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UDK 32:81'373.612.2
Jernej PIKALO, Petra PODOBNIKAR*
METAPHOR AS A POLITICAL TECHNOLOGY
Abstract. Discussions of political metaphors provide 
fertile grounds for understanding issues in political the-
ory and political practice. The article departs from the 
established theoretical and methodological approaches 
to political metaphor (e.g., classical, conceptual, herme-
neutical, cognitive) to introduce (post)structuralist and 
(post)Marxist methodological and theoretical bases. It 
maintains that the established approaches to the study 
of functionalities and ontologies of political metaphors 
are possible, primarily by researching their functioning 
in political discourses and as events in the power/truth 
dispositive. Metaphors can be researched as specific 
political technologies (strategies of power) that influ-
ence/create regimes of truth.
Keywords: political metaphors, political theory, linguis-
tic theory, political discourse, power, knowledge
Introduction
In Poetics, Aristotle points to the usefulness of a metaphor by emphasis-
ing its creative potential and character. Contrary to Aristotle, by employing 
rigorous grammatical analysis classical linguists reduce metaphor to a mere 
figure of speech, an ornament of language, with no added functionalities. 
Later, cognitive linguists and proponents of hermeneutics ‘rediscovered’ the 
functionalities of the metaphor that stretch beyond language. Contemporary 
approaches to metaphor, e.g., Georg Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual 
metaphor, Paul Ricoeurs’ hermeneutics of metaphor, Andrew Ortony’s or 
Raymond W. Gibbs’ interest in metaphor within cognitive science, con-
sider it as a much more useful ‘tool’ that yields knowledge about the world 
beyond words, while revealing social and political schemata that are not 
immediately clear. Nonetheless, research on metaphor largely remains con-
fined to the linguistic and cognitive theoretical approaches. 
The aim of this article is to move beyond the well-established theoreti-
cal and methodological approaches and position metaphor as ‘political’, 
*
 
Jernej Pikalo, PhD, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Petra 
Podobnikar, MA, Teaching Assistant, Faculty of Public Administration, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
 
DOI: 10.51936/tip.60.4.814 

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thereby opening it up in terms of its functionality. By constructing a politi-
cal metaphor anew, we seek to establish a theoretical and methodological 
alternative to the existing approaches and widen the possible scope of meta-
phor for analysing socio-political realities. The dominant linguistic and cog-
nitive methodological framing of metaphor, where metaphor is understood 
as part of language formation, as a tool of language and communication, 
will be re-considered in line with (post)Marxist and (post)structuralist meth-
odology. Further, the re-examination of different theories of metaphors – 
classical and contemporary – will enable us to open the field of the meta-
metaphorical and grasp social and political phenomena differently. We shall 
argue that the conception of ‘political metaphor’ based upon Foucauldian 
power relations goes beyond the word-games or textual analyses offered by 
hermeneutics and, when entering the field of politics, metaphor becomes a 
political technology. In this sense, metaphor in the interplay of diverse dis-
courses sheds light on specific socio-political relationships. 
We argue that linguistic, cognitive and hermeneutical traditions lack 
the power to elaborate the ‘real’ potential/effect of a metaphor. We try to 
demonstrate that metaphor is more than just a linguistic structure and is 
more an event, thus a discursive practice. Drawing from the Foucauldian 
methodological position and its theoretical concepts, we try to ‘reveal’ the 
metaphor’s material effect, which is broader than word-based or thought-
based metaphor theories. Within this framework, we attempt to formulate a 
concept of metaphor as a political technology, the point where we basically 
‘ground’ our notion of metaphor as a ‘circular relationship’ of power and 
truth – as a discursive construction that indicates a certain socio-political 
reality or ‘determines’ what is to be tru(th)e. The (post)Marxist account of 
language and Foucauldian conceptualisation of power will act as the start-
ing point to position metaphor as a political technology.
Methodological framing of metaphor 
The initial question in our considerations is whether we can think about 
metaphor beyond its widely accepted and deeply rooted linguistic tradi-
tion. Most of the modern theories of metaphor, whether addressing its sig-
nificance within social, cultural, cognitive, neural etc. fields, generally just 
‘broaden’ the linguistic approach; namely, the semantics and semiotics of 
language. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of metaphor and Lakoff and Johnson’s 
conceptual metaphor, for example, provide a notion that partially exceeds 
‘classical’ definitions. Their understanding of metaphor is based on the the-
ory of language that is creative and fluid in nature, yet does not go beyond 
the linguistic field since it reduces discourse to statements or text (as basic 
units of language). This implies the existence of a homogeneity of meaning: 

