresses a wide range of other topics as well. He actually started as a theorist of language in the early 1950s, living as a completely unknown Jewish-Czech emigrant in S-o Paolo, Brazil and writing in Portuguese. It was only in the 1970s after his return to Europe, where he settled in the small village of Robion in southern France, that he began publishing in German, one of his first languages. His “philosophical autobiography,” titled Bodenlos, was published in 1992, but he had written it as early as 1973-74 immediately after his return to Europe. (The manuscript is entitled Zeugenschaft aus der Bodenlosigkeit, Witness out of the ’Bodenlosigkeit’.) 20 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (London: Routledge, 1990) 90. “Um keinen Preis soll Sein ein Ding sein und dennoch, wie die Metaphorik immer wieder indiziert, der ‘Boden,’ ein Festes.” Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997) 97-98. 21 “In der äußersten Tiefe der existentiellen Dialektik: in der Apersonalität der Verzweiflung, in welche der bloße Geist des Existierenden durch die Strudel kreisender Wiederholung endlich versinkt, schlägt Kierkegaards Subjektivismus auf seinen Boden auf.“ Theodor W. Adorno, Kierkegaard: Konstruktionen des Ästhetischen, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997) 120. “Die verbleibende aber ist geteilt gleich jener Verzweiflung, die im Sturz der Krankheit zum Tode den Boden von Subjektivität durchschlägt [...].“ (Adorno, Kierkegaard 175). “In der Meinung, ohne strikte Beschränkung auf Tatsachenfeststellung und Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung bliebe der erkennende Geist allzu empfänglich für Scharlatanerie und Aberglauben, präpariert es den verdorrenden Boden für die gierige Aufnahme von Scharlatanerie und Aberglauben.“ (Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, ed. Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997) 13. Metaphors as Migrants 55 The book begins with a short description of bourgeois Prague before the Second World War, a mixture of Czechs, Germans, and Jews, everybody living within his own culture but closely connected to each other. “Of course,“ Flusser says, “everybody was a Praguian, this was not questioned. This was der Boden, the common ground, on which all other questions were posed. But as Praguians were we Czechs, Germans, or Jews? ” 22 This situation changed in 1938 when the German army invaded Czechoslovakia. The common ground was immediately destroyed and Jews in particular were marginalized, persecuted, threatened with death. Flusser, who very soon at the age of 18, decided to go into exile with his future wife and her parents - first to London and soon afterwards to Brazil - describes his situation in the very terms of ‘Bodenlosigkeit.’ In Flusser’s writings the term ‘Bodenlosigkeit’ displays an ambivalent meaning; it shifts from a negative to a positive experience. Flusser looked down on Prague and on his own life von ‘schwindelnder Höhe,’ from a great dizzying height. He felt estranged from his former life. Even the most familiar streets and squares looked like foreign terrain, a “realm of shades.” He was left with nothing but himself, but this dizziness he talks about was also “a dizzying feeling of liberation,” liberation to oneself. “From now on one belongs to nobody else but oneself, one was ‘oneself’ in the most radical sense of the word.” 23 And Flusser would not have been Flusser if he had not been aware of the original sense of the term ‘radical’ which derives from the Latin radix, meaning root, a word that gives the whole sentence a paradoxical meaning. And he continues: Although from now on one was bodenlos, der grenzenlose Himmel, the infinite sky [or literally: the sky without borders] arches above us. From now on everything was possible. It was this infinite [borderless] potentiality one plunged into, with a bleeding heart, but with an open mind. 24 ‘Bodenlos’ is the term Flusser uses to characterize his own life. He already begins reflecting on the title in his introduction. He compares the word ‘bodenlos’ to the absurd. “The original meaning of the word ‘absurd’” he says in his first sentence, “is bodenlos, in the sense of ‘rootless’.” Etymologically this is clearly wrong, but let us consider this as another metaphorical alliance. To explain the meaning of ‘bodenlos’ he draws three analogies: the first one from botany, the second from astronomy, and the third from logic. ‘Bodenlos’ is a plant that has been picked: Flowers on a kitchen table are his example of an absurd life: “If you try to immerse yourself in these kinds 22 Vilém Flusser, Bodenlos: Eine philosophische Autobiographie (Bensheim: Bollmann, 1992) 15 (my translation). 23 Flusser, Bodenlos 29. 24 “Zwar war man von jetzt ab bodenlos, aber über einem wölbte sich der grenzenlose Himmel. Von jetzt ab war alles möglich. In diese grenzenlose Möglichkeit stürzte man, zwar blutenden Herzens, aber aufgeschlossenen Geistes.