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Figures of a Changing World offers a dramatic new account of culture change, an account based on the distinction between two familiar rhetorical figures. The book treats metonymy as the basic organizing trope of traditional culture, and metaphor as the basic organizing trope of modern culture. On the one hand, metonymies present themselves as analogies that articulate or reaffirm pre-existing states of affairs. They are guarantors of facticity, a term that can be translated or defined as fact-like-ness. On the other hand, metaphors challenge the similarity they claim to establish, in order to feature their departures from pre-existing states of affairs. On the basis of this distinction the author goes on to argue that metaphor and metonymy can be used as instruments both for the large-scale interpretation of tensions in culture change and for the micro-interpretation of tensions within particular texts. In addressing the functioning of the two terms, the author draws upon and critiques the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Roman Jakobson, Christian Metz, Paul Ricoeur, Umberto Eco, Edmund Leach, and Paul de Man.
