Society is not a text

I On forage fish, rats and a marmalade stain: A different look at Hartz IV

At the very beginning, the term Hartz IV referred to the fourth stage of the legislative package through which the German government regulated the support for job seekers. However, the term soon was also commonly used to describe the transfer benefit itself and those who receive it. In recent years, as the political theorist Christoph Butterwegge explains in his book Hartz IV and the Consequences, the concept has gradually become a negatively connoted synonym for the dependency on social transfers in general. ³³ Some media statements by political leaders from various parties exemplify this ‘bad press’: while some consider Hartz IV beneficiaries a threat to the Welfare State, others directly criminalize them and are determined to punish them if they do not comply with their obligations: as a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) decidedly stated, ‘whoever does not work should not eat’. ³⁴

I draw on the example of Hartz IV because it can be considered the result of some political decisions that, claiming a supposed ‘activation’ ³⁵ of the world of work, serve the unlimited accumulation of capital that guides western economies. ³⁶ Hartz IV may epitomize the capacity of contemporary capitalism, as ideologies do, to attribute decontested meanings to concepts of social reality – and consequently to those to whom they apply – that reinforce a particular state of affairs. ³⁷ I do not attempt, however, to provide an analysis of the ideological connotations of Hartz IV, but I use this example to show how, by applying metaphors, the decontested meaning attributed to the term may be undermined. The three metaphors suggested here to map Hartz IV and their interpretations aim at elucidating three stages that will structure my argument: how by calling into question ideology’s consistency, by exploring other possible interpretations and by enriching its univocal character, metaphors may undermine ideological incontestability. To propose these metaphors, I draw on excerpts from three contemporary novels, the plots of which take place in three distinct regions of ‘western capitalism’: North America, as well as northern and southern Europe. The selection of these novels and with it the metaphors suggested and their interpretations are not a requisite for showing the value of metaphor as a critical device. Other excerpts from the same or different novels, metaphors and interpretations could have illustrated this as well. The literary depictions only provide the images with which Hartz IV is being metaphorically addressed here. ³⁸

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The first image is from the novel On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes. In the story, Esteban, the main protagonist, wonders about the popular beliefs that the locals of Olba have harboured over the years with regard to the properties of the lagoon and the sea. While the lagoon is considered to be a suspicious place because of its stagnant waters, this does not happen with the sea; the flow of the seawater is believed to have self-regulatory qualities that help the sea to maintain its balance. Unlike the lagoon, the sea assimilates, cleans and re-uses whatever people throw in it:

The lagoon has long been a kind of neglected backyard for the neighboring towns, one where everything was permitted and where decades of garbage and filth have been allowed to accumulate…The sea washes everything clean or else drives it out or gobbles it up, purifies with iodine and saltpeter, uses and recycles: one assumes the water there is healthy, not like the lagoon, which is always viewed by the people living nearby as an unhealthy, fetid place…The sea cleanses and oxygenates, the lagoon rots. ³⁹

This is what seems to have happened with the implementation of Hartz IV. The supposed ‘modernization’ that the legislative package should have provided by improving the general living conditions and working opportunities of job seekers, as Butterwegge argues, evokes memories of medieval serfdom, e.g. the introduction of 1-Euro-Jobs, and boils down to a refeudalization of the world of work through the liberalization of employment protections and subcontracted labour. ⁴⁴ This inequitable effect of the legislative package in favour of some groups at the expense of those whom the package theoretically was proclaimed to assist may manifest in a more clear-cut manner when one looks at it through a metaphor.

For instance, one could equate the type of constriction that capitalism imposes on those affected by Hartz IV with the dependence of forage fish on the sea. Let me thus suggest a first metaphor in relation to Hartz IV, that is, the metaphor forage fish–Hartz IV beneficiaries. The sea, while being a necessary condition for their existence, also becomes what converts forage fish into food for other predators. Forage fish are placed in a particular trophic level from which they serve the food chain. This paradoxical dependence of forage fish on the sea may illuminate in a piercing way the type of constriction that Hartz IV imposes on its beneficiaries: the type of jobs (1-Euro-Jobs) imposed on them, which should liberate them from their precarious situation, becomes what further increases the distance between them and the real world of work. ⁴⁵ They can do their job excellently, display the pertinent ‘soft skills’, or have good foreign language skills, but this is unlikely to get them out of the trophic level that the market economy has prepared for them.

