Description
This essay draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s profound insights into the problem of knowledge and the nature of truth
to reflect on epistemic activity within alternative accounting thought. An essential ingredient in Nietzsche’s analysis of
the conundrum of knowledge and truth is his profound assertion that knowing always involves a ‘transfer’ from one
epistemic sphere to another different one, that distinctive kind of creative transference of meaning that we attribute to
metaphor. Through reference to Nietzsche’s writings, this essay explores the epistemic implications of ‘knowledge as
metaphorical’ and the habitual tendency of metaphor, through exclusivity, fixation, effacement and ‘forgetfulness’, to
‘harden’ into ‘propers’ or ‘truths’—particularly of the sort we have come to associate with mainstream dogmatism. It
then considers how alternative accounting thought has offered liberation from such metaphorical dogmatism through
the deliberate assertion of alternative metaphorical re-presentations. Ironically however, through its very assertion, formation,
and attempts to validate these non-stereotypical metaphors, alternative accounting thought itself tends toward
the same sort of epistemic fixation and effacement it seeks to subvert. The question becomes one of whether such a
Nietzschean reflection on alternative accounting epistemics leads us inevitably to nihilism and epistemological despair or
rather, provides us with an affirmative foundation for the very possibility of constructing new accounting ‘truths’.
Alternative accounting thought and the prison-house
of metaphor
Melissa Walters*
School of Business Administration, Rinker Institute of Tax & Accountancy, Stetson University, 421 Woodland Boulevard, Unit 8398,
Deland, FL 32720-3774, USA
Abstract
This essay draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s profound insights into the problem of knowledge and the nature of truth
to re?ect on epistemic activity within alternative accounting thought. An essential ingredient in Nietzsche’s analysis of
the conundrum of knowledge and truth is his profound assertion that knowing always involves a ‘transfer’ from one
epistemic sphere to another di?erent one, that distinctive kind of creative transference of meaning that we attribute to
metaphor. Through reference to Nietzsche’s writings, this essay explores the epistemic implications of ‘knowledge as
metaphorical’ and the habitual tendency of metaphor, through exclusivity, ?xation, e?acement and ‘forgetfulness’, to
‘harden’ into ‘propers’ or ‘truths’—particularly of the sort we have come to associate with mainstream dogmatism. It
then considers how alternative accounting thought has o?ered liberation from such metaphorical dogmatism through
the deliberate assertion of alternative metaphorical re-presentations. Ironically however, through its very assertion, for-
mation, and attempts to validate these non-stereotypical metaphors, alternative accounting thought itself tends toward
the same sort of epistemic ?xation and e?acement it seeks to subvert. The question becomes one of whether such a
Nietzschean re?ection on alternative accounting epistemics leads us inevitably to nihilism and epistemological despair or
rather, provides us with an a?rmative foundation for the very possibility of constructing new accounting ‘truths’.
#2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Prologue
Only by forgetting this primitive world of
metaphor can one live with any repose, secur-
ity, and consistency: only by means of the pet-
ri?cation and coagulation of a mass of images
which originally streamed from the primal
faculty of human imagination like a ?ery
liquid, only in the invincible faith that this
sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself,
in short, only by forgetting that he himself is
a artistically creating subject, does man live
with any repose, security, and consistency. If
but for an instant he could escape from the
prison walls of this faith, his ‘self consciousness’
would be immediately destroyed (emphasis in
original) (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 86).
Awareness of our use of metaphor provides
an escape hatch from the prison house of
language, or at least lets us know how we are
con?ned. Such awareness is two-sided: it
enables us to see the metaphoric in what is
taken as literal, and also to make-believe that
metaphors are literally true. The ?rst is an act
of unmasking as when, for example, we come
to understand Descartes’ ‘machine of nature’
as Descartes himself appears to have done. . .
0361-3682/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0361-3682(02)00054-5
Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
www.elsevier.com/locate/aos
* Tel.: +1-386-822-7412; fax: +386-822-7426.
E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Walters).
There is a universe of di?erence between such
awareness and the view that the world actu-
ally is a machine (emphasis added) (Brown,
1976, pp. 175–176)
Opening remarks
This essay draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s pro-
found insights into the problem of knowledge and
the nature of truth to re?ect on epistemic activity
within alternative accounting thought.