“ Vilém Flusser, Bodenlos 29-30. R ÜDIGER Z ILL 56 of flowers, you can empathize with their desire to put down roots and to dig these roots into the soil.” 25 ‘Bodenlos’ is also absurd in the sense of meaningless, futile. For Flusser the planetary system is ‘bodenlos’ because you cannot ask why it circles around the sun: ‘in der gähnenden, abgründigen Leere des Weltalls’ - “in the yawning abysmal void of the universe.” 26 And ‘bodenlos’ is absurd in the sense of being without any reasonable foundation. Just as, for example, the sentence ‘two plus two is four at seven pm in S-o Paolo’ is bodenlos. It is an example of absurd thinking. With it we have the dizzying feeling of floating over an abyss, one in which the concepts of ‘true’ and ‘false’ have ceased to function. 27 Flusser uses these analogies to give us a sense of his mood, but also of the atmosphere represented by surrealism, existentialism or absurd literature and theatre. But as soon as ‘Bodenlosigkeit’ is discussed in public, Flusser says, it vanishes. “It is an experience of loneliness and it dissolves if publicly talked about into idle talk (leeres Gerede).” 28 Flusser’s introduction is a wonderful example of the richness of the ‘Boden’ metaphor and its philosophical context. In his ‘Bodenlosigkeit’ he activates the components of soil, foundation, ground, and reason (a notion suggested by the term ‘Grund’). His sense of ‘Bodenlosigkeit’ emerged when he left his original home, he is uprooted like a plant removed from the soil. He has lost the solid ground under his feet, he is free floating. His life no longer has any foundation: neither literally - he was abroad without money and qualifications - nor psychologically, at least in the beginning. It appeared to him absurd: meaningless, without cause or reason. The example of the planetary system reminds us of Husserl’s ‘Boden’ of the life-world. But Flusser puts it exactly the other way round. Husserl cannot imagine any point of view without a ‘Boden,’ even if it is floating around; Flusser’s emphasis is precisely on such a position. And even Heidegger’s ‘Gerede’ reappears here - although perhaps unintentionally. But whereas for Heidegger the ‘Gerede’ was the place of ‘Bodenlosigkeit,’ for Flusser ‘Gerede’ destroys it. Although at first glance Flusser seems to be describing a negative experience, he claims from the outset an at least ambivalent feeling about it. And later in his life he completely re-evaluated the experience. 25 Vilém Flusser, Bodenlos 9. 26 Vilém Flusser, Bodenlos 8. 27 Vilém Flusser, Bodenlos 9. 28 Vilém Flusser, Bodenlos 10. Metaphors as Migrants 57 Bodenlosigkeit becomes a positive connotation in Flusser’s own understanding of his life, and he represents it on different levels of his theory. 29 Although he lived in Brazil for more than 30 years, he finally moved back to Europe, settling in France but travelling around a lot and mainly publishing in West Germany until he died in a car accident in 1991. He was very proud of the fact that he not only published but also wrote and even thought in at least five different languages: in German, his mother tongue and admittedly his privileged language, the language he used with his wife, the one he wrote his youthful poems in, and the one in which - as he said - “I probably also dream” 30 in Czech and Yiddish, the other languages of his childhood; in Portuguese, the language of his first and most important country of immigration, in which he wrote his first scientific and philosophical texts; and in French, the language of his last home. These other languages were supposed to balance, to relativize, to bridle the German, the main language of his later and most successful writing. But the same was true of the mutual relations of and for German towards the other languages. Migration was always an important topic for Flusser; at the same time it functions as a specific category, as, for instance, in his book on Brazil, 31 in which “Immigration” is not only the title of a chapter but also an important principle of his considerations. The chapter is a reflection on the different conditions under which uprooted flowers can be successful in digging their roots into new soil, sometimes without losing their ties to their original home. This is, for example, the difference between the United States and Brazil, according to Flusser. To be successful as an immigrant, in building up a new identity in the United States, it is important to retain a certain amount of the old identity he suggests, while in Brazil it is better to loosen one’s past ties. 32 And finally Flusser generalizes the status of migration. He considers it as an inevitable status for everybody’s future life. And this is not only because we are always on the road, as tourists, for example, or as migrant workers or scientific jet setters, but because we are about to become habitual “nomads,” as he describes it. Our homes are by now full of holes made by the cables of telecommunication. To describe it with the title of one of his books, this condition represents “The Freedom of a Migrant.” 