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a ‘hermeneutic circulation’ between text and context or a ‘cognitive func-
tion’ revealing the ‘hidden meaning’. A methodological ‘re-framing’ of meta-
phor seems to be essential for ‘deconstructing’ the linguistic dominance of 
the understanding of metaphor. A re-examination of metaphor at the inter-
section of three methodological positions – hermeneutical, archaeological, 
genealogical, and partly also (cognitive) linguistics – calls for metaphor to 
be established in the sphere of discourse to be able to reveal its ability to 
(re)produce socio-political effects and hence point to its ability to transform 
socio-political events.
Hermeneutical position, primarily in Gadamer’s “hermeneutic circle”, 
Ba(k)htin/Voloshinov’s “dialogical hermeneutics”, and Ricoeur’s “hermeneu-
tics of suspicion”, provide fertile grounds for breaking with the monological 
understanding of language. Hermeneutics shows that metaphor has a role/
function in creating the socio-political reality by giving meanings to things and 
events, that it can represent them in a certain way, and expose certain mean-
ings and conceal others. Ricoeur’s (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983) “hermeneu-
tic of suspicions” assumes that individuals do not have direct access to the 
meaning of their own discourses and practices, but, and here Ricoeur remains 
Heideggerian, an essential continuity exists between everyday intelligibility 
and certain profound intelligibility, which everyday views tend to mask. The 
interpretation, as Gadamer (Ricoeur, 1974: 107; Wilson and Hutchinson, 1991; 
Laverty, 2003) puts it, is the process of discovering/revealing new forms of 
being; the hermeneutics is “dialectical circulation” between discovering the 
world and self-understanding. It is the articulation and revealing of profound, 
deep meanings (McGaughey, 1988: 423). Ricoeur acknowledges that we can 
really identify/discern the meaning, or it can be disclosed, only with a con-
sideration of the specific context of the text. Despite the important conclu-
sion drawn by Ricoeur – only in context can meaning be known – language 
remains, as Gadamer (2004: 389) notes, the “universal medium” for discover-
ing knowledge/understanding: only through language can we see Sache, the 
Thing itself, the truth that one seeks to comprehend. According to Gadamer 
(Grondin, 2006: 16–19), the interpretation is not subjective, which the author 
has intended, but the reality of a particular (historical) event. Interpretation 
does not appear as such and instead disappears into the work itself:
[…] understanding is always more than merely re-creating someone 
else’s meaning. Questioning opens up possibilities of meaning, and thus 
what is meaningful passes into one’s own thinking on the subject […] To 
reach an understanding in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting 
oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point of view, but 
being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what 
we were. (Gadamer, 2004: 368–371)

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Gadamer’s “hermeneutic circle” and Voloshinov’s “dialectical her-
meneutic” break with the tradition of the existence of full transparency 
of language. Language and meaning (truth) become a question of the 
human experience. Bahtin (Dovič, 2002), with the “dialogical construction 
of language” whereby dialogue is understood as a minimal unit of actual 
language, made it very clear that language is not to be understood in an 
atomised sense, but as a communicative–social interaction (Dolinar, 1996; 
Bahtin and Voloshinov, 2005). The meaning is therefore the effect of this 
inter-action. Bahtin’s (2003: 270–272) concept of heteroglosia points to what 
hermeneutics is lacking and what later became Foucault’s major point of 
critique of the hermeneutical approach. Heteroglosia implies the multiplic-
ity of languages as various forms of social speech and other rhetorical tools. 
Multiplicity does not refer to the heterogeneity and multiplicity of the mean-
ing of words and phrases based on the signifier/signify distinction, but on 
strategies, as various ways of speaking and rhetorical strategies, which are 
immanent to every statement (Bahtin, 2002: 270–272).
Hermeneutics and cognitive linguistics position metaphor as a “crea-
tive thought” (Lakoff and Johnson) or “creative language” (Ricouer). For 
Ricoeur (1973: 97), the “extraordinary attribute of words is their capability 
of meaning more than one thing”. He sees the strategic nature of language 
in its three components: sentence as an actual carrier of the meaning and 
the whole creativity of language, polysemy as the potential creativity of the 
word, and metaphor as the third strategy of discourse, the poetic (Ricoeur, 
1973). While Ricouer finds that polysemy and deep meanings are immanent 
to language, its creative character or even excess of meaning – the strategy 
of language – Foucault sees power relations as a strategy immanent to every 
discourse. Although Foucault and Ricoeur agree that individual can see what 
an everyday behaviour means, he can even detect its deepest meanings 
masked by its everyday behaviour, “what neither he, nor authority direct-
ing the hermeneutical exegesis can see, is what exegetical situation is doing 
to both of them and why” (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 124). For Foucault 
(Mottier in Pikalo and Carver, 2008: 186), the production of meaning is part 
of the wider discursive practices, institutions and power relations, and the 
point where hermeneutics and Foucault’s archaeology and genealogy part 
ways. His formulation of a statement as a non-linguistic entity (as discourse), 
a statement as an event, positions metaphor in the field of power relations: 
To describe a group of statements not as the closed, plethoric totality 
of a meaning, but as an incomplete, fragmented figure; to describe a 
group of statements not with reference to the interiority of an inten-
tion, a thought, or a subject, but in accordance with the dispersion of 
an exteriority; to describe a group of statements, in order to rediscover 