The one-sided view that asserts that Hartz IV beneficiaries are threats to the functioning of the system is called into question when, under the perspective of metaphor, they appear to be the very prey that feeds that system. Under the metaphorical view, as the political theorist Christian Girschner also claims, Hartz IV appears as a central condition for the maintenance of the system. ⁴⁶ In order for certain groups to keep their supremacy, others have to be placed into particular positions. In this sense, if, as some authors propose, ideologies ‘emphasize some aspects of social reality…and neglect or even suppress other aspects’, ⁴⁷ metaphors operate in the same manner and, as James Underhill suggests, they highlight aspects of a domain that under a previous interpretation were concealed, debilitating the incontestability of that interpretation. ⁴⁸ Metaphors may thereby accomplish a main function of critique, that is, they put in crisis the underlying order that sustains that decontested meaning: ‘critique just becomes meaningful with respect to the order that it puts in crisis.’ ⁴⁹ Through questioning the link between symbolic forms and a particular state of affairs, metaphors may open ‘a gap between what is and what is said about what is’. ⁵⁰ Metaphors cast doubt on the univocal interpretation attributed to a particular concept. They show the fragility of its incontestability: not only does the same lamb which in the meadow has the property of being ‘affectionate and charming’ become ‘tender and exquisite’, seen as a meal; ⁵¹ the same individuals who are seen as a disease of the system and thus described as ‘work-shy and sluggish’ become ‘misfortunate and pitiful’, seen as a symptom of that system some days before Christmas.

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The second image can be found in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, when Eric Packer, a young millionaire asset manager and main character of the story, is having a meal at a luncheonette with his wife, Elise Shifrin. Over the course of the meal, they realize that someone is making a terrible din behind them; several young men dressed in rat suits, each griping a rat by the tail, yell something that is difficult to understand:

[The men] stood motionless back to back, right arms raised, each man holding a rat by the tail. They began to shout something [Eric] could not make out. The rats were alive, forelegs pedalling…[They] were young, in full body suits, rat suits…[they] began to swing rats over their heads, voices out of sync, shouting something about a specter…Then the men flung the rats…The animals tail-whipped through the air…two lurid furballs running up the walls, emitting a mewl and squeak, and the men ran too, taking their shout out to the street with them. ⁵²

Rats are said to be deceitful animals that may carry contagious diseases; avoiding physical contact with them is recommended. This idea may evoke a first association: while Hartz IV beneficiaries have to suffer from very miserable living conditions, other groups remain impassive in the face of it without doing anything against that situation. It is better to avoid close contact. This may lead to another association because to have rats on or near one’s property may not simply be annoying but also may depreciate its value; while, on one side of the city, luxurious residential areas are constructed where, behind high walls, the ‘super-rich’ fortify their mansions with private security companies, on the other side, Hartz IV beneficiaries are concentrated in what are euphemistically known as ‘social hotspots’ or ‘deprived areas’. ⁵⁵ This may trigger another association. For some power elites, Hartz IV recipients exist only as an image portrayed in the media, but they have never met a single one, just as they have never met a real rat. Hartz IV beneficiaries’ living conditions are irrelevant for the imperative of an unlimited accumulation of capital that guides those elites’ lives and the path of western societies: that is why, as a considerable amount of the population around the globe still does, some Hartz IV beneficiaries may live in garbage dumps, feed themselves from discarded food, or be shamed for procreating too much, ⁵⁶ just like rats.

