A NSGAR N ÜNNING Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises: On the Functions of Metaphors as Figurative Knowledge and Mininarrations 1 I Metaphors as Figurative Knowledge and Mininarrations: Introducing the Focus, Goals and Outline In the preface to his seminal encyclopaedia of philosophical metaphors, the editor Ralf Konersmann answers the question of what metaphors actually are by providing a somewhat unusual functional definition: “Metaphors are 1 The present article is based on an article on crisis published in German (see Ansgar Nünning, “Narratologie der Krise: Wie aus einer Situation ein Plot und eine Krise (konstruiert) werden,” Krisis! Krisenszenarien, Diagnosen und Diskursstrategien, eds. Henning Grunwald and Manfred Pfister (München: Fink, 2007) 48-71.) and on the results of a larger research project that investigated the construction of Britain’s imperialist memorial culture in the 19th century, one part of which was concerned with ‘metaphors of Empire’, about which I have published several articles (see Ansgar Nünning, “On the Discourse Construction of an Empire of the Mind: Metaphorical Re-Membering as a Means of Narrativizing and Naturalizing Cultural Transformations,” Metamorphoses: Structures of Cultural Transformations. REAL - Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 20, ed. Jürgen Schlaeger (Tübingen: Narr, 2005) 59-98 and Ansgar Nünning, “On the Knowledge and Functions of Metaphors: Interfacing Literature, Culture, and Science,” La conoscenza della letteratura / The Knowledge of Literature, Vol. VII: Literature and Science, ed. Angela Locatelli (Bergamo: Bergamo UP, 2008) 195-217.). The project was part of the “special research centre” devoted to the investigation of “memorial cultures” (Sonderforschungsbereich 434: Erinnerungskulturen) based at Justus-Liebig- University in Giessen and funded by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). I would like to gratefully acknowledge the generous support of this institution and to thank the members of my research team, Prof. Dr. Astrid Erll, Dr. Hanne Birk, PD Dr. Birgit Neumann, Jan Rupp, and Meike Hölscher for their invaluable support. I am also very grateful to Herbert Grabes, Zoltán Kövecses, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Greta Olson, and Sabine Schülting for valuable suggestions, and to Manfred Pfister, who first encouraged me to work on ‘a narratology of crisis’. Special thanks to my research assistants Ilke Krumholz and Simon Cooke, who translated the German article on which this much revised and expanded contribution is based, and Mirjam Horn, who carefully formatted and proof-read the document, for their excellent and valuable support. A NSGAR N ÜNNING 230 narratives that mask themselves as a single word.” 2 The subtitle (“Figuratives Wissen“) of the preface, which is actually a highly interesting essay on the nature and functions of metaphors, sheds light on another key aspect of metaphors: the felicitous phrase “figurative knowledge” emphasizes that metaphors do indeed generate knowledge, albeit of a figurative kind. Konersmann is, of course, neither the first nor the only scholar to draw attention to the fact that metaphors can be conceived of as condensed narratives and that they produce a special kind of knowledge. Philip Eubanks, for instance, has argued that metaphors project “mininarrations,” 3 and other theorists have also acknowledged the cognitive and knowledge-creating potential of metaphors. It is through the production of narrative kernels and figurative knowledge that metaphors shape not only culture and theories, but also our world views and world models. In what has become one of the classics of metaphor studies, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson observe that “the people who get to impose their metaphors on the culture get to define what we consider to be true […].” 4 Anyone who doubts that they are right has only to recall George W. Bush’s harangues about ‘weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,’ which turned out to be weapons of the mind and mere metaphors but which nonetheless got ‘to define what we’ — or at least a large part of the American people — ‘considered to be true.’ The same holds true for many of the crises that we are almost daily confronted with in the media in what seems to be the age of crises and catastrophes: Whoever manages to get to impose their crisis metaphors on the respective culture gets to define what people consider to be true. Nowhere is the worldmaking function of metaphors more palpable than in the discourses of the media, which can turn just about any event, situation, or cultural change into a severe crisis or even a catastrophe. Given the sheer number of today’s crises and the ubiquity of crisis metaphors in our contemporary media culture, it comes as no surprise that the media themselves have taken up the topic of metaphors of crisis. In an article published in The Wall Street Journal tellingly entitled “In Financial Crisis, Metaphors Fly Like Bad Analogies,” Michael M. Philips provides a wide range of interesting examples of how the real financial crisis has generated a plethora of metaphors of crisis and illness, some of which are indeed “bad 2 Ralf Konersmann, “Metaphern sind Erzählungen, die sich als Einzelwort maskieren,“ Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008) 17. Except for Lotman, all German sources are my own translation and state the originals in the bibliography. 3 Philip Eubanks, “The Story of Conceptual Metaphor: What Motivates Metaphoric Mappings? ” Poetics Today 20.3 (1999): 437. 4 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago/ London: U of Chicago P) 160. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 231 analogies” or unwittingly funny catachreses. What the examples serve to show, however, is that the discourses of crisis generate ever more metaphors, most of which have the body and illness as the main source domains. Cases in point include “the patient’s arteries are clogged, and he’ll get a heart attack unless we do something; ” “the image from prognosis to prescription; ” “tainted medicine; ” and credit being “the lifeblood of the economy.” The author goes on to ask, “Why the rush to deploy metaphor to describe the Wall Street crisis? ”, providing an initial answer by quoting John D. Casnig, founder of the ‘Metaphor Observatory’: “Metaphor is used when we can’t understand something in its own context.” 5 Although one can readily agree with this explanation, it does not provide much in the way of enlightenment concerning either the metaphorical implications and mininarrations of metaphors of crisis, nor the functions they serve to fulfil. Though the ubiquity of crises and the pervasive importance of crisis metaphors in culture and society at large may be hard to deny or ignore, it may be less than obvious that ‘crisis’ is a case in point as far as metaphors being ‘narratives that mask themselves as a single word’ are concerned. Moreover, despite the obvious central significance of crises in both contemporary culture and world literature, anyone who is careless enough to attempt to write a scholarly article on the topic of the ‘metaphorology and narratology of crisis’ will be confronted with an apparently paradoxical result upon starting the research. On the one hand, it is obvious that all kinds of crises play a pivotal role not only in the narrations of the mass media but in a multitude of works of literature as well. On the other hand, there is hardly any academic research on the topic of the ‘metaphorology and narratology of crisis’ which could be used as a basis for further research. In April 2004, when I first conducted research on this topic, a Google-search for the German word ‘Krise’ yielded 1,080,000 hits; in March 2005 Google produced no less than 2,500,000 results for world-wide ‘Krise’; and in February 2009 the figure had escalated to 13,330,000, while the English word ‘crisis’ elicited no fewer than 350,000,000 hits. (The fact that even the word ‘Krisenmanagement’, i.e. ‘crisis management’, now boasts 1,870,000 hits, i.e. almost twice as many as ‘crisis’ four years ago, shows just how intense the crises are felt to be and that crisis management has indeed become a growth industry.) This confirms the intuitive impression of many media users, namely that, in today’s media society (both real and medially constructed), crises have growth rates which the global economy can only dare to dream of. In contrast, the results produced by the MLA bibliography are downright meagre: Depending on the precise terms and the combination of the search criteria (e.g. “narrative & crisis” or “narrative & plot”) one finds a mere one or two 5 All from Michael M. Philips, “In Financial Crisis, Metaphors Fly Like Bad Analogies,” The Wall Street Journal (September 27, 2008): A16. A NSGAR N ÜNNING 232 dozen articles, which furthermore mainly deal with the much-lamented crisis of narration in ‘postmodernism’ and are therefore hardly profitable for the question of a metaphorology or narratology of crisis. The world-wide crisis inflation is in contradistinction, then, with an astonishing reluctance to explore this apparently ubiquitous phenomenon in the realm of literary and cultural studies. Thus, ‘crisis’ is a high-priority cultural topic which seems to fascinate great portions of the public, yet to which academic research, and cultural studies in particular, have not yet paid sufficient attention. This disproportion between the cultural ubiquity of crises and the lack of metaphorological and narratological research on the topic forms the basis for the cognitive interest and the aims of this article, which deals with the question of how cognitive metaphor theory and narratology — the theory of narrative — can contribute to shedding light on the metaphor and narrative of ‘crisis’ and on the functions that this condensed metaphor serves to fulfil. When we look more closely at the actual cultural, epistemological, and political work that metaphors do, it becomes obvious that “no metaphor comes without ideological freight.” 