33 29 See Rüdiger Zill, “Nomadentum als konkrete Utopie: Unterwegs zu einer Philosophie der Migration,“ Das Dritte Ufer: Vilém Flusser und Brasilien, eds. Susanne Klengel and Holger Sievers (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009) 231-43. 30 Vilém Flusser, Retraducao enquanto método de trabalho 1, qtd. in Rainer Guldin, Philosophieren zwischen den Sprachen: Vilém Flussers Werk (München: Fink, 2005) 261. 31 Vilém Flusser, Brasilien oder die Suche nach dem neuen Menschen: Phänomenologie der Unterentwicklung (Mannheim: Bollmann, 1994). 32 Vilém Flusser, Brasilien oder die Suche nach dem neuen Menschen 26. 33 Vilém Flusser, Von der Freiheit des Migranten: Einsprüche gegen den Nationalismus (Bensheim: Bollmann, 1994). R ÜDIGER Z ILL 58 In Flusser, the connection between life and theory is evident. But even Adorno’s critical view of the concept of Boden might be seen as having been influenced by his fate as an emigrant. V Leaving the ‘Ground’: Metaphor as Migrant In his early text about the Paradigms of Metaphorology, Hans Blumenberg mentions the theory that the stylistic differences of certain ways of life are based on a level of elementary ideas, most clearly represented where a certain stock of imagery is used. 34 He considers this theory methodologically interesting and takes it as a starting point for his chapter on so-called “background metaphoricity” (‘Hintergrundmetaphorik’). Background metaphoricity is not obvious imagery, no ensemble of clear metaphors, but it can even be involved if at first glance there are only purely terminological sentences. But sometimes this terminology is organised by a guiding idea underneath (a ‘Leitvorstellung’). After all, we are aware of the ‘ground’ in ‘background,’ something that is, again, a certain kind of ‘Boden.’ Manfred Sommer, one of Blumenberg’s most successful students and the main editor of his posthumous work goes even further. In an article on Husserl’s concept of ground and underground - yet another ‘Boden’ - he says: [B] elow the surface of the text manifest to the reader there is an imaginary substratum. And the metaphors are the places where this sub-stratum projects out into the text and becomes visible. Thus metaphors scattered through the text are not to be understood as isolated occurrences. Instead, one has to conceive of them as indications and parts of a whole pictorial structure. The metaphors are interconnected underground and thus form an allegory. 35 I do not object to the diagnosis in general but I would like to point to the metaphoricity Sommer has chosen himself. His main claim in this article is that the metaphors of ‘ground’ and ‘underground’ which are of utmost importance for Husserl rely on an architectural background as well as on a geological one. Then, in a way, he changes his perspective by using the same metaphors so important for his object, Husserlian phenomenology, for his own diagnosis: “below the surface,” “sub-stratum,” “pictorial structure,” “interconnected underground.” In doing so he petrifies the metaphorical process. 34 Hans Blumenberg, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie (1960; Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1998) 91. 35 Manfred Sommer, “Husserl on ‘Ground’ and ‘Underground,’” Phenomenology of Interculturality and Life-World, eds. Ernst Wolfgang Orth and Chan-Fai Cheung (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1998) 139. Metaphors as Migrants 59 I therefore would like, to suggest a slight change of perspective and to focus some more attention on the procedure. If it is true that metaphor is always a tension brought about by the interaction of two different concepts then it is very insecure ground on which to build. Let us change our own metaphors for the metaphorical process. It very much resembles Flusser's description of the migrant. Like the migrant, the metaphor is something that settles on new ground without losing its ties to its original home. At least in the beginning: During its later life it might assimilate itself to the new realm and turn into a concept, just as, for instance, ‘Grund’ did when it meant ‘reason’ or ‘cause’ without alluding further to the original meaning of foundation. The sociologist Alfred Schütz in his famous article on “The Stranger” 36 characterizes the migrant as somebody who comes to a new country equipped with what he calls a certain “thinking as usual” and tries to understand the new situation, the foreign customs and way of life in terms of his old world. And since, inevitably, they do not fit entirely, there will be a crisis. In