As one can see, in putting together both rat and Hartz IV, metaphor manages to trigger various associations that distinctly map Hartz IV. Metaphor’s ability to ‘let them work together’ ⁵⁷ prompts a chain of associations through which the decontested meaning tied to Hartz IV can be explored. Thus, not only can its incontestability be progressively undermined but also the relations of dominance that sustain that meaning can gradually be unveiled. When a politician describes welfare beneficiaries as ‘scroungers’, the metaphor may be especially effective up to the point at which it no longer looks like a rhetorical device at all, but rather like reality. In these cases, the job of social critique seems to be to identify, expose, or destroy that metaphor. This work often begins by simply pointing out its existence, as in welfare recipients are not scroungers, and talking about them as if they were is a ploy to smuggle in certain claims without providing arguments. Another way of performing this task, as the example of the metaphor rat–Hartz IV shows, may be to deploy an alternative metaphor or an interpretation of the same metaphor that exposes its ideological connotations. ⁵⁸ By drawing on the metaphor rat–Hartz IV, I attempt to show how a metaphor that is ideologically connoted, i.e. it dehumanizes welfare beneficiaries, may be also used to disclose the relations of dominance that itself may carry; in this sense, not only by using a metaphor (commensal organism–Hartz IV) can one unveil the relations of dominance tied to another metaphor (parasitic organism–Hartz IV); but by giving an alternative account of it, one can also uncover the relations of dominance that underlie that metaphor.

The one-sided view that considers Hartz IV beneficiaries to be social scroungers is eroded under the new viewpoint introduced by metaphor: if those who benefit from Hartz IV remain in that situation for a long time, this is not because they want to, but because they have become absolutely superfluous for the boundless pursuit of profit that guides our present. What matters is the function of Hartz IV in terms of the accumulation of capital, not the living conditions imposed on those affected by it; that is redundant. In this regard, metaphor facilitates a type of understanding that consists of ‘seeing connexions’; ⁵⁹ each relation traced in the metaphoric moment leads to new associations that simultaneously evoke further associations and so forth. ⁶⁰ As Paul Ricoeur propounded in The Rule of Metaphor commenting on Black’s theory: when an individual calls ‘a man to be wolf’ – in our context, ‘to be rat’ – ‘wolf’ does not operate on the basis of a lexical meaning, but ‘by virtue of the opinions and preconceptions to which a reader in a linguistic community…finds himself committed’. ⁶¹ As the wolf metaphor, the rat metaphor highlights certain attributes of rats that some individuals in the same socio-cultural context may share: ‘[the rat metaphor] suppresses some details, emphasizes others – in short, organizes our view of [Hartz IV]’. ⁶² Thus, metaphor manages to trigger a chain of associations that provides a new ‘insight’ into the domain; that is, it introduces ‘the spark of imagination’ into a perpetual ‘thinking more’ ⁶³ about social reality and its interpretations.

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The third and last image is from Terézia Mora’s The Only Man on the Continent. It takes place in a train on Darius Kopp’s journey to visit his mother. Kopp decides to go to the snack bar of the train to see if he can find something to eat. There, he finds only croissants filled with marmalade. Kopp buys two, and when he begins to eat, something unforeseen occurs:

He was just in the middle of the second croissant, when it was announced that they would arrive at their destination in a few minutes…When Kopp looked at his watch to check what time it actually was, it happened: he touched his shirt with the marmalade side of the croissant. Red marmalade, white shirt. Kopp cursed with blaspheming words, and hectically dabbed at it with a napkin, so that at least no pieces would stick. ⁶⁴

Yet in Mora’s story, if it had not been for this remark, Kopp might have forgotten that his shirt was stained. En route, the spot could not be removed, and Kopp continued travelling. As long as he did not look at his shirt, the stain did not seem to exist. This image may also put in a more visual way the other side of Hartz IV, i.e. how a major part of the population may convince themselves that their lives have nothing to do with Hartz IV. They know that certain illusions about themselves or about other groups structure their reality, but they ignore it and continue on their way, as Kopp did, or as the philosopher Slavoj Žižek put it: ‘[T]hey know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they did not know.’ ⁶⁸ They may know, for instance, that with each product that they order from the largest online retailer, a workplace may be destroyed, but still they keep buying online. ⁶⁹

