metonymy4u

One natural way to get through this complicated life is to simplify questions. To turn unanswerable questions into answerable ones. For example, if you’re trying to decide whether buy stock in Volkswagen or Honda, you may ask yourself, “which company makes better cars?” But notice what happened. You didn’t answer the original question –“which company is the better investment?”– which is potentially a very difficult question on which a lot may depend. You substituted an easier question—“which car do I like better?” Likewise I found myself wondering today whether Foucault was a structuralist or an ironist? He analyzes history like a structuralist, but often writes like a poet. So which is it? Then I realized that I’d neglected, in this mental orgy of intellectual name-calling, a more difficult question: “Should I keep reading Foucault, who I find difficult and confusing at times?” Being somewhat averse to structuralist metaphors, if I had concluded that Foucault was a structuralist, I would have felt little anxiety about putting him down and dismissing him. Whereas if he is neither structuralist nor ironist, then it seems I have to face my inner demons straight up.