the new world the migrant’s old ‘thinking as usual’ is devalued and he has to construct a new system of orientation. He is looking at the new society through the glasses of his old mentality. We could call the old ‘thinking as usual’ a filter, and this exactly is what Max Black called the metaphor, a seeing of the object through the glasses, the filter of the old theory. But this old ‘thinking as usual’ is, of course, not an objective scientific theory, but a cluster of tools developed to deal with certain problems, sometimes even incoherent, more like a collection of recipes than a well constructed logical system. It is a pattern of implications - just as in metaphor the focus is surrounded by a cluster of cultural implications that are now applied to the new realm. Just as the migrant’s thinking as usual will work in the new world in part and has to be reconstructed in other parts, in metaphor, the frame, i.e. the new context the old world is applied to, filters some meanings which are useful and applicable and ignores others. As I have mentioned, this resembles the type of migrant in Flusser’s theory who defines his new identity by remaining in touch with his old one. And Flusser points to the fact that in a situation like this it is not only the migrant who has to change his mindset (which is basically what Alfred Schütz describes), but that the new world is changed (although perhaps only to a small degree) by the migrant himself. Again, we can apply this to metaphor. This is what is called the interaction of the poles in metaphoric tension. 36 Alfred Schütz, “The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology,” The American Journal of Sociology XLIX.6 (1944): 499-507. R ÜDIGER Z ILL 60 VI A Glimpse at a New Continent: The Migrant as Metaphor To reflect finally on what I have just done myself, the migrant is not only a metaphorical resource for metaphor but metaphor is also a metaphor for the migrant. We can describe the migrant as a living metaphor. In other words, Richards and Black considered interaction as one of the decisive features of metaphors. Meaning is not only transferred from focus to frame but evolves in a complex progress of mutual influence between frame and focus. If ‘migrant’ now serves in my line of thought as a focus for the framing concept of metaphor (‘metaphor is a migrant’), this likewise has not only to be understood as a unilateral process of transfer; it is not only a projection in one direction, but has to be an interaction itself. Therefore, meaning is not only floating from migration to metaphoricity but from the metaphor to the migrant as well. If we understand the migrant as a living metaphor 37 we will stress his status as a person who is not yet at rest but consists - even more than other people - in a tension, somebody who is influenced by different, sometimes even opposing and therefore inconsistent forces. This is what distinguishes metaphors from translation, where the original and the new languages might be originally in tension as well, but at a certain point a decision has to be made. Although several versions of a translation are possible, the translator’s deliberation has, at some point, to come to an end. To call the migrant a metaphor rejects the idea that he could be a translation, although in his later life he (or his children or grandchildren) might become a translation. But to further explore the implications of this metaphor would mean to leave the country of rhetoric (whose map I have tried to draw here, at least in part) and travel to the continent of migration which at the present time is not within the range of my visa. 37 ‘Living metaphor’ can be understood both literally and figuratively. (Richards pointed out already that a statement sometimes can be read both ways simultaneously.) In the literal sense ‘living metaphor’ indicates a certain type of metaphor as opposed to dead metaphors, both being termini technici. In the figurative sense, it considers the migrant as an incarnated rhetorical figure, a metaphor transfigurated into flesh. 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Zill, Rüdiger. “’Substrukturen des Denkens’: Grenzen und Perspektiven einer Metapherngeschichte nach Hans Blumenberg.“ Begriffsgeschichte, Diskursgeschichte, Metapherngeschichte. Ed. Hans Erich Bödeker. Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2002. 209- 58. ---. “Grenze.” Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern. Ed. Ralf Konersmann. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007. 135-46. ---. “Nomadentum als konkrete Utopie: Unterwegs zu einer Philosophie der Migration.” Das Dritte Ufer: Vilém Flusser und Brasilien. Eds. Susanne Klengel and Holger Sievers. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. 231-43. II. M ETAPHORS S HAPING C ULTURES — C ULTURES S HAPING M ETAPHORS : H ISTORICAL C ASE S TUDIES