In this sense, by teasing out some of its nuances and shades, by enriching its univocal interpretation, metaphor may provide a more vivid and elaborated depiction of Hartz IV, dispelling the one-sided view that points to the beneficiaries’ shortcomings to legitimate the oppressing conditions imposed on them. Metaphors may thus trigger a process of reconstruction through which the decontested meaning tied to a social domain can no longer be maintained. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argued in their seminal work, ⁷⁰ metaphors may open a reconstructive process that has a transformative effect. The manner in which this reconstruction is performed relies on the metaphor used: it is not the same to look at Hartz IV as ‘a stain on somebody else’s shirt’ or as ‘a stain on one’s shirt’; ‘a stain of marmalade’ is different from ‘a stain of ink’. Nonetheless, the manner of starting this process – the metaphor proposed – is not as decisive as the very process of reconstruction that the metaphor may make possible and through which the formerly decontested meaning is suspended. After our having viewed a particular domain of social reality through a metaphor, after the reconstructive process entailed herein, its contestability gradually comes into view.

II Metaphor and critique of ideology

In his Lectures on Fine Art, Hegel argues that ‘metaphor is always an interruption of the course of [representation]’. ⁷¹ Metaphor disrupts the manner in which things are represented up to a particular moment; it has a disruptive effect on the regular course of representation because ‘it arouses and brings together images which do not immediately belong to the matter in hand and its meaning’. ⁷² By juxtaposing discordant images that ‘draw the mind away’, ⁷³ metaphor suspends the possibility of fixing a meaning to the domain to which it applies. Metaphor triggers ‘a constant dispersal’ ⁷⁴ that induces a process of reconstruction through which the previously decontested meaning tied to that domain is subverted. As the examples above illustrate, the ability of metaphors to undermine the decontested meanings given to certain concepts may be displayed in three ways: by calling into question their consistency, by exploring other possibilities under which a domain can be thought about, and by enriching their univocal interpretation, metaphor may manage to ‘interrupt’ their incontestability.

Many will, however, object that the aforementioned characterizations given for the source domains are not accurate. They appear to be presumptions rather than rigorous descriptions. And, in a sense, they are. As Donald Davidson argued, in a literary sense, metaphors are ‘usually false’. ⁷⁵ Nevertheless, to assess the value of metaphors as a tool of critique, they should not be considered following the model of logic argumentation, but following the model of rhetorical persuasion. The type of knowledge with which metaphors operate stems from what Max Black termed the ‘system of associated commonplaces’, ⁷⁶ which refers to the knowledge of a particular domain that different members of a culture may share; for instance, to portray a rat as a ‘deceitful animal’ has more to do with a cultural representation than with rats themselves. ⁷⁷ Thus, to appraise the power of metaphor as a critical device, it is not important whether rats are deceitful, but rather how that characterization may be utilized to illuminate in a different light the domain to which it applies; in other words, how are the commonplaces tied to a source domain used as a ‘means for selecting, emphasizing, and organizing relations’ ⁷⁸ in the target domain, initiating a reconstructive process.

Building on Rahel Jaeggi’s account of critique of ideology, one may say that, as critique of ideology does, metaphors do not say what things are or should be; rather, as the case above exemplifies, they suggest ‘what things can be like’, and, by doing so, they may reveal connections, refer to internal contradictions, decipher mechanisms which may contribute to conceal those contradictions, and show that the meaning given to a particular situation is distinct from what it is claimed to be. ⁷⁹ What is relevant to appraise their power as a critical device is not the degree of truth of the assumptions with which metaphors operate – truth that, after the pragmatic turn, can no longer be considered non-evaluative – but how those assumptions are put to work to disclose the contestability of the social world and the possible effect, function or origins that a decontested meaning may have in serving dominance. ⁸⁰

