Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics: A Formalist Theory of Metaphor

This book offers a new definition of metaphor—as an ontological and visual construction, whose roots are external visual forms, and its motivation is our attachment to forms. This definition, which Michalle Gal names “visualist,” challenges the ruling conceptualist theory of metaphors and places a new emphasis on how we experience rather than understand metaphors. In doing so, she responds to the visual turn that is taking place in literature and the media, demanding that the visual become a site of philosophical analysis. This focus on the external visual world allows Gal to employ visual theories to capture the essence of metaphor. She looks beyond conceptual or semantic mechanism, and returns to theories of Arnheim and Gombrich and the current evolution of ideas about the visual or material and embodied cognition. Proposing to see visual metaphors in their basic form, she uses a new externalist terminology of ontology, visuality, composition, affordance, construction, and emergence. Setting out a new theory that takes into account that humans are visual no less than cognitive creatures, Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics lays the foundation for a new vocabulary to talk about metaphors.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. The Visual Dimension of Metaphors 2. Semantic Theories of Metaphor 3. Cognitivist Theories of Metaphor: a conceptual turn 4. The Advent of the Visual Perspective of Metaphors 5. Metaphors After the Linguistic Turn of Aesthetics 6. Paradigmatic Metaphors 7. Visuality, Paraphrase and Syntactic Productivity 8. Visuality of Language: formalist account 9. Metaphor: A Definition Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Michalle Gal is Professor of Philosophy at the Unit of History and Philosophy and the Interdisciplinary Design Graduate Program, Shenkar. Gal is the author of Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics: A Formalist Theory of Metaphor (2022), Aestheticism: Deep Formalism and the Emergence of Modernist Aesthetics (2015), and Introduction to Design Theory: Philosophy, Critique, History and Practice (2023). She is the editor of the special issues Art and Gesture (2014), Visual Hybrids (2023), and the forthcoming Design and its Relations (2024).

Review :
Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics is incredibly audacious, which should encourage researchers to take an interest in reading this book. Gal pulls this off with ease through smart and elegant writing, building up her theory point by point, chapter by chapter. Irrespective of which metaphor theory we follow, the result is a highly engaging and stimulating read that will undoubtedly spark countless debates on the nature of metaphor in the long run. What is certain is that Gal’s thought-provoking—might I even suggest provocative—book offers a fresh and original insight on metaphor, substantially expanding the perspective for metaphor scholars working in any discipline. Michalle Gal’s Visual Metaphors and Aesthetics: A Formalist Theory of Metaphor is a major accomplishment. It takes seriously the imagistic, material, and imaginative dimensions of metaphor, and it shows that language use is shot through with painterly ambitions. This is a theory of metaphor by a philosopher of art for philosophers of art, and it is most welcome. Human thinking is primordially tactile and visual, and on the visual level from the very beginning imbued with metaphors. On the linguistic level the ubiquity of metaphors of course meets the eye, but it is only when looking at their visual origins that an explanation of how they function can be given. Michalle Gal provides this explanation in an outstandingly informed and informative, creative and lucid way. A must read for anyone for whom the iconic turn is more than a metaphor. Michalle Gal draws on recent developments in visual culture, and on the work of a number of under-appreciated thinkers—Arnheim, Aldrich, and Gombrich, among them—to offer a resourceful, spirited defense of an ambitious new theory of metaphor. Her rich book promises to unsettle widespread assumptions about metaphor as well as the history of philosophical aesthetics. This important work is well researched, well organized, and well written.