1
Writing
about metaphor and knowledge is tricky business,
a task made that much more di?cult by relying on
Nietzsche to do so. Nietzsche was not, by
accounts, a systematic thinker and his writings are
intensely and deliberately metaphorical (meta-
leptically so) in themselves, so much so that his
philosophical writings, more often than not, run
the risk of being confused with Symbolist poetry
(Kofman, 1993). Nevertheless, he had some fairly
radical, rather profound things to say about
metaphor and epistemic activity to the con-
templative thinker. Of particular interest to this
essay are Nietzsche’s theses that all knowledge is
metaphorical and that supposed ‘propers’ and our
sense of ‘truth’ derive from the e?aced and per-
haps unjust, ?xation and generalization of our
metaphors. What we perceive we perceive meta-
phorically, what we know we know metaphori-
cally, and what we consider to be ‘truths’ are
naught but ossi?ed and e?aced metaphors that
we have transferred generally and forgotten
are metaphors (Nietzsche, 1872/1999,1873/1999).
Nietzsche’s analysis of the metaphorical nature of
knowledge and truth provides a rather distinctive
vehicle for situating alternative accounting
thought in the struggle for the construction of
accounting truths—and for re?ecting on a unique
epistemological irony in that position.
This essay re?ects, from the perspective of
Nietzschean philosophy, on the metaphorics that
drive alternative accounting research. Alternative
accounting thought, in its broadest sense, may be
read as a manifestation of Nietzsche’s ‘metapho-
rical drive’, and as such, stands out as an a?ront
to mainstream accounting ‘propers’ by o?ering
liberation from epistemic ?xation and dogmatism
through the deliberate assertion of alternative
metaphors. But just how liberated are we? In
rejecting the canonical metaphors of mainstream
thought, are we privileging, ?xing, and empower-
ing others that are potentially as exclusive, appro-
priating, and subjugating as those we seek to
depose, rejecting one set of ‘propers’ only to raise
up another in their place? Are we thus imprisoning
ourselves by the very metaphors with which we
sought escape?
Drawing on the writings of Nietzsche, this essay
puts forth the following re?ections and theses
presented here roughly in order of their discussion
in the main text to follow.
1. Knowing always involves metaphor. Thus,
knowing in accounting, as in all epistemic
arenas, is invariably metaphorical.
Accounting knowledge then, is not the
accumulation of facts per se but an accu-
mulation of a speci?c subset of favored,
accepted metaphors and the conceptual
edi?ce that is constructed there from.
1
This reference is my (for lack of a more philosophically
suitable one) convenient umbrella label for ‘other’, ‘new’,
‘interdisciplinary’, ‘radical’ or ‘non-mainstream’ accounting
thought. It is, in itself, metaphorical in constructing a connec-
tion (that strongly implicates a likeness statement) between
arguably di?erent (sometimes antithetical) discourses by refer-
ring to the whole of the growing body of literature appearing in
journals such as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Jour-
nal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Advances in Public
Interest Accounting, and Critical Perspectives on Accounting by
a single name. This is rather like the historical convention
(attributed to Aristotle) of using the word ‘metaphor’ as a
broad category term to encompass all of those (arguably dis-
tinctive) instances of rhetorical linguistic forms known as
tropes. In using a single name, I realize that I am taking a
naming liberty (and one which some accounting theorists might
take exception to) however, I would argue that while this
‘alternative’ discourse encompasses diverse and often quite dis-
parate perspectives, it may be distinguished as a set of dis-
cursive practices in its explicit or implicit, direct or indirect
eschewing, questioning, and/or problematization of the pre-
scriptions and pretensions of mainstream accounting thought.
In this essay I take ‘alternative accounting thought’ (following
somewhat what Moore, 1991 labels as ‘critical’) to suggest a set
of discursive practices with a radical ontological, epistemologi-
cal and/or political stance which questions the ‘propers’ or
‘truths’ of mainstream accounting thought and seeks to put
forth and empower alternative re-presentations of and ration-
alities for accounting theory and/or practice.
158 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
2. Mainstream accounting metaphors have
been established as resolute ‘propers’—as
conceptual accounting ‘truths’—through
unjust exclusivity and ?xation and an e?a-
cement of their metaphoricity. Maintenance
of the mainstream conceptual edi?ce is
e?ected through ‘forgetfulness’ and con-
cealment of its metaphorical nature.