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not the moment or the trace of their origin, but the specific forms of an 
accumulation, is certainly not to uncover an interpretation, to discover 
a foundation, or to free constituent acts; nor is it to decide on a rational-
ity, or to embrace a teleology. It is to establish what I am quite willing to 
call positivity. To analyse a discursive formation therefore is to deal with 
a group of verbal performances at the level of the statements and of the 
form of positivity that characterizes them; or, more briefly, it is to define 
the type of positivity of a discourse. (Foucault, 1972: 125)
Foucault’s statement – as a discursive formation – is a historical analysis 
of the effects of a specific discourse on the socio-political reality. Foucault 
eliminates what hermeneutics are so eager to find, the profound and pen-
etrating (Kuhn and Foucault, 2010a): “in the statement is not to find the 
unsaid, or what they are hiding. The proper question is the way on which 
they exist, the conditions of their existence” (Foucault, 1972: 119; Dreyfus 
and Rabinow, 1983: 11). Foucault clearly shows that the statement should 
be analysed on the level of production of the effects. A statement seen as an 
event (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 45; Fubion, 1954/1984: xxii) is Foucault’s 
disposition, whereby power relations penetrate – produce, reproduce and 
transform – the whole socio-political reality. The polysemy that hermeneu-
tics advocates is about searching for a new meaning. As such, it remains on 
the level of the sentence or semantic field. Words can produce heterogene-
ous meanings and constructions, yet remain on the level of a statement, even 
as polysemy (Foucault, 1972: 120). The unsaid, hidden or subtle, which inter-
est hermeneutics, are also significant for an archaeologist according to what 
appears on the surface (uttered/said). Still, an archaeologist of discourse 
also analyses it as an effect of discourse, a “statement is always an event, that 
neither the language nor the meaning can’t quite exhaust” (Foucault, 1972: 
28). Archaeology analyses statements as systems of heterogeneous sets, gov-
erned by certain rules (rules of formations). Foucault’s statement is not an 
isolated atom, but is constituted in the field of power relations – a statement 
not depending on linguistic elements (words and sentences) that deter-
mine its content, but on the constellations of power. That is where a state-
ment emerges (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 54–55). Foucault’s fundamental 
objective is to “determine specific forms of articulation” in archaeological 
writings qua power, as power relations in genealogy. With the “politics of 
the scientific statement” as a singular event, Foucault implies that discourse 
is a “constitution of different elements” – it is a singular event, yet simul-
taneously draws on heterogeneous forces; the referential, the subject (the 
positions he occupies), the field of enunciation where statements enter in 
the specific relationships, and the repeatable materiality to which the state-
ments are subjected (Foucault, 2002: 112; Dolar, 2010: 60). 

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Instead of being something said once and for all – and lost in the past 
like the result of a battle, a geological catastrophe, or the death of a king 
– the statement, as it emerges in its materiality, appears with a status, 
enters various net works and various fields of use, is subjected to trans-
ferences or modi fications, is integrated into operations and strategies 
in which its identity is maintained or effaced. Thus the statement circu-
lates, is used, disappears, allows or prevents the realization of a desire, 
serves or resists various in terests, participates in challenge and struggle, 
and becomes a theme of appropriation or rivalry. (Foucault: 1972: 105)
Foucault’s statement-event shows the immanence of power. The power 
as a strategy that penetrates all human practices – his language, cognition, 
institution, conducts, truth and body, the point where metaphor emerges 
within the “strategic play of power”, thus as a specific political technology. 
The hermeneutical assumption of ‘deep’, contextual understanding of 
discourse implies the existence of a homogeneous discourse and in turn 
the possibility of determining a homogenous meaning. Cognitive linguists 
and hermeneutics disregard the broader socio-political context. Metaphor is 
reduced to the unit of a statement outlining how meaning is constituted in 
the given communication interaction (Mottier, 2008), that is, how metaphor 
structures human cognition and perception. The socio-political effects that 
metaphors produce are not taken into account – reinforcing, reproducing 
or undermining power (Mottier, 2008). Foucault’s methodological account 
of the archaeology and genealogy of discourses enables an explication 
of the strategic notion of metaphor. The concept of event through which 
Foucault explains the “constitution” and function of discourse, and the one 
of power, opens up the possibility to think and construct metaphor also out-
side of language as a political technology. 
Metaphor – beyond semiotics towards semantics 
Contemporary theories of metaphor are chiefly based on the semiotics 
of language where metaphor is reduced to a figure/trope (of speech). The 
focus for ‘non-classical’ theorists of metaphor is to move beyond the syn-
chronic notion of metaphor, namely, the existence of a fundamental differ-
ence between literal and metaphorical language – the proper and the figu-
rative. With his interaction theory (1954: 293), Max Black was probably the 
first to attempt to resolve this deeply rooted classical assumption. Interaction 
theory of metaphor tries to demonstrate that meaning is produced in certain 
relations, in an interactional relationship between “the undivided meaning of 
the statement and the focused meaning of the word”. (Ricoeur, 2003: 98). The 
metaphorical function is to select, accent, supress or organise the features of 

