Politics Disguised; Disguising Politics

REVIEW BY SAMANTHA ARNOLD

Department of Politics, University of Winnipeg, Canada

Metaphorical World Politics. By Francis A. Beer and Christ’l De Landtsheer. East Lansing:Michigan State University Press, 2004. 288 pp., $29.95 (ISBN: 0-87013-726-3).

Metaphors matter. This is the central claim informing the chapters collected byFrancis Beer and Christ’l De Landtsheer in Metaphorical World Politics. Each in itsown way works to demonstrate just whyFand howFthis is so, and as such thisvolume will certainly be of interest to scholars exploring questions of representationin world politics. Among the most important points to take away from the editors’introductory chapter is that, even though metaphor may certainly perform a rhe-torical function, its significance in the context of an exploration of world politics liesinstead in its constitutive power. This is the difference between the view that met-aphor, or language in general, merely describes or reflects a world that is objectivelymeaningful and the view that language serves rather to constitute meanings thatmight appear self-evident.

Beer and De Landtsheer’s appreciation of the performative power of language(Austin 1975; Butler 1999) through metaphor is significant. It draws our attentionto an understanding of metaphor as a cognitive map, as an ongoing act of inter-pretation that frames perception and practice even as it is itself framed in andthrough perception and practice. As such, their reading of metaphors as productiveof systems of meaning usefully bypasses the often made but problematic distinctionbetween perception and misperceptionFa distinction that requires us to acceptthat meaning is independent of interpretation. Instead, they direct analytical at-tention to the political nature of the meaning. In this context, Beer and De Landts-heer correctly note that metaphors ‘‘are part of the political struggle for collectivemeaning, the interpretation of the forms or patterns of human political life’’ (p. 7).The significance of metaphor in politics, then, is that metaphor is politics. It is aboutthe contestation over meaning, and the struggle to both produce and naturalize it.The decision to entitle their volume Metaphorical World Politics rather than Metaphorand World Politics suggests that Beer and De Landtsheer perhaps share this view.

The view that metaphor is politics introduces power into the mix. As Foucault hasargued, power is not simply a repressive force; it is also a productive one. In hiswords, power ‘‘traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowl-edge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network whichruns through the whole social body’’ (Foucault 1984:60–61). The connection be-tween metaphor and this Foucauldian notion of power is recognized by Beer andDe Landtsheer, although not explicitly in these terms. They argue that the ‘‘powerto name is the power to identify and differentiateFto say what is the same and whatis differentFto define where boundaries begin and end, what is the form andtexture’’ (p. 22). Metaphors, they continue, play a part in this naming; if this is thecase, then the constitutive function of metaphor is in fact an exercise of, andthrough, power.

And yet, the implications of these important insights are left under-interrogated,both in the introductory chapter and in most that follow. Beer and De Landtsheersuggest in their opening paragraphs that, although increasing attention hasbeen paid to metaphor with respect to communication, language, literature, and

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International Studies Review (2005) 7, 636–638

rhetoric, ‘‘[m]etaphors in a political context have . . . received relatively little fo-cused academic attention’’ (p. 5). However, this claim is not sustainable whenmeasured against a considerable body of poststructural (or postmodern) scholar-ship that in fact has a great deal to say about the role played by language, rep-resentation, and, indeed, metaphor in world politics (among others, see Cohn1987a, 1987b; Shapiro 1989; Doty 1996; Bleiker 1997; Mutimer 1997; Campbell1998; Agathangelou and Ling 2004; Masters 2005). Some representative post-structural scholarship is acknowledged in Beer and De Landtsheer’s introductorychapter, but the breadth and significance of this scholarship is reduced therein to afew footnotes, and it is meaningfully addressed in only a limited way throughoutthe volume. This is unfortunate because a more sustained engagement with theinsights developed in this literature would have provided a more balanced readingof the state of the literature exploring metaphor and politics, or, perhaps more tothe point, metaphor as politics.

This is not to suggest that Metaphorical World Politics is without merit. On thecontrary, Beer and De Landtsheer’s discussion of metaphor in the context of worldpolitics has considerable promise. Their insights point toward the necessity of ex-ploring the ways in which the meanings that define ‘‘world politics’’ are produced,interpreted, contested, and reified. Indeed, as they note, ‘‘[m]etaphorical politicsare about the meaning of power, how power is interpreted. They are also about thepower of meaning, the persuasive consequences of such interpretation’’ (p. 7).What is lacking, however, is a more nuanced unpacking of these insights regardingmetaphor, politics, and power.

None of the chapters in this volume advances the view, rightly problematized byBeer and De Landtsheer, that metaphors are ‘‘essentially ornaments that may en-liven oral discourse and decorate written text without affecting its meaning’’ (p. 5).However, the treatment of metaphor in many of these chapters is open to preciselythis reading insofar as the political nature of metaphor is perhaps inadvertentlyflattened by a focus on the deployment of metaphor by political leaders, that is, onmetaphors as rhetorical strategies. Without denying that metaphors can be put, inan instrumental fashion, to political purposes (a practice that is neatly and variouslyhighlighted in this volume), and without denying the importance of such strategiesof ‘‘metaphorical world politics,’’ the instrumentalism that operates in many of thesechapters is problematic if metaphors are to be understood as produced in andproductive of systems of meaning. In suggesting that political leaders, or anyoneelse, can pick and choose among available metaphors (or perhaps create a new one)to achieve a particular purpose, the socialFand politicalFcontent of metaphoricalpolitics is emptied; metaphor must be meaningful to its audience. It operates in a‘‘market place’’ of competing meanings. The effect of metaphor thus transcends theintention of the political leader. Moreover, the instrumental deployment of met-aphor requires further that its meaning is fully containedFthat there be no mean-ing that ‘‘escapes’’ the intention of the actor.

What is missing from many of the chapters in Metaphorical World Politics, then, is asustained engagement with the politics of metaphor, in favor of explorations of thepolitical effects of metaphor. In other words, following on Roxanne Doty’s (1996:4)distinction between ‘‘why’’ and ‘‘how’’ questions, this volume focuses largely on the‘‘why’’ questions, which presuppose the social actors and meanings that make cer-tain practices possible. What is missing is greater attention to the ‘‘how’’ questions,which challenge us to consider how it is possible that actors are constituted as actorsin the first place, and how particular meanings become attached to their practices.‘‘How’’ questions are thus questions about powerFhow it is constituted, practiced,reproduced, and made meaningful. Asking the ‘‘how’’ questions about metaphorsreveals the powerFand struggleFthat is at work in the production of meaning.Whose meanings become self-evident? And perhaps more importantly, who isprivileged as a result, and who is marginalized? What possibilities for global politics

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are enabled and foreclosed? It is in the asking of these questions that metaphors aspolitics, as opposed to the politics of metaphors, can be laid bare.

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