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Woman as Metaphor1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Eva Feder Kittay
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Abstract

Women's activities and relations to men are persistent metaphors for man's projects. I query the prominence of these and the lack of equivalent metaphors where men are the metaphoric vehicle for women and women's activities. Women's role as metaphor results from her otherness and her relational and mediational importance in men's lives. Otherness, mediation, and relation characterize the role of metaphor in language and thought. This congruence between metaphor and women makes the metaphor of woman especially potent in man's conceptual economy.

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Type
Research Article
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Hypatia , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Summer 1988, pp. 63 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Hypatia, Inc.

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