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the primary subject referring to the statement of the secondary subject. For 
Black (Ricoeur, 1981: 89; Ortony, 1933: 21–33), metaphor is not a deviant nam-
ing, but the “unordinary usage of predicate” (Ricoeur, 1986: VI). However, 
remaining within the proper–figurative dichotomy, Black proposed that an 
actual distinction between them is not possible. As a result, using the proper 
or a more suitable word means the “loss of cognitive content” (Black, 1954: 
293; Zashin and Chapman, 1974: Massen, 1995; Miller, 1992), implying that 
the ‘interaction metaphor’ cannot substitute the literal meaning without the 
original meaning (cognitive content) being lost. George Lakoff and Mark 
Johnson in Metaphors we live by (1980/2003) subsequently extensively ana-
lysed the cognitive function of the metaphor. Cognitive linguists generally 
assume that metaphor is the way of thinking and understanding the reality. 
Apart from creating the reality, metaphor is the mental processing of things 
and events, since reality is irreducibly metaphorical. The metaphorical is an 
immanent “moment” in every thought (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003). In 
this sense, language becomes an extremely dynamic concept where the cog-
nitive potential of the human mind enables diverse ‘colours’, perceptions 
and understandings. Lakoff and Johnson ontologically position metaphor 
within the relation of perception (the question of the nature of human cog-
nition) and text (sentence). Language is the mirror-image of the operational 
and organisational modes of mind: “ontological mapping across domains, 
that is ontological mapping through source domain, from target domain” 
(Lakoff and Johnson, 1989/2003: 246; Lakoff, 1993: 278; Walter and Helmig, 
2008: 125). Metaphorical meaning appears with the conceptual metaphori-
cal mappings ultimately “originating” from the relation (correspondences) 
in our bodily experience, that is, from the (nature of) the body, interactions 
in the physical experiences and cultural practices (Lakoff and Johnson, 
1980/2003). Accordingly, the aim of ‘conceptual theory’ is to demonstrate 
that metaphor is essentially a conceptual and not a linguistic entity, it ‘exists’ 
in thoughts (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980/2003; Lakoff, 1993: 320) and arises 
from the process of reasoning. Neural theories of language similarly suggest 
that metaphor emerges in the neurological networks as an “effect” of neural 
circuits (Feldman, 2003: Xii; Gibbs, 2008).
If metaphor is the way of thinking, then metaphorical expressions are 
inherently related to the conceptual system that is intrinsic (connected) to 
perception, cultural practices etc. Cognitive theories of metaphor suggest 
that metaphors influence our perception of socio-political events. While 
objective reality is mainly contested on the grounds of the power of human 
cognition, the aspect that neither cognitive linguists nor hermeneutics con-
sider is the diversity of human practices and specific discourses (images, 
systems, authorities etc.) that produce, constitute and transform the entire 
socio-political »body«.

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The existence of the literal, proper meaning implies the existence of an 
objective world where language occurs as uniform, constituted by transpar-
ent entities; language as inter-subjectively and trans-subjectively uniform 
(Pikalo, 2008: 41–54; cf. Pušnik, 2022: 315; cf. Kokol and Pikalo, 2015: 1091). 
This classical notion of language assumes that the language–mind relation-
ship is univocal and transparent, whereby any irrationalities in language are 
the effects of its deviant usage, possibly occurring as metaphor. We could 
argue that in Poetics and Rhetoric Aristotle ‘invents’ metaphor as a rhetor-
ical figure. By associating metaphor with a noun or a word rather than a 
discourse, Aristotle set the orientation vis-à-vis poetics and rhetoric for cen-
turies (Ricoeur, 1981: 16; Aristoteles, 1959). However, at the same time the 
Aristotelian definition of metaphor is quite distinct: it has a unique struc-
ture (word) but two different functions, rhetorical and poetical – that of 
trope and that of epiphora. In Ricoeur’s opinion, epiphora – which means 
transposition – indirectly implies the semantic essence of a discourse. In 
Rhetoric, Aristotle (2004, 139) suggested the following conceptualisation of 
metaphor, as epiphora:
Liveliness is specially conveyed by metaphor, and by the further power 
of surprising the hearer; because the hearer expected something differ-
ent, his acquisition of the new idea impresses him all the more… Well-
constructed riddles are attractive for the same reason; a new idea is con-
veyed, and there is metaphorical expression.
In metaphor, Aristotle ‘fused’ two seemingly distinct elements, the stra-
tegic one (rhetorical, as techne of speech): “to make things visible/vivid” as 
they were in action (Aristotle, 2004), and as meaning, as making sense of it 
(the proper meaning of the word). In this context, in the strategic play of 
discourse Aristotle introduces the logical power of analogy and power of 
comparison – the power of making things visible, the power of speaking of 
the inanimate (Ricoeur, 1981: 43). 
Ricoeur bases his theory of metaphor as a metaphorical reference on 
Aristotelian poetics, where metaphor is defined as mimemis, Frege’s divi-
sion between meaning and reference, and Benvestine’s ‘extension’ of refer-
ence to extra-linguistic reality – indicating the shift from semiotics to seman-
tics. While semiotics applies to the inner relations of language – relations 
between signs, semantics alludes to the relation between sign and signifi-
cation, namely, between language and the world (Benvestine, 1988: 36). 
Hermeneutics has two important distinctions when defining a discourse. 
Saussurean semantics, which excludes the denotative function of language, 
analyses the signification, the thing itself – the relationship between the 
“thing” and reality (Ricoeur, 1981: 125; Benvestine, 1988: 60; Howarth, 2000: 