6 On the contrary, metaphors are not only “the understanding of something in one conceptual domain [...] by conceptual projection from something in a different conceptual domain; ” 7 they also serve as subtle epistemological and political tools that are heavily imbued with cognitive, emotional, and ideological connotations. Using these preliminary examples and observations as a point of departure, this article argues that our concepts and metaphors not only structure what we perceive and experience in our everyday realities, 8 but also provide the categories in terms of which we conceptualize and structure culture, cultural change, and even our theories. Terms like ‘crisis,’ ‘catastrophe,’ or ‘metamorphosis’ 9 are very interesting cases in point. The focus will be on the questions of how societies collectively deal with and account for cultural transformations, and of what role metaphors play in these processes. I will argue that in order to come to terms with the role that metaphors play in shaping culture and theory we would be wise to begin by looking at the discursive, literary, and cognitive strategies deployed in the attempt to cope with disastrous changes, because they not only serve as means of structuring, narrativizing, and naturalizing cultural transformations, but are also, as I will try to show, important senseand indeed world-making devices. 6 Eubanks 437. 7 Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier, “A Mechanism of Creativity,” Poetics Today 20.3 (1999): 403. 8 See Lakoff and Johnson. 9 See Jürgen Schlaeger, Metamorphoses: Structures of Cultural Transformations (Tübingen: Narr, 2005). Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 233 And this, arguably, is where metaphors like ‘crisis’ come in. Metaphors not only serve to structure how we understand cultural transformations, they also project “mininarrations” 10 onto them, thereby providing ideologically charged plots and explanations of cultural and historical changes rather than neutral descriptions thereof. It is arguably “the metaphorical concepts we live by,” 11 to use Lakoff and Johnson’s felicitous formulation, that provide the key to understanding the topic at hand, i.e. “Metaphors Shaping Culture and Theory.” If one accepts Lakoff and Johnson’s view “that most of our conceptual system is metaphorically structured,” 12 then one might even go so far as to argue that metaphors and narratives are the most powerful tools we have for making sense of cultural transformations, being endowed as they are with the power of reason and the power of evaluation. 13 Using the metaphor of crisis as a case study of a phenomenon which illustrates that metaphors are indeed ‘narratives that mask themselves as a single word’, and analysing how they not only project structures onto cultural changes, but also try to make sense of them, this paper pursues three goals: first, to argue that metaphors play a central role in shaping both culture and theory, i.e. in both everyday cultural notions of changes and disastrous events, and in theories of culture and cultural transformations; second, to provide an overview of some of the uses and implications of the discourses of crises; and third, to explore the functions that the metaphor of crisis serves to fulfil. Using the crisis metaphor as a paradigm example, this article will attempt to throw some light on the various ways in which happenings are turned into events and then into crises through metaphoric projections, and on how we perceive and conceptualize the world in terms of such metaphors. Although a recent volume explores the discourse of crisis, 14 both the cultural implications and ideological functions of the metaphors of crisis and the constitutive rather than just the reflective role of such metaphors in determining the perception of events and cultural transformations have not yet been sufficiently explored. Following some preliminary considerations on how crises are treated in the media society and some theses on the inflation of crisis that emerge from the society of crisis (section 2) the two main sections will primarily deal with the development of the building blocks of a narratology of crisis with the help of some key concepts from narrative theory and from metaphor theory (section 3 and 4 respectively). This attempt to outline the main features of a 10 Eubanks 437. 11 Eubanks 22. 12 Eubanks 106. 13 George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago/ London: U of Chicago P, 1989) 65. 14 See Henning Grunwald and Manfred Pfister, eds., Krisis! Krisenszenarien, Diagnosen und Diskursstrategien (München: Fink, 2007). A NSGAR N ÜNNING 234 narratology and metaphorology of crisis will be concluded by a short outlook on the functions which the thematization and staging of the metaphors and plots of crises can fulfil in media and in literature (section 5). II An Age of Crises: Preliminary Considerations on Crises and Crises Inflation As self-evident as it may be that the perception and the awareness of any kind of crisis is sharply emphasized as soon as one starts dealing with this topic in detail, one can nevertheless justifiably speak of a crisis inflation in today’s media and in crisis society. No matter what newspaper one reads or which television channel or radio station one tunes in to, one always finds that, apart from award shows and quiz programmes, there seems to be little but reports on various kinds of crises or — to note a subtle but significant difference — reports on situations and phenomena which the respective medium dubs as ‘crisis.’ The ubiquity of the medially thematized, staged, and constructed crises confirms the thesis that crises have become an essential part of today’s media-culture society: We seem to be living in crisis-ridden times in which crises have entered all realms of society. Colloquially put: During the past few years, crises have been breeding like rabbits. This thesis is also supported by the fact that earlier decades dealt with their crises a lot more sparingly than today’s media-culture society does. The 1970s were characterized by an oil crisis followed by an economic crisis or depression, but everything was relatively easy to get an overview of. This is different today: Everywhere you look and in every sphere of society there are crises. In politics, both national and international crises are legion: Whether it is Afghanistan or Iraq, Cuba or Macedonia, Haiti or Chechnya — there is hardly a country which has not been promoted to an idiomatic component of the crisis-compound in the newscast. This is no different in the economic and the financial world where the same holds true for almost every industry, and many companies: everyone seems to be in a crisis. Everyone except for those companies which have already overcome this stage and are now bankrupt — of which Worldcom and Lehman Brothers were just the multi-billion dollar tips of the huge crisis iceberg. If the enormous number of internet results for crises can be believed, not just the arts, the media, the music, and the publishing sectors, but also online publishing, online studies and online advertisement are also ‘deep in crisis.’ In view of the demographic crisis, the pensions crisis, the crisis of most of the car industry, and the big banks crisis in general, the crisis of the labour market, of agriculture, of the building industry and health care, the Cabinet crisis, the lasting budgetary crisis, the government crisis and, of course, the university crisis (and the permanent crisis of the humanities), to name just a few of the most important current crisis sites Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 235 and crisis scenarios, there can be no doubt about the fact that crises have become ubiquitous. This medial proliferation of ever new crises does not, of course, provide neutral or objective status reports but rather attributions and diagnoses which are perspectiveand media-dependent. These, in turn, are based upon a mode of perception specific to the respective time, or a discourse strategy for which ‘crisis’ has become the medial counterpart to the uninteresting normality of everyday situations. One does not have to be a radical constructivist to agree with the opinion that the media talk of ‘crises’ has actually contributed to turning certain situations and stories into media events. In the end, is there anyone who understands the complicated background, or is interested in political or economic details? The language of ‘crisis’ is both common and catchy. In the media it functions as a cipher or abbreviation which attracts attention, attributes a high degree of significance to the respective matters and, in doing so, ensures interest for the news coverage. The severe and very real world-wide economic crisis notwithstanding, our media themselves create such an increase of crisis that one can justly speak of a crisis inflation and a society of crisis. To put it bluntly: the real and threatening economic and inflation crisis of the Weimar Republic has been replaced by a downright crisis inflation in today’s media culture society. Whether it is BSE or SPD, Haiti or trading, the British Monarchy or the American and European banks, the “Crisis of Values” or the “Global Crisis” — there are crises everywhere you look. New crises emerge on an almost weekly and daily basis: some years ago the crisis of the European Union and of the EU Constitution was the latest shooting star in the crises charts, but nowadays the world wide financial crisis, according to current media reports, gets worse every day. Of course, private and personal lives have not been spared in the epidemic spread of crises. Mental crises, identity crises, midlife crises, relationship crises, marriage crises, in a crisis because of a child or in a crisis because of childlessness — the kinds of crises and crisis scenarios in this realm are as manifold as the diagnoses and therapies offered. For instance, many homepages inform us that the word ‘crisis’ signifies an opportunity for positive change. The implication is that you are invited to change something essential — not a new realization, by the way. Something similar, yet considerably more differentiated, can be found in William James and Carl Gustav Jung. At any rate, this briefly outlined crisis inflation in our media culture society supports the opinion of Renate Bebermeyer, namely that the term has been “turned into and hyped as a catchword-puppet: ” [F]amiliarization to the omnipresence of the verbal crisis creates a certain ‘consensus-background’ in front of which the crisis-commonplace is accepted without A NSGAR N ÜNNING 236 criticism […]. [E]verybody can have their own thoughts about crises and search the available crisis options for something appropriate: The chosen crisis. 15 The crisis inflation has even generated particular genres: On the one hand, there is the genre of the “words on the crisis,” 16 on the other hand, there are the “ever more and more…” texts: “More and more people suffer from allergies; more and more teenagers take drugs; etc.” Speaking in terms of the popular metaphors of crisis and disease, our media, our society, and the average citizen seem to be “infested with an unidentified crisis-virus; ” and this metaphoric crisis disease has now reached epidemic proportions. One of the main reasons for this is the “immunodeficiency which is due to the lack of definition” of this “unimmunized, contentdeficient” 17 term itself. An effective therapy for this crisis epidemic is nowhere to be seen: “So we will go on using uncalibrated crisis-thermometers, and the media language will continue to diagnose every slight cold as a disease with a crisis climax.” 