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Embodied Metaphor and Genocide
By Richard Koenigsberg
The essence of metaphor according to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson is
"understanding one thing in terms of another." The organization of knowledge
occurs when a "source domain" gets mapped onto a "target domain," allowing
us to make meaningful deductions. The research of Lakoff and Johnson focuses
on how "Structures of our bodily experience work their way up into abstract
meanings and structures of thought." Bodily experiences get mapped onto
schemas that shape cognition and perception.
My study of Hitler's Ideology (2008, see below) represents an analysis of
embodied metaphors contained within Hitler's writings and speeches. Nazism
revolved around Hitler's conception of Germany as an enormous national
organism or body politic. Hitler imagined that Germany was suffering from a
"disease within the body politic" caused by Jewish bacteria. In order to
save the life of the nation, it was necessary to destroy the source of
Germany's disease. Genocide represented the acting out of an immunological
fantasy.
Insofar as knowledge is organized when a source domain gets mapped into a
target domain, it follows that Hitler's perception of a disease within the
body politic articulated a disease that Hitler experienced within his own
body. What was the nature of Hitler's (psychosomatic) disease? How does the
suffering of human beings get projected into culture, creating diseases such
as war and genocide?
_____
JUST RELEASED (2008) FROM INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING:
Hitler's Ideology: Embodied Metaphor,
Fantasy, and History
By Richard A. Koenigsberg
PLEASE ASK YOUR LIBRARY TO ORDER A COPY
ISBN: 978-1593118563
The Fantasy of Oneness and the Struggle to Separate
<http://www.ideologiesofwar.com/gfx/hitlers_ideology.jpg>
INDIVIDUALS: Please email [log in to unmask] for information on
how you can order your own, personal copy at a special, discounted rate.
REVIEWS:
"When political figures refer to national crises as 'cancers,' Richard
Koenigsberg feels its no accident. He feels such expressions are echoes of a
nation's hidden belief systems. If you can understand the underlying
fantasies that provide politicians with such rhetoric, then you can
understand the country. This book presents an ingenious technique for
identifying the psychological origins of political and social events." --The
Village Voice
"This work deserves to be an instant classic. With care and caution,
Koenigsberg remains close to the data. Koenigsberg suggests that what is at
stake is larger than an explanation of Hitler, Nazism, or even nationalism:
it is, rather, an explanation of culture itself. Koenigsberg's genius has
unlocked many of the secrets of a timeless drama." --Howard F. Stein,
Professor of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma
_____
Hitler's Human Body and the Body Politic
Hitler's Human Body and the Body Politic
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