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11) and that of the semantics of the word, when meaning becomes appar-
ent, realised or transformed only within the mediation of the whole state-
ment/sentence, which relates to the contextualisation of the word within 
the statement. Indicating the important shift from the figure-word based 
theory to the sentence-based theory (semantics), hermeneutics formulates 
metaphor as “work in miniature” since both text and metaphor, world and 
word fall under the one and same category, that of discourse (Ricoeur, 1974: 
97; 1981, 217–256). Where the word and sentence are two poles of a single 
semantic entity, together alone they form a meaning and reference. In the 
‘position’ of the reference (extra-linguistic reality or the object), metaphors 
hold the power to transform reality. Discourse alludes to the extra-linguistic 
reality, i.e., to its referent, “…the shift of meaning which needs the contribu-
tion of the whole text, effects on words…” (Ricoeur, 1974: 96). 
Ricoeur uses the Aristotelian notion of tragedy to further elaborate the 
hermeneutical understanding of metaphor – the undividable relationship 
between muthos (Aristotelian conception of the story, narration) and lexis 
(the reference) where the meaning of metaphor is only possible within 
muthos, that is, within the discourse as a whole. In the Ricoeurian defini-
tion, the ‘power’ of metaphor is lexis, namely the reference, but a meta-
phorical sense is solely possible in the immanent relation to the whole text 
(Aristotelian muthos) (Ricoeur, 1973; 1981: 259–280). Understanding of the 
work as a whole provides the ‘key’ to the metaphor (Ricoeur, 1973: 107), 
the interpretation – hermeneutical circle – unveils the new form of being, 
i.e., the metaphor. Ricoeur’s positioning of metaphor in the sphere of refer-
ences to co-construct the world and Aristotle’s notion of mimesis (Greek, to 
unveil the world) establishes the strategic ‘nature’ of metaphor – fabrication, 
construction and creation (Ricoeur, 1973: 109). Ricoeur’s metaphor exists at 
the intersection of the story (discourse), its distinctive parts and as diction 
(reference), which directs and creates it at the same time. 
The (post)Marxist and (post)structural implications for metaphor 
Poststructuralist and (post)Marxist theory and ontology allow for an inno-
vative conceptualisation of metaphor that moves away from the tradition of 
the linguistic, conceptual and hermeneutic theory of metaphor. Foucault’s 
archaeology and genealogy of power and discourse show the possibility of 
re-inventing metaphor within discourse theory. Foucault’s notion of state-
ment, as a non-linguistic entity, as an assemblage/set of articulations and 
actualisations, that is, specific forms which culminate in discourse, posi-
tion metaphor in the field of ‘power relations’. Discussing metaphor as an 
element of Foucault’s discourse, produced within the immanence of the 
power-knowledge structure, is an innovative approach that allows us to 

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differently evaluate the role and power of metaphor within the political. To 
do so, Jakobson and De Saussure’s structural theory of language must be 
taken into account. This is also a point of departure from hermeneutics (and 
cognitive linguist) discourse, and of entry to the (post)Marxist and (post)
structuralist ‘definition’ of language/discourse where metaphor ‘becomes’ a 
practice of language and is hence epistemologically effective. 
De Saussure’s structural linguistic theory develops the “relational theory 
of language”. Language is a ‘system of differences’ where meaning and iden-
tity are produced within the (relational) relationship of signifier and signi-
fied. De Saussure breaks with the transparency of language in relation to 
the object, which lies at the heart of hermeneutics. The structure, the sym-
bolic order, as a ‘empty field’ of variation of relations (Lacan and Deleuze, 
2004), or the Foucauldian (2010a) ‘radical event’ – the play of differences – 
is what determines the sense, meaning, reality and truth (cf. Foucault, 1994: 
217) Language is arbitrary. All that exists is only its function and conven-
tion. De Saussure (in Howarth, 2000: 19; de Saussure, 1977: 81) draws on 
the notion of language, where there is no natural relationship between the 
signifier and signified: “in language there are just differences…the system of 
language is a set of differences … and in a particular set of differences the 
system of values emerges” (de Saussure, 1974: 81). The relational and dif-
ferential concept of language is an essential element of structuralism: every 
structure represents two aspects, a system of differential relations in which 
the symbolic elements are mutually determined and the system of singu-
larity that corresponds to these relations and delineates the space of struc-
ture (Deleuze, 2004). If we simplify the Deleuzian notion and use Foucault’s 
conception of discourse, the symbolic order or the structure as a relational 
relationship determines the position of the subject (Foucault, 2010a; 2003). 
Meaning (sense) arises from the combination of the elements that in them-
selves hold no meaning. Ducrot (1988; Šumič-Riha, 1988: 51) made a similar 
assumption: in discourse, there are rules and forces which are not outside 
the discourse (‘the material reality’), but are immanent to every discourse, 
they are not decisive for his discourse, but constitute the discursive situation 
itself in which discourse proceeds from the relationship with the speaker.
From the de Saussurean structural principle of language as autonomous 
order, Ducrot develops the theory of discourse as a historical event. The 
statement is an event; “the realisation of the statement is the historic event, 
that is the emergence of a statement”, and Ducrot (1988: 178) regards that 
emergence as an “enunciation”, neither as an act nor as someone’s posses-
sion, but the fact of the emergence of the statement. Ducrot’s (1988: 241) 
polyphonic theory of discourse refutes the conception where subject is the 
ultimate author, the producer of the statement, and the source of meaning. 
The statement has a ‘gap’ – the meaning of the statement is never identical 