18 This medial and metaphoric sweeping swipe may suffice to exemplarily point out the fact that today the condition of crisis can apparently be attributed to everything and everybody and that the use of the same term may not and should not conceal the fact that we are dealing with different kinds of crises in the distinct social realms. Instead of attempting to create an anatomy or phenomenology of a single one of these innumerable crises, the confusing multitude and diversity of worldwide crises has induced me to begin with basic inquiries about the narrative pattern which is concealed behind these partially real and partially medially staged crises. III Concepts for a Narratology of Crisis The problem for anyone attempting to develop a narratology and metaphorology of crisis lies in the fact that hardly any preliminary work has been done to which one can refer. The definition of the key concept of ‘crisis,’ the meaning of which seems self-evident at first glance, is already problematic: Intuitively, everybody knows what a crisis is, and what an event is. Why go through the trouble of defining these terms? The answer is: because there is nothing less self-evident than, or as profoundly preconditioned as, the concepts of event and crisis. 15 Renate Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise: Eine Vokabel im Sog ihrer Komposita und auf dem Weg zum leeren Schlagwort,” Muttersprache: Zeitschrift zur Pflege und Erforschung der deutschen Sprache 91 (1981): 347-48. 16 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 351. 17 Both Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 349. 18 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 356. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 237 Just like other events, crises are also the result of selection, abstraction, and distinction. Tying in with the colloquial meaning of ‘significant occurrence’ or ‘significant event,’ narratology first of all distinguishes between the chaotic and the contingent totality of all occurrences and the event as a particularly relevant and significant part thereof. 19 Both the emphatic eventconcept of narratology 20 and the metaphoric concept of crisis are not concerned with everyday occurrences but with incidents or changes which are collectively thought to be of great relevance and importance. Thus, the configuration of such an event and a crisis situation is based on singling both out from the continuous flow of occurrences and qualifying them as something special or surprising; thus, it is based on selection and distinction by an observer. Thus, events and crises are not only based on selection but on a high degree of abstraction as well. Every media event and every aggravating situation which is labelled ‘crisis’ consists of a multitude of (previous) actions, status changes, and events which are then subsumed under a universalized generic term like ‘crisis.’ Hence, the constitution of an event that falls into the ‘crisis’ category is a kind of distinction implying that the most important aspects are emphasized and the irrelevant facts are neglected. The fact that those distinctions can be considered as attributions, assessments, and acts of sense-making becomes even clearer in the case of those crises, historical key events, and transnational media events which are considered as ‘great’ or ‘epoch-making.’ For this reason alone, we need criteria by means of which we can agree on when a historical occurrence can be considered as an event or is even perceived as such a ‘great’ event or situation that we speak of a crisis. Crises are a special kind of event, or perhaps rather non-event, since they — according to their etymology — precisely mark the critical point at which a decision about the further progress of the incident is made amongst a number of possibilities. Thus, though crises admittedly do not constitute a particularly eventful incident themselves, they have usually been preceded by one or several important events. So, crises are a certain form of diagnosis or description of a situation which is normally preceded by especially eventful occurrences which are considered as significant. Since narratology offers criteria for distinguishing the term ‘event’ from the term ‘occurrence’ and for differentiating various degrees of ‘eventfulness,’ it also provides clues for describing important aspects of the metaphor of crisis. In narratology the event is defined as “a status change, which meets 19 See Karlheinz Stierle, “Geschehen, Geschichte, Text der Geschichte,” Text als Handlung: Perspektiven einer systematischen Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Karlheinz Stierle (München: Fink, 1975). 20 See Wolf Schmid, Elemente der Narratologie (Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter, 2005). A NSGAR N ÜNNING 238 certain criteria.” 21 Wolf Schmid has developed a catalogue of criteria and basic prerequisites that a status change needs to fulfil in order to be perceived and characterized as an ‘event.’ According to Schmid, events are defined as status changes which need to meet a number of criteria. Schmid attempts to determine the degree of eventfulness by means of the following five criteria which, at the same time, shed light on the phenomenon of crisis: 1. relevance or significance of the change in question; 2. unpredictability (or unexpectedness); 3. consecutivity (or consequentiality) of the change; 4. irreversibility; 5. non-iterativity or non-repeatability. These narratological criteria for eventfulness provide multiple starting points for coming to terms with the phenomenon or metaphor of crisis. Since they specify precise criteria for the selection and qualification of particularly ‘eventful’ occurrences, they provide clues as to when an occurrence is perceived as a crisis. In order to distinguish a certain situation or sequence of action from a mere occurrence and mark it as a special event or even as a crisis, it needs to meet the following three criteria: First, the moment of surprise or the extraordinary: “the pre-linguistic experience of contemporaries whose belief is unsettled by what has happened.” 22 Second, the standards according to which “normal and ‘unsettling’ experiences can be distinguished would have to be of a collective quality.” 23 Third, in contrast to mere occurrences, crises — much like events — need to have “structure-altering consequences […] which are perceived by the protagonists.” 24 While the first criterion approximates the relevance or significance of change in Schmid’s catalogue, the third corresponds to the consecutivity or ‘consequentiality.’ The context of this definition of the term ‘event’ and the criteria for the determination of eventfulness support the hypothesis that crises are not something objectively given. On the one hand, they are in fact to be understood as the result of selection, abstraction, and distinction, and, therefore, as discursively created constructs. On the other hand, the attribution clearly is not entirely random since a situation, which is diagnosed as a crisis, apparently needs to meet certain preconditions. Thus, one does not have to be a constructivist or a discourse theorist in order to want to add three further characteristics to the already formulated conditions and features of crises: the discursivity of crises, the constructivity of crises, and the fact that they are not ‘givens’ but the result of diagnoses. An occurrence only becomes an event or potential crisis by being reflected in discourses and stories. The constructivity of crises is based on the fact that 21 Schmid 19. 22 Andreas Suter and Manfred Hettling, Struktur und Ereignis Sonderheft 19 von Geschichte und Gesellschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001) 24. 23 Suter and Hettling 24. 24 Suter and Hettling 25. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 239 they are not just ‘given’ or ‘there,’ but are made by the people and media ‘reporting’ on them. As a result of this constructivity a crisis is always dependent on the system of concepts, the conventions and the discourses of the respective epoch, and the media which formulate the crisis diagnoses. Two further characteristics, namely the cultural and historical variability of crises, can be derived from the discursivity and the constructivity of crises. Occurrences that are considered as particularly eventful as well as those considered as critical are not irrevocably defined once and for all, but rather depend on the respective criteria of relevance that are subject to historical change and are culturally variable. This also means that incidents which are considered as ‘great’ events of history or as a ‘crisis’ from today’s perspective were or are not necessarily already perceived in the same way from the perspective of the protagonists. Conversely, many former media events and crises are largely forgotten today. According to Lotman, “the qualification of a fact as an event depends on a system of concepts […]” of the respective epoch and that it is always carried out “in accordance with the general world picture.” 25 Thus, if eventfulness is to be understood as “a culturally specific and historically variable phenomenon of narrative representations” 26 then the same also holds true for crises. The plots associated with the metaphor of crisis which are available in an epoch or culture are themselves part of the respective reality models or world views: Consequently, crisis plots can be conceptualized as a certain form of narrative patterns for the organization and sense making of far-reaching changes or disasters, and the cultural life of crises and catastrophes always sheds light on particular cultures of description or cultures of disasters. 27 The rapid increase of crises staged by the media, referred to as ‘crisis inflation’ above, is a clear indicator for the fact that the present culture of description significantly differs from those of earlier centuries. Incidentally, the order of the contributions in the excellent volume on crisis edited by Henning Grunwald and Manfred Pfister offers evidence for the thesis that both different academic and scientific disciplines as well as every epoch and every culture have developed their own respective cultures of description and crisis models. 28 Comparing the respective contributions reveals the fact that the concept of crisis in the Greek ancient world differs more or less clearly from the ‘Renaissance crises’ and crisis awareness in the 25 Jurij M. Lotman, “The Problem of Plot,“ The Structure of the Artistic Text (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1977) 235. 