Metaphor initiates a dialectical process that may well be equated with what Hans-Georg Gadamer in his Truth and Method called a dialectical experience. ⁸¹ The decontested meaning tied to a concept is ‘refuted by [the viewpoint gained through metaphor] and what was regarded as typical being shown not to be so’. ⁸² The ‘simplifying and schematical’ justifications with which, according to some scholars, ⁸³ ideology may operate can no longer be sustained in the face of the view and knowledge carried by the performance of metaphor. If, as the sociologist John B. Thompson argued, ideologies assume ‘a narrative form’, that is, ideologies are stories that ‘seek to justify the status quo’, ⁸⁴ then, metaphor opens a gap in the story, shows its insufficiency and obligates the agent to modify her account, as other literary devices do. ⁸⁵ Metaphor sparks a negativity that has a fruitful effect not only due to the ‘deception’ that it may entail – when ‘seen through’ metaphor, things are not as one believed – but also due to the ‘comprehensive knowledge’ that one may gain in it. After a particular domain has been seen through the perspective of metaphor, its possible decontested meaning can no longer be upheld because ‘[one] has acquired a new horizon’. ⁸⁶

Although the ways through which this new horizon can be achieved are multiple and interconnected, on an analytical level three paths deserve to be mentioned. First, some metaphors may perform this effect due to their novelty. They may broaden an agent’s horizon by providing new descriptions of a social domain; the metaphor maps the social condition in a novel manner and the descriptions tied to that social condition up to then show themselves to be insufficient. The new description conveyed by the metaphor may impel the individual to reformulate his conception of that social condition in the light of this insufficiency. ⁸⁷ Second, metaphors may also achieve this effect due to their vividness. As Hegel noted, some metaphors may work as a type of ‘reinforcement’ of an individual’s previous impressions due to their power to mobilize both cognitions and emotions. ⁸⁸ Certain metaphors may act as a reinforcement because they are able to connect with other experiences made by the individual. In their idiosyncrasy, some metaphors may confirm earlier impressions of the agent about the deficit or restrictive character of a particular interpretation of social reality. What was considered a mere suspicion, reinforced by the evidence provided by the metaphor, attains such a vividness in him that he feels impelled to reconsider his conception of that social domain. Third, some metaphors may additionally yield a new horizon because of their fierceness. While some metaphors may achieve this effect due to the plausibility of the link between target and source domains, others may conversely attain it due to the distance of the link. In both cases, the mordacity brought about by the link may trigger a kind of astonishment in the agent, through which his usual conception about the social domain to which the metaphor applies is undermined; due to the common work of imagination and reason in a single description, ⁸⁹ the metaphorical link may open a leeway, as aesthetic experiences may also do, whereby the constriction imposed on the individual by everyday descriptions is temporarily suspended. ⁹⁰ The peculiar but incisive characterization deployed by the link carries a reappraisal of the social condition that must be integrated into the agent’s course of representation and, by doing so, it may broaden his horizon.

The new horizon gained through metaphor may suspend not only the earlier meaning but also the socially determined symbolic structures that maintain that interpretation. Metaphor overrides ‘the autonomous process of symbolic formulation’ ⁹¹ that sustains that meaning and which, according to Clifford Geertz, is a central feature of ideologies. In other words, metaphor debilitates not only the ‘nature of the conception’, the incontestability that the concept manifests, but also ‘the vehicles of conception’. ⁹² Metaphor may initiate a dialectical moment through which the function that a meaning may have in the symbolic structure conveyed by ideology is suspended. It sets in motion a dialectic that Paul Ricoeur defined as ‘the most primordial…dialectic that reigns between the experience of belonging as a whole and the power of distanciation that opens up the space of speculative thought’, ⁹³ through which the vehicular role of ideology as a mediator of meaning loses its supremacy. Metaphor generates its own vehicles and manages to establish distance from the symbolic arrangement provided by ideology; according to Ricoeur, this distanciation from the ‘experience of belonging as a whole’ generated by metaphor and that ideology may symbolize ‘is the condition of the possibility of a critique of ideologies’. ⁹⁴ Thus, metaphors not only can undermine the decontested meaning tied to a concept of social reality but also, in the dialectical process that they may initiate, can wear away the symbolic order that sustains that meaning. ⁹⁵ And, with that, metaphor may become a key device of the ‘conceptual apparatus capable of dealing more adroitly with meaning’ ⁹⁶ which Geertz reclaimed for coping with ideology and which the contemporary critique of ideology should not dismiss.