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to what the speaker ought/intended to say (Ducrot, 1988: 260). The state-
ment is never identical to enunciation. “Communication thought” is never 
the same as the thought of the speaking subject – what was said/uttered 
is never identical to the ‘thing’ that the speaking subject intended (Ducrot, 
1988: 260). 
The meaning of a statement is constituted within the culmination of 
different elements of discourse, where the simplest sentence is produced 
through dialogue, and not with the authority of a subject. The ‘performative’ 
statement influences reality. In a similar manner, Voloshinov and Bahtin 
(2005) underlined the historical aspect of discourse production, somehow 
trivial to Saussure’s hegemony of the sign, as Ricoeur notes. Voloshin’s ‘ideo-
logical turn’ in language and Bahtin’s dialogical nature of language enabled 
language to be ‘bound’ to reality, to think language as neither an instrument 
nor a grammatical element, but in its effective function, as an articulation of 
reality. Voloshinov understands sign in its ‘ideological charge’, the moment 
that allows language to be connected to the material reality of human psy-
chological and social practices. Although language is not a simple reflection 
of reality as objectivists would claim, it is a grasping of reality through lan-
guage, which as practical consciousness pervades all social ‘being’; language 
is an articulation of active and changing experiences in the world (Williams, 
2005: 136). Consequently, meaning is an inevitable social act, depending on 
social relationships (Williams, 2005: 136). Bahtinian language is immanently 
ideological and material. Opposing de Saussure’s ‘hegemony’ of structure/
form, Bahtin (2005, 17) thinks of language as a practice: language-speaking 
is not an abstract system of linguistic forms, nor an isolated monological 
statement, not even a psychophysiological act of its realisation. Language is 
a social event of speaking inter-action that is realised within the statement 
and statements. Speech as a ‘living dialogue’ (Bahtin and Vološinov, 2005: 
61) is an essential reality of language.
Structure, the symbolic order in Lacanian and Deleuzean’s “language”, 
is the moment where the imaginary is eliminated from the language. The 
structure determines the meaning. It is determined in the series of differ-
ences, in the relations between the signifier and signified (not in the rela-
tion to the object), the precise relation that determines the identity, the 
very truth. Meaning/sense arises from the combination of elements that are 
shifted through the structure and which by themselves have no meaning. 
Jakobson’s structuralist notion of language depicts specific implications of 
metaphor (and metonymy). Metaphor and metonymy are not perceived 
as figures of imagination, but fundamental structural ‘components’ – indi-
cating movement from one series to another and within the same series 
(Deleuze, 2004). In Laclau’s view, Jakobson provides the ground for a stra-
tegic notion of discourse. Ricoeur also indicates that with the broadening 

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of the de Saussurean model of language Jakobson allows metaphor to 
enter into discourse. Jakobson’s theory of two types of aphasic disturbances 
defines the constitution and workings of discourse. The mutual implica-
tion of ‘metaphoric chain’ and ‘metonymic mesh’ form a specific discourse 
where Laclau (2009) sees the totalisation effects on discourse. The function-
ing of language through two different operations, combination and contex-
tualisation, by which the sign obtains its location and selection and substitu-
tion, by which the sign can be replaced, indicates the mutual implication of 
metaphor and metonymy (Jakobson, 1989/1996: 89). This brings rhetorical 
categories to their specific locations (Laclau, 2009: 6), whereby metaphor 
and metonymy are not just figures among others, but as Laclau (2009: 6) 
points out, the two fundamental matrices around which all other figures 
and tropes should be ordered. Jakobson ‘models’ a movement of discourse 
on the axis of similarity and association, the aphasia on both axes results in 
the concentration on either axis (Jakobson, 1989/1996: 89). Fixation of the 
meaning for Jakobson always depends on the wider sets of cultural prac-
tices (specific individual styles, practices and habits).
Laclau’s discourse is immanently constituted as a ‘mixture’ of metaphor-
metonymy circulation, intersected by rhetoric as a dimension of significa-
tion that has no limits in its field of operation (Laclau, 2009). Accordingly, 
Laclau indicates that discourse is every practice of signification connected 
to social life. As there is no distinction between the signification and activ-
ity (Laclau and Muffe, 1985; Laclau, 2009), if words, actions and effects are 
interdependent networks, then the de Saussurean categories signifier/signi-
fied, paradigmatic/syntagmatic aspect quit being linguistic categories as the 
synchronic method anticipates. In Laclau’s (2009) opinion, if we theorise 
them appropriately, these categories could define relations at work in the 
field of common ontology; otherwise, rhetoric could not be ontologically 
constitutive. If we think of any identity or truth as a construction, then we 
are implying shifts/crossing from metaphor to metonymy: from the start-
ing point of association (metonymic relation) to its consolidation in analogy 
(metaphoric relation) (Laclau, 2009). This is how the construction of a spe-
cific identity or hegemonic discourse is created. 
We have tried to show that Ducrot, Voloshinov and Bahtin provide the 
grounds for thinking about metaphor as part of the wider discursive prac-
tices. This connects with Foucault’s conceptualisation of metaphor within 
power strategies. Bahtin and Voloshinov’s notion of language as being dia-
logically “produced” and their “disclosure” of a sign in its immanent material-
ity is valuable. Bahtin with heteroglosia (opposite to monological language) 
introduces the idea that language is a strategy, implying that diverse strate-
gies are displayed in language. Thus, heterogeneous meanings, which are 
reflected in language similar to Ricoeur’s notion of the inherent creativity 