26 Schmid 25. 27 For these concepts, see the call for papers for the ESSCS 2009 in Copenhagen and the research project on cultures of disasters that Gerrit Schenck runs at the University of Heidelberg; see also Siegfried J. Schmidt, Geschichten und Diskurse (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2003) 42. 28 See Grunwald and Pfister. A NSGAR N ÜNNING 240 17 th century. 29 Since hardly any preliminary work exists in this area, studies on the cultural and historical variability of ‘crisis models,’ on epoch-specific crisis awareness, on the respective socially dominant or culture-specific plots, schemes and frames, and on cultures of crisis and disaster, are an especially noteworthy desideratum. Based on the differentiation between occurrences and events, crises can be conceptualized as the results of narrative transformations by means of which an occurrence first of all becomes an event, then becomes a story and finally becomes a certain kind of story or a specific plot pattern, namely a crisis narrative. From the point of view of literary and cultural studies, crises can only become tangible, and are only observable, in their textual or medial manifestations, i.e. in the discursive presentation as crisis narratives in a concrete text or another media product. Thus the medial mode of speaking about crisis is a special form of narration which is defined by its content as well as being the result of using certain schemes of narration. Accordingly, crisis narrations merely present one of several possible ways of interpreting an event and of assigning meaning to a situation. Crisis narrations are based on a special kind of configuration and emplotment of the respective events and make use of culturally available (crisis) plots. Thus, for the analysis of any kind of media event considered a ‘crisis,’ both the selection of events and, in particular, the narrative arrangement and configuration of the material to form certain narratives is of great importance. The term emplotment, coined by Hayden White, points to the circumstance that historical facts and events are always embedded in a super-ordinate context. Emplotment strategies serve the purpose of overcoming the contingency of the historical event and of narratively structuring the selected events, of molding them into a certain story and, in doing so, interpreting them at the same time: “Emplotment is the way by which a sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to be a story of a particular kind.” 30 This is very important for understanding the constitution of crises since crises are ‘stories of a particular kind’: The context which every crisis diagnosis is based on is not inherent in the respective historical occurrence or the events but is created by choosing a certain narration and genre pattern. It is worth mentioning the fact that White’s theses on the significance of emplotment are of central importance for the question of how a historical occurrence becomes an event in the first place and of how a crisis is made or constructed by the use of certain emplotment strategies. 29 See the articles by Renate Schlesier, Eckhard Lobsien, and Helmar Schramm in Grunwald and Pfister. 30 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD/ London: Routledge, 1973) 7. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 241 Since the identification of a crisis greatly depends on the perspective of the observer, crisis can be described as attributions of sense and meaning which are observerand perspective-dependent. To prevent misunderstandings, I would like to point out that the emphasis of the discursivity, constructivity, and perspective-dependence of crises is by no means meant to deny the possibility of a real existence of crises — both in the original, nonmetaphorical sense of the word as well as in the figurative sense. However, it is important to point out that the vast majority of crises in today’s media society are based on the discursive and narrative practices of distinction, configuration, and staging described above. In this context the widespread use of the phrase ‘real crisis’ is especially striking in that it is self-unmasking, since it contains a downright “flag-flying confession of the illusory nature of many crises.” 31 IV The Metaphor of Crisis: Towards a Metaphorology and Narratology of Crisis It is not only the categories of narrative theory, however, that are profitable for the development of a narratology and metaphorology of crisis. The theory of metaphor can also shed light on the narrative structure and the discursive construction of crises. If the term ‘crisis’ is transferred to the analysis of plots, it is necessary to remember, above all, that we are dealing with a metaphor: As a brief look into the history of the concept reveals, the term crisis originates from the vocabulary of ancient medical science, 32 as Alexander Demandt points out in his seminal book Metaphors for History: “Originally it meant ‘decision’ and in antiquity this quite unmetaphorical meaning was already applied to history.” However, the modern concept of crisis is not determined by this original meaning but by its derivative medical application: “In the writings of Hippocrates and Galen krisis [in the original Greek lettering! ] describes the point of time during a course of disease at which the fate of a patient, whether he recovers or dies, is determined.” This organologyrelated background is preserved in the modern discourse of crises in history: “Wherever a crisis is identified, a patient can be discovered as well; be it in reality or in the mind of the person speaking of the ‘crisis’.” 33 Thus, speaking of a crisis is equivalent to the diagnosis of a disease, yet it does not merely evoke images of disease, of a patient, and of healing; rather, the metaphorics 31 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 353. 32 See Rolf Winau, “Krise (in) der Medizin: Die Entwicklung des medizinischen Krisenbegriffs und das ärztliche Selbstverständnis,“ Grunwald and Pfister 41-47. 33 All Alexander Demandt, Metaphern für Geschichte: Sprachbilder und Gleichnisse im historisch-politischen Denken (München: Beck, 1978) 27. A NSGAR N ÜNNING 242 projects both a diagnosis and certain story or plot pattern onto the situation as well. Cognitive metaphor theory conceptualizes what is involved in such a complex process of metaphoric projection in terms of ‘blending’ or ‘conceptual integration.’ 34 Foregrounding the mapping process and exploring how the source domain is mapped onto the target domain, cognitive approaches characterize metaphoric blending processes as a ‘mechanism of creativity’: 35 Image-schematic projection creates a new virtual realm, the blend, which is no longer subordinate to either the source (vehicle) or the tenor (target) but instead creates emergent structure that exists neither in the source nor the target domains. 36 This model not only takes into consideration the fact that people draw on their pre-existing cultural knowledge when they use or process metaphors, it also demonstrates that metaphoric projection is anything but a one-sided, unidirectional affair. On the contrary, what is involved is a process of mutual integration of two distinct conceptual domains. In the present case, both the personal sphere of illness and the political and economic sphere of wideranging changes and transformations are projected into the blended space, which, while bringing together salient features of the two knowledge domains involved, “exactly resembles none of them” 37 : “This selective borrowing, or rather, projection, is not merely compositional — instead, there is new meaning in the blend that is not a composition of meanings that can be found in the inputs.” 38 By creating conceptual blends between the private and personal domain of illness and the public sphere of economics, politics, or international rela- 34 It is, of course, beyond the scope of the present essay to present a detailed account of cognitive metaphor theory or of the conceptual integration network theory. For a brief introduction, see Monika Fludernik, Donald C. Freeman, and Margaret H. Freeman, “Metaphor and Beyond: An Introduction,” Poetics Today 20.3 (1999): 387-92; Fauconnier and Turner, “A Mechanism of Creativity”; for comprehensive accounts, see Gilles Fauconnier, Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994); Gilles Fauconnier, Mappings in Thought and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997); Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks,” Cognitive Science 22 (1998): 133-187; Mark Turner, The Literary Mind (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996); Zoltàn Kövecses, Metaphor and Emotion (New York: Cambridge UP, 2000); Zoltàn Kövecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002); Zoltàn Kövecses, Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005); Zoltàn Kövecses, Language, Mind, and Culture: A Practical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006). 35 See Fauconnier and Turner, “A Mechanism of Creativity.” 36 Fludernik, Freeman, and Freeman 387. 37 Fludernik, Freeman, and Freeman 393. 38 Fauconnier and Turner, “A Mechanism of Creativity” 398. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 243 tions, crisis metaphors profoundly affect the way in which cultural, economic, military, and political changes are perceived and understood. They suggest, then, that the essential character of such changes is that of a dangerous illness of the respective system. Moreover, the choice of the metaphor largely determines human understanding of, and reactions to, the situation or transformation designated as a crisis. Once a certain situation is metaphorically marked as a crisis, this kind of definition or diagnosis of a situation at the same time automatically implies and immediately activates certain frames and narrative schemata. To start with, ‘crisis’ implies great difficulty and danger, a threat, and insecurity. In the case of a crisis the climax and turning point of a dangerous development is reached, or imminent. As the English saying “We must bring things to a crisis” nicely puts it, a crisis is always also a moment of decision-making. Thus, labelling an event as a ‘crisis’ not only provides a specific definition of the respective situations, but also evokes certain narrative schemata, development patterns, and plots. On the one hand, these schemata interpret the events lying ahead in a specific way. On the other hand, describing a situation as a ‘crisis’ is also always a diagnosis from which certain therapeutic perspectives and action scenarios for future development can be derived. Who and what is sought after in a situation like this is apparent according to the respective culturally available crisis plots, because when talking about a ‘crisis’ specific actions and developmental patterns are invoked at the same time. Depending on the social realm of action there are different crises, but the fundamental scheme remains the same, both from a narratological perspective and from the point of view of metaphor theory: What are in demand in a crisis are active crisis managers (physicians, politicians, management boards, ‘experts,’ etc.), crisis management plans, and purposeful actions (in short: successful crisis management). Let us take football (or ‘soccer’) as an example: As soon as the media rules that a club is in a crisis there is already a plot for a further course of action, namely: emergency meeting, media speculations about the imminent dismissal of the coach, denials of the reports, denials of the denials, dismissal of the coach, new coach, a good tidying up — at least until the dismissal of the next coach. Even though it has not been possible to avoid every single relegation this way, this example teaches us that the mode of speaking about a crisis always evokes conventionalized schemata and plot patterns which sketch out the future course of action. For this reason a crisis diagnosis is always already more than a specific definition of the situation and, in retrospect, oftentimes appears as a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, it is worthwhile, heuristically, to bear in mind the fact that the common talk about crisis actually is a metaphor and that this metaphor does not only represent or embellish the respective realm of reality but also fulfils A NSGAR N ÜNNING 244 extensive structuring, narrativizing and constructive functions — just as metaphors do in general. 39 The medical vehicle ‘crisis’ provides particular elements or ‘slots’ which characterize the special features of crisis plots. For a start, two central members of the cast are of importance: a patient or crisisridden organism; and a physician or observer, who diagnoses the disease from a “privileged control-room.” 40 Moreover, the crisis metaphor implies a number of further aspects which include the following (which make no claim to being comprehensive): Disease symptoms or aspects of the crisis condition; an anamnesis, i.e. the inquiry about the medical case history of the disease (according to the patient); the diagnosis, i.e. the detection or evaluation of the kind and quality of the disease as well as the condition of the patient, which is based on precise monitoring and examination; the therapy, i.e. the identification of every possible remedy and method of treatment; and the therapist, namely somebody who administers the therapy (he or she can be, but does not have to be, the same person as the physician or the privileged observer). In addition, the metaphor ‘crisis’ always evokes a number of culturally determined connotations and associations, the main ones including disease or illness, threat, disturbance and danger, anxiety, alarm, fear and concern, and a search for remedies. The fact that the metaphor of crisis already largely pre-structures the respective target domain and that it furthermore implies a general developmental scheme with regard to the structural or narrative pattern which potentially forms the basis of every crisis scenario is therefore crucial for a metaphorology and narratology of crisis. The latest cognitive metaphor theories have shown that metaphors not only structure the way in which we understand cultural phenomena and processes, but they also project “mininarrations” 41 onto the respective tenor or target domain. As soon as we speak about ‘crisis,’ a course-of-disease scheme is invoked: “There is an identifiable beginning which is to be understood as a cause and which starts a development which leads to a reasonable ending; disturbances of this structure provoke an extensive awareness of danger.” 42 Moreover, by projecting a particular plot upon cultural changes metaphorical concepts serve to narrativize and naturalize them. The projection of crisis-plots can be understood as an interpretive strategy or cognitive process 39 On the cultural functions of metaphors see Ansgar Nünning, “On the Emergence,” Ansgar Nünning, “On the Knowledge,” and Section 5 below. 40 See Martin Hielscher, “Kritik der Krise: Erzählerische Strategien der jüngsten Gegenwartsliteratur und ihre Vorläufer,” Literarisches Krisenbewusstsein: Ein Perzeptions- und Produktionsmuster im 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Keith Bullivant and Bernhard Spies (München: Iudicum, 2001) 319. 41 Eubanks 437. 42 Keith Bullivant and Bernhard Spies, “Vorwort,” Bullivant and Spies 17. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 245 of the sort that has come to be known as ‘naturalization,’ which makes complex socio-historical phenomena intelligible in terms of culturally accepted frames. To interpret cultural transformations in terms of such culturally bound plots can be thought of as a way of naturalizing changes by giving them a function in some larger pattern supplied by accepted cultural models. Culler clarifies what ‘naturalization’ means in this context: “[T]o naturalize a text is to bring it into relation with a type of discourse or model which is already, in some sense, natural or legible.” 43 This kind of metaphoric naturalization is so much an ingrained part of our everyday cognitive strategies used in dealing with and accounting for cultural changes that, in all probability, we are not conscious of it and hardly, if ever, notice it. Consequently, speaking about or diagnosing a crisis includes not only defining certain action-roles but, as a result of the systematic logic of the metaphor, also linking past, present, and future in a comprehensive plot. With regard to the past, the diagnosis of a crisis implies a negative, more or less teleological development towards a crisis. By contrast, the present in a crisisdiagnosis is perceived and interpreted as a decisive moment and as a realm of possibilities. With regard to the future this results in a spectrum of different possibilities and potential development structures, which range from the extremes of death and destruction at one side to recovery and the overcoming of the crisis on the other. The age-old similes for particular peoples and states are typical examples of this. Organic crisis metaphors were frequently used to describe the Fall of Rome: sickly Rome lying on the deathbed. 44 With clear reference to the medical language use, Rousseau applied the term ‘crisis’ to the body politic. The connection between crisis and disease is also brought to one’s awareness through Goethe’s organic interpretation of the term ‘transition time’ [‘Übergangszeit’]: “Every transition is a crisis, and is not crisis a disease? ” 45 Aside from the already mentioned action roles and fundamental images, the metaphoric origin of the rhetoric of crisis draws attention to further aspects which are of interest for a metaphorology and narratology of crisis. This includes the question of the causes or the initiators of the crisis, the question of concepts and solutions, and the question of selecting crisis managers and agents to find a solution for the crisis, as well as the question of the crisis experience of the respective protagonists, not to mention the cultural crisis awareness of an era. The respective demeanour or attitude towards a 43 Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (London: Routledge/ Kegan Paul, 1975) 138. 44 Demandt 80. 45 “Alle Übergänge sind Krisen, und ist die Krise nicht eine Krankheit? ” qtd. from Demandt 219. A NSGAR N ÜNNING 246 crisis can range from resignation and melancholy on the one side to euphoria on the other: The experience of a crisis can lead to the resolute refusal of accepting the impending loss and provoke the impulse to seriously defend the endangered goods; however, the experience of a factual commotion of what was valid so far can also be turned into an argument for the necessity of its downfall. 46 It is obvious that due to the range of implications that the metaphor of crisis offers, different attitudes towards a crisis can produce entirely different plots. Speaking of ‘the’ crisis plot would therefore be highly questionable. Rather, by means of the metaphoric language of crisis, a broad spectrum of possible development structures is evoked, according to which the option which actually occurs depends on the skills of the protagonist in crisis management. The spectrum of possibilities ranges from the extreme of recovery or even improvement to versions of sitting it out and twiddling one’s thumbs in the middle (which usually leads to an aggravation and worsening of the crisis) right to the other extreme of death and destruction, which can befall both individuals and the Roman Empire as the result of a crisis. Further indications for a metaphorology and narratology of crisis are not only given by the metaphoric origin of the word ‘crisis,’ but also in its current use, particularly the morphology and emerging crisis idiomology, which is able to shed light on both the multitude of the cast roles as well as the narration and plot patterns connected to crisis. Renate Bebermeyer analysed “the nature, character and manifestations of the buzzword-like, pseudo-‘crisis’compounds which increase in a compulsive and explosive way” 47 from a linguistic point of view in two articles which are rich in both material and insight. She attributes the semantic and morphological crisis inflation as well as the “habit, which already reveals compulsive-manic traits, of seeing everything under the aspect of a crisis which is considered as dominant” 48 to two trends: namely to the “necessity to constantly ‘find’ the newest and most sensational and to present it by means of a handy ‘adequate’ motto — in a pseudo-scientific way” 49 on the one hand, and to the widespread crisis mentality (which was common in 1980 already! ) on the other. Considering the crisis-compounds which were actually circulating already in 1980, the spectrum of roles and actions designated or possible for crisis plots, is clearly going to be very broad. It ranges from the crisis initiator and crisis aggravator to the crisis observer and crisis manager and crisis management, to crisis administration and the crisis squad, the head of crisis 46 Bullivant and Spies 15-16. 47 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 345. 48 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 346. 49 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 345. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 247 squad and the leader of crisis squad. Their task is to discover the origin or origins of the crisis and, on the basis of crisis counsels, crisis conferences, crisis meetings or crisis squad sessions, develop an appropriate crisis concept, a crisis strategy, a crisis schedule or a mechanism for dealing with the crisis and, by means of crisis intervention, contribute to solving the crisis or at least by containing it or limiting the damage. If they are successful they will be celebrated as crisis conquerors on account of their effective crisis strategy. The crisis tourist, the crisis observer and the crisis winner as well as those who use crises as a reason for developing a crisis philosophy, deserve mentioning as well. What all of these metaphorical crisis-compounds have in common is that they serve to show that metaphors, by virtue of their more or less coherent entailments, provide a systematic way of talking about and making sense of cultural changes and disasters. Lakoff and Johnson have emphasized what they call the “systematicity of metaphorical concepts” 50 and have spelled out its implications: The very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another […] will necessarily hide other aspects of the concept. In allowing us to focus on one aspect of a concept […], a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor. 51 Metaphors “form coherent systems in terms of which we conceptualize our experience” 52 — and cultural transformations, one might add. Highlighting certain aspects of historical changes while hiding or even repressing others, metaphorical concepts serve as both sense making devices and as “‘strategies of containment’ whereby they are able to project the illusion that their readings are somehow complete and self-sufficient.” 53 As a further element for the development of a metaphorology and narratology of crisis to be borne in mind is that there is no such thing as one particular crisis plot, but rather there is always a broad spectrum of possible courses of action — because both the duration of a crisis and the respective course of a crisis usually depend on a multitude of factors, measures, and events. Nonetheless, I hope it has become clear that, on the one hand, it is possible to specify the most important roles which are constitutive for the metaphor and narratives associated with ‘crisis’ while, on the other hand, crises are nothing ‘natural’ but are based on a specific mode of emplotment 50 Lakoff and Johnson 7. 51 Lakoff and Johnson 10. 52 Lakoff and Johnson 41. 53 Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981; London: Methuen, 1983) 10. A NSGAR N ÜNNING 248 (sensu Hayden White), by means of which a situation becomes (made into) a plot and a crisis in the first place. V Functions of Crises and Crisis Plots The question continues to present itself as to what functions might be fulfilled by the metaphor, narrative, and rhetoric of crisis so ubiquitous (and inflationary) in politics and the media. Rather than just taking the dominant rhetoric of world wide crises and catastrophes implied in these metaphors at face value or even mistaking such tropes for a simple reflection of economic, historical, or political reality, one might look more closely at the functions that such metaphors serve to fulfil. There are several functions that can be identified, although many of them are syncretized in specific texts and media. First of all, the widespread manner of speaking of someone or something as being plunged ‘deep into crisis,’ is aimed at generating interest and “pageturner excitement,” 54 especially in the media. A further general function to be seen is that drawing on crisis-plots offers a means of making sense and coherence: situations perceived as ‘crises’ are those “which are virtually urged to be narrated, for the production of coherent, sense-making and identityproviding stories, models, and attempts at arrangement, which bring coherence, sense and identity to produce.” 55 Renate Bebermeyer has concisely sketched out further fundamental functions from the perspective of linguistics: The original academic terminus crisis has two simultaneous functions to fulfil, one of which is structural, deriving from its availability as a ready-made buildingblock for the quick production of ever new composites. Besides its building-block capacity, the ‘crisis’ concept has a second, double-sided task: on the one hand, it is called on as a demonstrative and at the same time expression-varying substitute word for its compositional derivates; on the other, it offers, free from the grip of its compositional role, a general and generalised, negatively loaded catchword summary of all developments and changes calling forth unrest and angst. 56 In politics in particular, crisis metaphorics has long been part of the rhetorical basics of polemics against other parties and those who think differently. For politicians “crisis is […] — depending on need — confirmation and alibi, both are offered one from the most different of motivations; one profits massively from the crisis-pound.” 57 The reasons for this are clear: 54 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 352. 55 Hielscher 314. 56 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 354. 57 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 349. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 249 Some politicians need pessimism, ‘the world of growing crises and dangers’ and therefore also the vocabulary of catastrophe, in order to effectively place themselves and their strategies in the light; the current journalistic compulsion to overuse and sensationalism — a report needs a media-justifying (big) format to be heard — does the rest. 58 The implicit message launched by the steely crisis managers and media pros is thus: “A danger named is a danger banned.” 59 Moreover, by reducing the complexities and elusiveness of the source domains and the cultural transformations they refer to, metaphors of crisis impose form upon a chaotic reality. Another function is therefore to impart some sort of structure and plot to amorphous economic or political phenomena and to complex cultural changes, thus serving as unifying and ordering devices. What deserves to be emphasized is that the structure which metaphorical mappings allow us to impart to a given domain “is not there independent of the metaphor.” 60 Metaphoric projections represent coherent organizations of complex phenomena in terms of ‘natural’ (or naturalized) categories like illness: metaphors are “structured clearly enough and with enough of the right kind of internal structure to do the job of defining other concepts.” 61 Despite their inevitably reductive character, crisis metaphors can fulfil heuristic or cognitive functions in that they represent a particular diagnosis of a situation. 62 As conceptual tools, metaphors resemble models. Imposing form and structure upon an untidy, contingent, and chaotic reality, metaphors like crisis serve as models for thought, as conceptual fictions people and whole cultures live by. 63 To identify the functions of metaphors entirely with those of models, however, is to miss significant cultural functions that they are often asked to perform. It would be reductive and misleading to suggest that the metaphors of crises and catastrophes were nothing but conceptual models, for at least two reasons. Equating these metaphors with models ignores the creative uses of metaphors in the representation of cultural objects or transformations. In contrast to models, which represent structural relations, metaphors impose structures: they “often do creative work.” 64 The ubiquitous metaphor of ‘cri- 58 Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 355. 59 See Bebermeyer, “’Krise’ in der Krise” 356. (“Gefahr benannt — Gefahr gebannt.”) 60 Lakoff and Turner 64. 61 Lakoff and Johnson 118. 62 See Grunwald and Pfister. 63 See Lakoff and Johnson. 64 Mark Turner, Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism (Chicago/ London: U of Chicago P, 1987) 19; See also Harald Weinrich, Sprache in Texten (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976) 309. Weinreich also argues that metaphors create their analogies and correspondences; also see Fauconnier and Turner, “A Mechanism of Creativity”. For the similarities and differences between metaphors and models, see the articles in Anselm Haver- A NSGAR N ÜNNING 250 sis’ serves to show that metaphors not only create individual target domain slots, but can also determine the way in which a given target domain is perceived and understood in the first place. The second reason why metaphors are more than just conceptual or cognitive models is that the evocation of emotion is an important aspect of the metaphorical process, as Paul Ricœur and other theorists have convincingly shown. 65 Of far greater interest for the cultural historian than the functions that metaphors have in common with models are those functions of such metaphors that shed light on the “representational politics” 66 of such a popular metaphor as crisis. In addition to their power to impose structure, metaphors of crises and catastrophes also serve as an important means of determining an emotional response, fostering as they do reactions of fear, shock, and stress. This emotional function is particularly obvious in the case of metaphors of crises and catastrophes because they imply a feeling of being personally threatened and a sense of collective threat, which is arguably the dominant affective component in metaphors of crises and catastrophes. Metaphors of crises and catastrophes not only help to generate emotions, they also rhetorically assert the need for effective crisis management. A third function of metaphors of crises and catastrophes consists in providing contemporaries with simplified, but more or less coherent frameworks for interpreting recent economic, historical or political developments. As mental models, metaphoric fictions provide powerful tools for making sense of complex situations and cultural changes. By actually commenting upon the events and relations they purport merely to reflect or to report, metaphors of crises serve as a means for explaining complex processes and cultural transformations. The structure and logic inherent in the crisismetaphor, for instance, not only greatly reduces the complexity of the phenomena in the target domain, but also transforms a chaotic series of events into a simple story or a crisis plot (see sections 3 and 4 above). With regard to how “metaphors can be made into mininarrations,” 67 the metaphor of crisis is a perfect case in point. kamp, ed., Theorie der Metapher, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996); Wolfgang Bergem, Lothar Bluhm, and Friedhelm Marx, eds., Metapher und Modell: Ein Wuppertaler Kolloquium zu literarischen und wissenschaftlichen Formen der Wirklichkeitskonstruktion (Trier: WVT, 1996). 