Furthermore, there appears to be a more practical reason to support the value of metaphor as a tool of critique. The disclosing moment achieved by metaphor seems to share two main features with a reconstructive critique of society according to the model of critical theory. ⁹⁷ It presupposes the existence of an insufficiency, similar to what Robin Celikates calls a second-order pathology, ⁹⁸ regarding the manner in which agents interpret the world – they attribute decontested meanings to notions that are contestable; but it also maintains their critical and reflexive capacities, as a metaphor is a device that each individual can create, develop and interpret. ⁹⁹ Thus, this type of disclosing critique performed by metaphor acknowledges the possibility of a deficit in an agent’s self-reflection, but without falling back into the asymmetry of classical models as it preserves the agent’s capacity to perform the reconstructive process.

That does not mean that the disclosing moment brought about by metaphor provides the knowledge with which individuals may achieve the good life on a collective or individual level; rather, it affects the preconditions that may enable them to acquire this type of knowledge. As Honneth argued, the value of metaphors as a tool of critique does not stem from their ability to provide knowledge about how individuals should live, but from their ability to modify ‘the preconditions under which evaluative discourses on the ends of common action are conducted’. ¹⁰⁰ Metaphor seems to challenge those ‘closed conditions and symbolic representations that hinder the use of critical and judgmental capacities in social practices’, ¹⁰¹ as critique of ideology does. And, in this sense, by suspending the incontestability of the social world and its interpretations, by putting in crisis the underlying symbolic order, metaphors may yield increased freedom; as Ted Cohen put it, ‘a metaphor is an invitation and inducement to a kind of freedom’, ¹⁰² which bears a resemblance to the freedom yielded by art, whereby one gains an ‘ability to see’ oneself and the world differently. ¹⁰³

It is surely no coincidence then that the sociologist Karl Mannheim in his classical work Ideology and Utopia located the hub of social conflict in a ‘narrow view’. While ideology represents one side of this conflict which he defines as the ‘discovery’ that ‘ruling groups can in their thinking become so intensively interest-bound to a situation that they are simply no longer able to see certain facts which would undermine their sense of domination’, ¹⁰⁴ utopia – which we would currently dub a progressive ideology – designates the other side. Here, ruled groups ‘are intellectually so strongly interested in the destruction and transformation of a given condition of society that they unwittingly see only those elements in the situation which tend to negate it’. ¹⁰⁵ Although Mannheim’s sense of a narrow view referred to the inability of both ruling and ruled to see what maintains their situation, which the social critic seemed to be able to identify – a hypothesis difficult to sustain today – this narrow view might take on a different meaning, according to what I have proposed in this article: if there is something that individuals are unable to see within ideological frameworks, so to speak, that may be the contestability of social reality and its concepts.

Thus, the value of metaphor as a tool of critique of ideology does not derive from its ability to provide a less ideological interpretation, to yield more accurate knowledge, or to achieve a less imaginary relationship with the ‘real conditions of existence’; ¹⁰⁶ rather, its value stems from its ability to disclose the contestability of the social world and its interpretations. By providing a new viewpoint, metaphors widen the narrow view that fixes decontested meanings to contestable concepts. By evoking a new way of seeing, the contestability of social reality appears, as the scales fall from one’s eyes. As a tool of critique of ideology, the value of metaphor relies then on its power to set the contestability of the social world before the eyes.

