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Talk:Metonymy

644 bytes added, 08:25, 8 August 2006
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[[Metonymy]] is usually defined as a trope in which a term is used to denote an [[object]] which it does not literally refer to, but with which it is closely linked.
Desire always refers to something fundamentally other than the objects it aims for or the signifiers that symbolize them. Thus desire inevitably follows the path of metonymy. Because desire is expressed by a symbolizing demand, it always designates a desire for the whole (the lost object) by expressing a desire for a part (the substitute object), just as the metonymic figure "a sail on the horizon" designates the whole (a ship) by a part (a sail).
 
 
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Lacan proposed the following symbolic formula for metonymy:
 
This formula represents the fact that any new signifier (S0) intervenes because it is contiguous with a prior signifier (S). Metonymy is best illustrated by the kind of displacement that takes place in dreams.
 
The Freudian concept of displacement emphasizes the shift of value and of meaning. What usually happens is that words and feelings, in a distorted and disguised form, are transferred to nearby material.
 
Lacan insisted that metonymy resists being meaningful by always producing apparent nonsense, as is usually the case with the manifest content of a dream.
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