to "trope" [and deconstruct]

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/21/2009 09:30 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>OED has this transitive verb,but not in the present sense: "to turn into or
>to employ as a metaphor or other rhetorical figure" (I think).
>
>2001 Lidia Yuknivitch _Allegories of Violence_ (N.Y.: Routledge) 10: [I]
>suggest that we read war as a trope, a figure of thought on which meaning
>turns. The writing of war, the troping of war happens at the level of
>narrative language.
>
>(The Civil War, Vietnam...just the infinite play of signs. No biggie.)

Compare:

In the recent book, "Philosophy in a Time of Terror," here is what he
[Derrida] said about 9/11:
         "We do not in fact know what we are saying or naming in this
way: September 11, le 11 septembre, September11. The brevity of the
appellation (September 11, 9/11) stems not only from an economic or
rhetorical necessity. The telegram of this metonymy -- a name, a
number -- points out the unqualifiable by recognizing that we do not
recognize or even cognize that we do not yet know how to qualify,
that we do not know what we are talking about."
         The rest is silence.

The above is excerpted from The New York Times, Monday October 11,
2004, "An Appraisal: The Man Who Showed Us How to Take the World
Apart", by Edward Rothstein.

Joel

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