Conclusion

Let me conclude by making some general remarks about the limitations of my undertaking and the use of metaphor in social criticism. I distinguish at least three axes of limitations in my analysis; corresponding to each of these axes, there are a number of ways in which shortcomings may arise. The first axis is derived from having to choose one approach among the multiple and very often incompatible approaches to metaphor. ¹⁰⁷ One major drawback of the interactionist approach used here is that it does not give sufficient consideration to the linguistic component of metaphor; the theory of meaning underlying this approach does not provide a clear differentiation between linguistic signification and other forms of meaning. The second axis of limitations is rooted in the characterization of ideology. I presumed that ideologies work by making decontested the meaning of concepts that are contestable. One question that needs to be asked, however, is whether ideologies always function in this manner, or whether they can also operate in the opposite direction, that is, by maintaining contestation. ¹⁰⁸ Moreover, even though my analysis of the case of Hartz IV is supported by empirical research, I could not provide a more detailed account of the negative connotation tied to Hartz IV. My aim was to illustrate the undermining effects that metaphors may have regarding the incontestability that certain concepts take on in ideological frameworks. Further, I basically understood ideology in a pejorative sense, which is not free of controversy. A main limitation of this pejorative approach is that it does not draw sufficient attention to the symbolic dimension of ideology, ¹⁰⁹ which I consider of paramount importance in the process of the fixation of meaning. By looking to other more descriptive approaches to ideology that emphasize this symbolic component, I attempted to counteract this shortcoming. The third axis of limitations stems from the manner in which I proceeded. I traced three moments through which metaphors may undermine ideological incontestability; although I presented them separately, these three moments are closely interconnected. In addition, I examined the dialectical process initiated by metaphor through which an individual gains a new horizon to argue for its disclosing power, but I could not include in my analysis other questions that are central to further confirm this claim: research questions that should be addressed in future work include a wide-ranging depiction of this process, an analysis of its conditions and an explicit appraisal of the status and relationship of this type of disclosing critique to other forms of critique. One drawback in this context is the lack of a precise account of the role of the social critic. The interactionist approach to metaphor fails to account for the difference between the agent who suggests a possible interpretation of a metaphor and the agent who finds herself confronted with it. To explore this difference would be decisive in further appraising the role of the critic within this type of disclosing critique. Here, I assumed, as the interactionist approach seems to do, that, regardless of whether one is the critic or not, the effects of the reconstructive process initiated by metaphor concern exclusively the agent who suggests, works out and interprets the metaphor.

Even in the light of all these limitations, several practical implications for the critique of ideology and social criticism in general may arise from what I suggest. First, my analysis reinforces the idea that metaphors are valuable tools of analysis of social reality. My claim just puts into a more updated language what Karl Marx called ‘the correct scientific method’, ¹¹⁰ which consists of seeing concepts in a more tangible manner by ‘the reproduction of the concrete situation’, ¹¹¹ that is, by using metaphors. If any ‘mental fact’ is the result of transforming perceptions and images into concepts, the most prolific method to explore the ideological connotations of concepts, according to Marx, is the one that inverts this order and turns concepts back to their origins as images. ¹¹² Second, my findings point to the possible benefits of using metaphors in texts of social criticism. The creation of unhackneyed metaphors that question and understand society and its constellations in a new way may contribute to face what Axel Honneth dubbed the ‘challenge of social criticism’. What among ‘normalized intellectuals’ is ‘a sense of proportion, a convincing argument’, argues Honneth, ‘must be almost completely replaced for the social critic by the creative ability to give texts a disintegrating effect on social myths. The task of rhetorically equipping dry explanations with suggestive power therefore represents the real challenge of social criticism.’ ¹¹³ Metaphors may address this challenge and accomplish a main task of social criticism. They show a worthwhile capacity for ‘skilfully drilling holes’ ¹¹⁴ into the ‘conceptual picture…that holds us captive in the sense that, owing to our fixed descriptions, certain procedures seem to us like parts of nature’. ¹¹⁵ Third, my analysis additionally reclaims the value of imagination and creativity in the practice of social criticism. Examining the qualities of the social critic, Michael Walzer noted years ago that the critic should have a ‘good eye’ not to lose sight of social reality, regardless of what his theories postulated. ¹¹⁶ The capacity shown by metaphors to evoke new ways of seeing the social world suggests that the critic may not only need a good eye to look at the world in front of her or him, but also to metaphorically formulate what this world could be like, and by doing so to make its incontestability more fragile. Turning back to Nietzsche’s metaphor, and putting it together with another of Walzer’s metaphors: one could conclude that if in social criticism, as in poetry, ‘the best reading…illuminates the poem in a more powerful and persuasive way’, ¹¹⁷ then metaphor is among those philological devices that may illuminate in a different way the one-sided reading of society and its interpretations that the philology of contemporary capitalism transforms into a law of nature.