The Bubble: Metaphors we survive by

Can we remake the world through metaphor?

Metaphors are indispensable tools for making sense of reality, including the ongoing reality of systemic colonial relations—or to obfuscate it (to deflect the need to enact substantive decolonisation agendas, for example). In times of crisis they perform a crucial role in translating and interpreting a rapidly changing world.

Viral phenomena have multiplied recently, literally and metaphorically. But all crises generate metaphorical languages. Terrorism was not a virus, it was a bacterial formation; the GFC was a fierce and incontrollable storm… The ‘Canberra bubble’ – a bad thing – has become the ‘family bubble’ – a good thing. To understand what is at stake in the metaphors we use and the ways they are deployed, we need a critical engagement with their underlying assumptions, their rhetorical operation, their ideological effects, and their real-world implications.

SESSION 1

METAPHORS WE SURVIVE BY 
FRIDAY 4 SEPTEMBER

Can we remake the world through metaphor?

Edwin Bikundo (Griffith University), 
‘Reading Faust into International Criminal Law’.

Dorota Gozdecka (Helsinki Law), ‘All animals are equal, but some more than others – equality as an illusion in contemporary rights discourses’.

Dimitris Vardoulakis (Philosophy, Western Sydney University), ‘What is agonistic democracy?’