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of language, demonstrate that language reveals/indicates social speech/
language, which shows the ideological and material ‘nature’ of a sign. 
In this sense, sign is not a linguistic element, but a social event of speech 
interactions that is realised in the statement. Language in this diachronic 
perspective is a social practice. With Bahtinian’s “dialogical language” and 
Voloshinov’s “ideological sign”, metaphor ‘clashes’ with the very materiality.
In the last part of this article, we show that neither Bahtin nor Foucault con-
sider structure to be perfectly homogenous and uniform. In the Foucauldian 
sense, power (relations) penetrate the entire socio-political body. In the 
Bahtinian and Voloshinov senses, “social sign” is produced within (and 
a product of) the “arena of class struggles”. Discourses are material, they 
emerge in different relations, and in the language interaction: language is 
a social event of language interactions, realised with statement(s) (Bahtin, 
2005: 61). Ducrot similarly considers a statement as an historic event, where 
precisely the appearance of this statement is an enunciation (Ducrot, 1988: 
178). Consequently, the meaning of a statement is apparent within the con-
frontation and crossing of different voices (Ducrot’s polyphonic theory). It is 
constituted within the culmination of various discourses. If we acknowledge 
Voloshinov’s “ideological sign”, or go along with Bahtin’s heteroglossia, or if 
we argue with Foucault and Ducrot’s conception of discourse: a statement is 
an event where language as everything uttered/enunciated (Ducrot) and said 
(Foucault) induces/effects and enables discourses. Metaphor can thus depart 
from the linguistic tradition and definitions. Ducrot, Voloshinov and Bahtin 
provide the basis for a strategic notion of metaphor. In Laclau’s explanation 
of the totalisation of discourse, strategic metaphoric-metonymic movements, 
shifts and intersections, constitute hegemonic discourse or (temporarily) 
determine particular political identity. For Laclau, discourse or hegemonic 
identity ‘resides’ at the intersection/crossroads of metaphor and metonymy 
as strategic movements or continuous antagonisms that form discourses on 
one or the other side of ‘the end’. Language as a system of differences, where 
‘antagonism’ is failure of difference, can exists only in its interruptions – that 
is as metaphor (Laclau, 1985).
Metaphor as a political technology 
In Foucault’s formulation of discourse, statement as an event shows two 
aspects of discourse: contingency and historical development in language. 
Foucault asserts that the historicity of the statement must be restored and 
so it is developed in the relations of power rather than in the relations of 
meaning (Foucault, 2008: 116). A statement as a series of what is actually 
said, written or uttered, on its surface (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 45) is 
Foucault’s “order of discourse” (2008: 26) – that is, the nature of the event 

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and nullification of the signifier
1
. Although Foucault never addressed the 
function of metaphor within discourse, we can draw certain methodologi-
cal/theoretical conclusions from his work: metaphor should be analysed on 
the level of event, which contradicts/negates the assumption of the origin; 
metaphor should be analysed as a series of enunciations in contrast to the 
metaphor as a unit of the statement; regularities should be traced in contrast 
to the original/identity or the original meaning; identification of the con-
ditions for the possibility of emergence in contrast with identification of 
the real meaning. Discourse in Foucault’s (2008: 116) sense does not refer 
to the unsaid or not meant, but to discontinuity, involving all practices that 
intersect or fuse, ignore or exclude; it does not dwell on the interplay of 
meanings of a certain pre-discursiveness. Discourse is a practice and within 
this practice discursive events acquire the principle of their regularity – i.e., 
the discourse does not imply truth, meaning or sense, but on the level of 
discourse itself its conditions of existence can be detected. In this vein, a 
metaphor is neither a figure, a tool nor a word whose essence is to produce 
diverse and multiple meanings. Being intrinsic to discourse, metaphor is the 
culmination of different discursive practices and articulations. It must be 
examined as a singular event that neither language nor meaning can exhaust 
(cf. Foucault, 2002: 130). In Foucault’s event, there is immanent contingency 
in its singularity. This means that reasoning about metaphor should be out-
side the ‘meaning–perception’ (trans)formative role and instead take met-
aphor as an epistemological determinant that produces (communicates) 
knowledge of the world and to the world. 
In line with Foucault’s reasoning, metaphor seems to be immanent to 
every discourse. As such, it becomes epistemologically productive/effec-
tive. Similarly as with knowledge, power is always present:
Power must […] be analyzed as something that circulates, or rather as 
something that functions only when it is part of a chain. It is never local-
ized here or there, it is never in the hands of some, and it is never appro-
priated in the way that wealth or a commodity can be appropriated. 
Power functions. Power is exercised through networks, and individuals 
do not simply circulate in those networks; they are in a position to both 
submit to and exercise this power. They are never the inert or consenting 
targets of power; they are always its relays. In other words, power passes 
through individuals. It is not applied to them. (Foucault, 2003a: 29)
1 
Foucault’s subject is to be analysed as a complex discursive function. The proper question is not 
who speaks, but the real question we should pose is to identify the modes of discourse, that is, the different 
modalities of enunciation: “[…] discourse is not majestically unfolding manifestation of thinking, knowing, 
speaking subject, but, on the contrary a totality in which dispersion of a subject and his discontinuity with 
himself may be determined” (Foucault, 1972: 55).

