Metaphor as Art: A Thought Experiment

Research on metaphor has primarily foregrounded the problematic sides of metaphors. Metaphors shape experience, they can foreclose options, they suggest norms and cultural values and, in doing so, they may even be lethal, as physician-writer Abraham Verghese argues in relation to HIV/AIDS metaphors. The chapter identifies some of the properties of art that might be productively transferred to metaphors and, by illustrating the features with specific examples, and shows how the thought experiment might illuminate properties of metaphors that are potentially useful in medical/health humanities. In medical education, it is often the reverse movement—namely the familiarising quality of metaphor—that is used for pedagogical or mnemonic purposes. John Dubie’s cancer metaphor and the student’s cookie comparison are invitations to explore an object or experience with imagination and creativity. Physicians use similar techniques when they invent new metaphors to explain unfamiliar terms, difficult diagnoses and diseases to their patients. Metaphors, like artworks, are, without a doubt, far from being innocent pleasures.