65 See Paul Ricœur, “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling,” Critical Inquiry 5 (1978): 143; Wilhelm Köller, Semiotik und Metapher: Untersuchungen zur grammatischen Struktur und kommunikativen Funktion von Metaphern (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1975) 202. Köller also emphasizes the connotational components and emotional shades of values implied by them. 66 Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, The English Novel in History 1840-1895 (London/ New York: Routledge, 1997) 125. 67 Eubanks 437. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 251 Fourth, metaphors of crises fulfil important normative functions because they authorize and propagate ideologically charged diagnoses of a situation they purport merely to describe. By providing a diagnosis, they project particular norms and values onto the target domain. Although as a rule one cannot extract a very sophisticated philosophy from any of these metaphors, they tend to leave no doubt as to what the desirable form of reaction should be: effective crisis management. In other words, metaphors of crises are never used merely in a descriptive, but always in a prescriptive way, subtly propagating normative views rather than providing neutral descriptions. Drawing on values deeply embedded in culture, metaphors of crises not only project features and structural relations from the various source domains onto the respective target domains and cultural transformations, they also imply how the entities of the two domains are to be evaluated in the new blend resulting from their conceptual integration. 68 Fifth, metaphors of crises and catastrophes are often used as political arguments in that the form of the diagnosis usually already implies what the best political remedy is supposed to be. As the politically motivated uses of crisis metaphors in the recent discussions about the global financial and economic crises have illustrated, the often fierce debates about the pros and cons of the various bailouts were carried out at least as much in metaphorical as in literal terms, even though many of the political protagonists are unlikely to be aware of the metaphorical nature of the discourses of crisis. Though ‘crisis’ is, of course, also an economic concept, the actual uses of the term in the media and the discourses surrounding it show that the metaphoric implications, more often than not, gain the upper hand. Other salient examples here are the host of articles in The Financial Times and many other newspapers about the volatile stock markets. In contrast to other more covert uses of the metaphor of crisis, the metaphoric nature of the medicinal discourse of crisis is forgrounded as soon as other metaphors belong to the same metaphoric field, i.e. to what Weinrich and others have felicitously called Bildfeld. A typical case in point is an article published in The Financial Times entitled “Fear Prevents Patient from Responding to Treatment”: “The patient is not responding. Liquidity infusions, co-ordinated rate cuts, state-sponsored band bail-outs — nothing seems to be working. The London market is in cardiac arrest.” 69 Politicians from the opposition can, of course, raise the question of whether “the right medicine is being given in the right dose at the right 68 See Lakoff and Turner 65. 69 Neil Hume, “Fear Prevents Patients From Responding to Treatment,” Financial Times, 11 October 2008 <http: / / www.ft.com/ cms/ s/ 0/ 04aafa5e-972c-11dd-8cc4-000077b07658. html> 20 June 2009. A NSGAR N ÜNNING 252 time.” 70 Even though politicians, business leaders, and economists may agree on the diagnosis, the metaphorical implications of ‘crisis’ provide no guarantee that agreement on remedies is likely to be achieved. Sixth, metaphors of crises and catastrophes can fulfil legitimizing or licensing functions because they provide rationalizations of cultural changes and justifications for whatever diagnosis and therapy the ‘crisis managers’ come up with. Forging emotional and functional links between such manifestly unlike phenomena as the world of banking and finance and the realm of illness, the metaphor of crisis serves as an important means of legitimizing whatever desperate measures are proposed by the government. As the example quoted above serves to illustrate, even desperate remedies are in order to try to cure a sick patient’s disease because exceptional times like the global banking crisis require exceptional remedies. Though people tend to agree that even someone like President Obama cannot cure a sick world economy alone, the prevailing diagnoses of global economic crisis seems to legitimize just about any desperate and tough remedy, the more so as long as everybody agrees that ‘the patient is still in intensive care,’ that there is great danger of contagion or infection, and that the financial turmoil has begun to put even formerly healthy businesses at risk. In short: The legitimizing or licensing functions of the metaphor imply that crises call for immediate crisis intervention by experienced crisis managers, even radical attempts to try first aid are no longer questioned, and if prolonged therapy seems to be unavoidable, this is also readily accepted once agreement on suitable remedies is achieved. In doing so, metaphors not only provide highly simplified accounts of complex cultural changes, they implicitly also project what Eubanks aptly calls “licensing stories: ” 71 [F]or us to regard any mapping as apt, it must comport with our licensing stories — our repertoire of ideologically inflected narratives, short and long, individual and cultural, that organize our sense of how the world works and how the world should work. 72 In the light of Eubanks’ hypotheses about what motivates metaphoric mappings, it is probably no coincidence that metaphors of crises and catastrophes are currently the most popular of all of the tropes used for describing the state of affairs. This may largely be attributed to the fact that the licensing 70 David Bowers, “View of the Day: Bad Medicine,” The Financial Times, 3 December 2008 <http: / / www.ft.com/ cms/ s/ 0/ ed8faf98-c153-11dd-831e-000077b07658.html? nclick_ch eck=1> 20 June 2009. 71 Eubanks 424. For a concise definition, see Eubanks 437: “Licensing stories are narratively structured representations of an individual’s ideologically inflected construal of the world.” 72 Eubanks 426. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 253 stories associated with fatal illness ensure that the measures proposed are generally regarded as especially apt, reflecting as they did a broad cultural, ethical, and normative consensus: “That is to say, our world-making stories give us the license — provide the requisite justification — needed to regard possible metaphoric mappings as sound.” 73 The licensing stories implied in metaphors of crises and catastrophes provide historical mininarrations about the ‘natural’ origin and genesis of the problematic situation. Lastly, and arguably most importantly, metaphors of crises are central to the formation and maintenance of collective identities, because they provide simple and coherent accounts of complex developments and because the mininarrations entailed in these metaphors have important propagandistic and ideological implications, nurturing a culture’s dominant fictions. Metaphors of crisis, for instance, arguably tend to serve as subtle ideological handmaidens of capitalism, because they glorify the world that the crisis manager set out to save. Metaphors thus help to create that culturally sanctioned system of ideas, beliefs, presuppositions, and convictions which constitutes sets of beliefs, hierarchies of norms and values, or a “system of ideological fictions” like capitalism. 74 The images and stories projected by metaphors are thus instrumental in what one might call the imaginative forging of the fictions of late-capitalism. After all, not only a nation but “any imagined community, is held together in part by the stories it generates about itself.” 75 In short: Metaphors of crises serve to narrativize and naturalize complex cultural, economic and political transformations, projecting ideologically charged plots onto the developments they purport merely to represent or to illustrate. In doing so, they arguably do creative work in that they serve to define how the cultural transformations associated with the current economic problems are understood by the contemporaries. Generating a whole network of ideological implications and normative entailments, the metaphoric mappings also play “a central role in the construction of social and political 73 Eubanks 426-27. 74 See Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (1978; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995) 321. Said calls Orientalism a “system of ideological fictions” and equates that phrase with such terms as “a body of ideas, beliefs, clichés, or learning” (205), “systems of thought,” “discourses of power,” and with Blake’s famous “mind-forg’d manacles” (328). 75 Stephen Arata, Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 1. For the concept of imagined communities, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). A NSGAR N ÜNNING 254 reality.” 76 Since metaphors have “the power to define reality,” 77 they even constitute a license for policy change and political and economic action. 78 VI Metaphors and the Collective Unconscious: On the Value of Cognitive Metaphor Theory for the Study of the Discourses of Crisis Even if these building-blocks for a metaphorology and narratology of crisis may raise more questions than they have managed to answer, perhaps they can make a small contribution to illuminating the complex processes involved in the discursive, metaphorical, and narrative construction of crises. The sketched out narratology and metaphorology of crisis can certainly not offer a cure for the medial production of crises, but it can nevertheless promise a little healing or relief, in that it can provide some beams of light that allow one to see better through the crisis fog spewed out by the media. A narratology of crisis guides our attention, on the one hand, to the narrative transformations through which a happening becomes an event and a story with a particular narrative pattern of the type ‘crisis’. On the other hand, an analysis of the metaphorical origin and implications of the metaphorical concept of crisis can shed light on the action roles and plots of the mininarratives which are implicit in every diagnosis of crisis. It offers the prerequisites to describe the action roles as well as the structural and narrative patterns that bind together the scenarios that the metaphor of crisis projects. In conclusion, I would like to provide a brief assessment of the value that a cognitive and cultural analysis of metaphors like ‘crisis’ may have for both the study of the relationship between metaphors and culture, and for cultural history and the history of mentalities. As the above analysis has hopefully shown, metaphors can profitably be understood as narrative kernels or mininarrations that consist of a single word and that shed light on the cultural discourses from which they originate. On the one hand, the metaphors of crisis underscore the hypothesis that metaphors indeed shape culture, turning our contemporary media society into a veritable culture of crises, catastrophes, and disasters. On the other hand, the example of crisis also serves to demonstrate that metaphors are themselves shaped by culture in that the ubiquitous discourses and metaphors of crisis reflect the penchant for exaggeration and sensationalism so characteristic of contemporary media culture. The widespread manner of the media of speaking of people, companies, whole economies, and even nations as being plunged ‘deep into crisis,’ suita- 76 Lakoff and Johnson 159. 