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Foucault’s “analytics of power” stresses that every discourse is a consti-
tution/product of power relations (and produces them). Discourses in this 
sense are “transparent” (Kelly, 2009) and the question is no longer what the 
unsaid or the real meaning is, but for whom it serves (Foucault, 2008: 119; 
Kelly, 2009). Discourse as a set of discursive practices outlines the “nature 
of metaphor and metaphorical” – in every statement there are circulations 
of power and its effects (Foucault, 2008: 114–115). As we observed with 
Laclau’s (2009: 75) assertion that metaphoric-metonymic movement is what 
is immanent to discourse, i.e., the inherent strategic play that temporarily 
determines the ‘hegemonic discourse’ (sublime metaphorical fixation) and 
at the same time acknowledges its contingency (moderate metonymic asso-
ciation), Foucault’s notion of power – present in any relationship and rela-
tion (Kelly, 2009; Foucault, 2010b), it is relational and dispersed, intentional 
and non-subjective (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 187; Foucault, 2010b) – pro-
vides the grounds for taking the strategies of metaphorical and metaphor 
even further. It is not about the production of additional/surplus meanings 
that ought to be analysed, but that procedures, techniques and technologies 
are the new ways of examining metaphor. In turn, the real question is what 
kind of relations is a metaphor producing in particular socio-political con-
texts, how it inscribes itself into the socio-political body. Metaphor should 
be examined within the “meshes of power” or “economies of power” (cf. 
Foucault, 2008: 120). Metaphor should be examined as a specific strategy of 
power: as a game of strategies that are mobile, transformative and reversible, 
including relationships between the people and relationships that they have 
with themselves (Foucault, 2010b: 252; Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 204). 
Foucault’s economies of power or meshes of power demonstrate the per-
vasiveness of power that spreads throughout the whole socio-political body, 
depicting the failure of any objectivity, or any possibility of truth. Applying 
this to different theories of metaphor that rely on the assumption that some 
kind of ‘objective law’ exists, implying that certainty, true meaning, could 
be known or discovered by a ‘deep’ investigation (interpretation), despite 
refuting literal meaning as objective truth. What we see with Foucault is that 
every meaning is caught in the meshes of power, every truth is a product 
of specific ‘economies of power’, every language practice is where power 
effects become visible, and every metaphor, despite being ‘different’, is an 
object of the same power/knowledge dispositive. 
A metaphor is about telling the truth in every single moment. Not an 
‘excess’ of meaning, but as something that we are still understanding as met-
aphor, even though it is part of the same strategies of truth: 
What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthro-
pomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been 

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enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and 
which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: 
truths are illusions about which one has forgotten are illusions … met-
aphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which 
have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as 
coins. (Nietzsche, 2019: 6–7)
Fearless speech, as Foucault would describe truth telling, is the terrain 
where “metaphorical interplay” reveals itself in strategies of power. Truth 
constantly appears in varying forms, conceals itself with different masks, 
seems elusive, yet at other times is apparent, visible and liberating. However, 
in the moment we wish to seize it, in a moment of our awareness, to discover 
a real, truthful meaning, when we make sense of our being, as we have been 
embodying it, the precise moment when we think that we are expressing 
it, the truth that we are so eager to grasp disappears in intermission, loses 
itself in the ashes of discourses, in the said, but not really meant. In relation 
to parrhesia, metaphor uncovers its ‘true nature’ – as neither a tool, a fig-
ure nor the interplay of words and thoughts, but as a political technology 
that circulates around the truth, around the true meaning, consistently shifts 
its game (of meanings), accumulates multiple discourses, displaces and so 
clearly divides the subject in his belief that what he is is truly him, and what 
he speaks is the truth (Foucault, 2009). 
Metaphor exposes the truth, the ‘true’ meaning or nature of every iden-
tity in immanent contingency, raptures and fluidity, revealing metaphorical 
circulation in every ‘word’ we say, in every view we have, in every activ-
ity we participate in. The meshes in truth, its immanent ruptures, are not 
what determines its character. The truth is the ‘economy’ of discourses that 
repeatedly (re)constitute it, the ‘politics’ which establishes and destroys it. 
In these ruptures and meshes, metaphor emerges as the Aristotelian techne 
or a Foucauldian technology of procedures and techniques. Metaphorical 
play constitutes every discourse, but at the moment of our certainty dis-
solves it in an instance.
To speak the truth in metaphors appears to be the work of an 
autonomous individual. However, any use of metaphors is not about ‘escap-
ing’ power, but restoring it, with new ‘rules’ and new ‘laws’ that determine 
the place of the emergence of truth. Metaphor is to be understood as a ‘stra-
tegic instance’, which continually circuits in the discursive field, and within 
the struggle of diverse discourses determines the rules of the un-true. In this 
sense, metaphor is a specific political technology, a strategy of power, that 
decides about the regimes of truth. Metaphor, as a technology, is a struggle 
over the status of the truth. 

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Conclusion
In this article, we wanted to go beyond the established methodological 
and theoretical visions of metaphor and open it up in terms of new function-
alities. We sought to widen the possible scope of metaphor for analysing 
socio-political realities. We showed how metaphor as a strategy gives insight 
into how power relations determine a particular hegemonic discourse. The 
contemporary linguistic theories, where we mostly analysed the theories 
of metaphor put forward by Ricoeur, Lakoff and Johnson, rightly assumes 
that metaphor can be understood only within the socio-cultural context, but 
simultaneously these theories assert that the creative-polysemic nature of 
language and mind is what ontologically produces metaphorical meaning. 
The ‘power’ of metaphor manifests itself in generating multiple meanings 
and in the sense of these approaches we process reality, give meaning to 
events, discover, and perceive the world in a given way. It is seen as a sub-
jective endeavour whereby while interacting humans produce meanings as 
interpretations and creations of reality. 
Contrary to the mentioned theories, with Foucault we showed that mean-
ings are always already present and hence subjectively-creative ontological 
(re)creations of ‘classical’ theories of metaphor miss the realities of power/
truth relations. It is instead power relations that constitute the metaphor 
as immanent to every discourse and something that circulates throughout 
the socio-political body. Any attempt to fix meanings as such is bound to 
fail due to the (re)creative nature of discourses and power relations. In this 
sense, metaphors are political technologies that reflect and create wider 
socio-political practices. A new potential avenue of research insights into 
the function of metaphors is thereby opened. 
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