77 Lakoff and Johnson 157. 78 Lakoff and Johnson 156. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 255 bly dramatic as it is, is aimed at generating interest, excitement, urgency, and the illusion of great importance, underscoring the newsworthiness of whatever the respective story may be about. The significance of metaphors of crises for any history of mentalities is in the light they throw on the habits of thought, the attitudes, and the values that inform a given culture. Moreover, they also illuminate how societies collectively deal with and account for catastrophes, disasters, and other negative cultural transformations. As the above analysis of the popular metaphors of crises and catastrophes have shown, it is not only poets who think in terms of metaphors, but also journalists, bankers, politicians, and theorists who try to account for cultural transformations, and arguably even whole cultures. 79 The plethora and ubiquity of such metaphors support the hypothesis that such metaphors embody what Elizabeth Ermarth, in a different context, has called “the collective awareness of a culture.” 80 By giving shape and meaning to cultural transformations, metaphors can construct an important “article of collective cultural faith.” 81 Rather than being merely a passive vehicle that reproduces the ideology of our time, metaphors of crises should be conceptualized as playing a creative role in shaping our cultural awareness and in constructing the ideological fictions that provide the mental framework of collective consciousness, or rather of what Fredric Jameson has called ‘the political unconscious.’ Instead of regarding them as mere ornamental devices of literature or political rhetoric, it is more rewarding to conceptualize metaphors as a cognitive and cultural phenomenon, and as an active force in their own right which is involved in the actual generation of ways of thinking, feeling, and of attitudes and, thus, of something that stands behind historical developments. The suggestive metaphors of crises and catastrophes, one might add, that our age lives by show that we, without apparently being aware of it, seem to have already found the discursive spell which can make sense of the complex economic, political, and social changes we generally fail to grasp: “When a metaphor comes to be regarded as an argument, what an irresistible argument it always seems! ” 82 One might add that the same holds true for most of the theories and accounts of cultural transformations which are usually also couched in terms of 79 See Jürgen Link and Wulf Wülfing, “Einleitung,” Bewegung und Stillstand in Metaphern und Mythen, eds. Jürgen Link and Wulf Wülfing (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984) 14, who argue that metaphors to a great extent pre-structure mentalities and who emphasize the collective nature of this process: “Nicht nur Dichter [...] ‘denken in Bildern’, auch ‘Kulturen’ insgesamt.” 80 Ermarth 89. 81 Ermarth 122. 82 Robert Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (1883; London: Macmillan, 1900) 344. A NSGAR N ÜNNING 256 metaphors. The trouble is that such metaphorical accounts of cultural changes as ‘crisis,’ ‘development,’ or ‘progress’ all too often come to be regarded as an argument, especially in the discourses of politics and economics. In addition, more often than not, they are naturalized to such an extent that people forget their metaphorical nature altogether, mistaking a vivid metaphor for a ‘neutral’ or even realistic description of the actual state of affairs or of changes in the world ‘out there.’ It may also be worth mentioning in passing that there is always more semantic energy in a metaphor than anyone who uses it is ever aware of. As a result of this uncontrollable semantic surplus, a metaphor can just as well have self-disruptive effects, being hoisted with its own petard in that some of the metaphorical entailments may deconstruct the narratives that a metaphor serves to project. 83 On the one hand, all of these metaphors have remarkable metamorphic power in that they actually serve as shape changers, conveniently narrativizing and naturalizing cultural transformations by projecting familiar concepts onto elusive and abstract phenomena that defy direct observation. In doing so, metaphors “can create not only knowledge but also the very reality they appear to describe.” 84 On the other hand, however, the metaphoric entailments are always potentially more numerous, complex, and contradictory than any writer or public speaker is ever likely to fathom. The central metaphor explored in an earlier volume, metamorphosis, 85 for instance, not only provides a very vivid account of a process leading to a complete change in form, structure, substance, or character. It also implies a wide range of threatening aspects like mutability and disruption, which are arguably quite misleading and even detrimental to any attempt at trying to conceptualize and come to grips with the structures of cultural transformations. The metaphor of metamorphosis highlights certain features which are arguably not readily applicable to, or even provide a very distorting view of, cultural transformations while hiding others which are arguably very important, e.g. the question of what agents stand behind, drive, and are responsible for the economic, historical, and cultural changes conveniently subsumed under a metaphoric umbrella term of ‘crisis.’ One might even go so far as to argue that it might be wise to avoid the metaphors of metamorphosis and crisis altogether if one wants to come to terms with cultural transformations and their possible structures. 83 Steven Fink’s popular book Crisis Management (1986; Lincoln, NE: Universe Inc., 2002) provides an interesting case in point in that among its key phrases one does not only find such likely compounds as ‘crisis management plans,’ ‘acute crisis phase,’ and ‘acute crisis stage,’ but also improbable metaphorical phrases like ‘poison pill,’ ‘postdecisional regret,’ and even ‘tampon crisis’ and ‘tampon usage.’ 84 Said, Orientalism 94. 85 See Schlaeger. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 257 In sum, what I hope to have shown is that anyone interested in the structures of the kind of cultural transformations that are dubbed ‘crisis,’ might profit a great deal from taking the study of metaphors into consideration, just as the study of literature and culture might in turn profit from taking into account research in cognitive metaphor theory. Taking a fresh look at the insights of cognitive metaphor theory and historicizing the models and categories it has developed could be an important force in the current attempts to enrich the linguistic and literary study of metaphors in the framework of cultural history and to explore the role that metaphors play as cognitive instruments which impose structures and stories onto amorphous and contingent historical changes. In order to reassess the changing cultural functions that metaphors have fulfilled, it is worth looking more closely at the role of such discursive processes as metaphoric mappings in determining the perception and construction of the way in which events and situations are transformed into ‘crises’ in the first place. These concluding suggestions are not, however, meant to be the last word on any of these complex issues, but rather should be seen as modest proposals for a reconceptualization of the central role that metaphors have always played in man’s attempt to grasp and to make sense of the complex cultural transformations that societies undergo and that people experience and that we call ‘crises’ or ‘catastrophes.’ Though the severity of today’s landslide crises may go far beyond what most people could have imagined, any crisis is unlikely to really reach a country until everybody believes that there really is a crisis. It is only when a metaphor comes to be regarded as, or mistaken for, reality, that a crisis is likely to become a catastrophe. From the point of view of metaphor theory and a narratological perspective there is, in any case, much to be said in favour of a sceptical opposite standpoint to the medial inflation of crisis, for not taking every crisis-story and crisis scenario at face value. In the light of the above considerations, it also seems to be wise to differentiate between the representation of real crises and the medial production of fictional crisis scenarios and generally to give more attention to the discursive strategies, metaphorical implications, plot structures, and medial practices of crisis diagnoses than it has been the case for so long. Precisely because there has for so long been a lack of studies of culturally and historically variable, epoch-specific crisis models and because the histories of literary crisis perception and crisis processes are yet to be written (this goes equally — so far as I can tell from an overview of the research — for all national literatures), it remains to be hoped that there will be further study of this central cultural theme of our times, and that an analysis of the functions of metaphors as figurative knowledge and mininarrations that shape culture may continue to provide new insights and impulses for A NSGAR N ÜNNING 258 research on a phenomenon that can only be fully grasped in an interdisciplinary framework. Steps Towards a Metaphorology (and Narratology) of Crises 259 Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Arata, Stephen. Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle. 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