3. Alternative accounting thought may be
read as a manifestation of Nietzsche’s
‘metaphorical drive’ previously repressed in
mainstream conceptual activity. The alter-
native accounting drive intentionally mul-
tiplies metaphors to deprive mainstream
‘propers’ of their exclusivity and deliber-
ately asserts non-stereotypical metaphors
to jeopardize the sovereignty of main-
stream conceptual ?ctions and to betray
and ridicule the existence of the metapho-
rical in supposed mainstream ‘propers’.
4. Metaphorical activity coincides with
Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ and manifests
within alternative accounting epistemic
activity in the form of drives to establish
and empower its alternative metaphorical
re-presentations. The ensuing assertion,
formation, and attempts at validating these
non-stereotypical metaphors, as sympto-
matic of a speci?c will, e?ect e?acement
and abandonment of their metaphoricity,
in the end, allowing it to it be forgotten; the
ironic result being, a susceptibility to privi-
lege, ?xation, and presupposition of the
like that the alternative accounting drive
has sought to undermine and destabilize.
5. The question becomes one of whether such
a Nietzschean re?ection on alternative
accounting epistemics leads us inevitably to
nihilism and epistemological despair or
rather, provides us with an a?rmative
foundation for the very possibility of con-
structing new accounting ‘truths’.
One author note is in order. This paper is a
philosophical essay designed to re?ect on and
make assertions about epistemic activity within
the arena of alternative accounting thought from
the unique perspective of Nietzsche’s account of
knowledge and truth (a metaphor in itself). That
is, it is an appropriation of the alternative
accounting research ‘world’ by a unique perspec-
tive that, through this essay, imposes its will upon
it. It is less about the metaphors themselves or
whether accounting is more appropriately con-
ceptualized as one metaphor versus another and
rather more about the abstract Nietzschean impli-
cations of ‘knowledge as metaphor’ for alternative
accounting epistemics and its writers. As such,
while metaphorical instances are employed illus-
tratively, this text does not address a particular
alternative accounting metaphor (or subset of
metaphors) nor does it explore any one of them in
any great detail.
Philosophical exposition: Nietzsche on metaphor,
knowing, and truth
Knowledge as metaphorical: metaphors for things
Nietzsche asserted that knowing always involves
metaphor, that all knowledge is metaphorical;
indeed,
. . . there is no ‘real’ expression, and no real
knowing apart from metaphor (Nietzsche,
1872/1999, 149, p. 50, emphasis in original).
Nietzsche seems to have based this profound
epistemological assertion on the very broad sense
of metaphor, suggested by the etymology of the
Greek word itself, as ‘transfer’, or more speci?-
cally as a ‘transfer’ or ‘transference’ of meaning
from one sphere to another di?erent one (Brea-
zeale, 1999).
2
He began elaboration of his asser-
tion regarding the metaphorical nature of
knowledge in his analysis of the transfers or re-
presentations involved in simple perceptions, the
‘?rst’ uses of metaphor. He argued that the human
2
Reference to Nietzsche’s writings also suggests extended
senses of metaphor as ‘imitation’, ‘re-presentation’, ‘perspec-
tive’, ‘translation’ and ‘transformation’ or ‘metamorphosis’ (of
meaning) and moreover, the metaphorical assimilation of other
tropes (in particular, metonymy, synecdoche, and metastasis)
into his analysis (implying his use of the word ‘metaphor’, fol-
lowing Aristotle, as a metaphor for all forms of trope).
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 159
mind’s ?rst use of metaphor is the translation of
sensual experience into a particular image and then
the translation of a perceived image into language
(as when a visual image is designated by the word
‘leaf’); thus, the very act of cognition involves re-
presentations of our world through metaphor.
To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred
into an image: ?rst metaphor. The image, in
turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor.
And each time there is a complete overleaping
of one sphere, right into the middle of an
entirely new and di?erent one (Nietzsche,
1873/1999, p. 82).
We perceive ‘things’ only re-presented as ima-
ges; we understand images only re-presented as
words (and their meanings). Cognition then, does
not grasp ‘things in themselves’ but things in terms
of signs, imitations or re-presentations of things; for,
‘‘What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve
stimulus (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 81)’’. Moreover,
signs do not metaphorically present accurate or
‘true’ representations of ‘things’. Signs or words re-
present partial knowledge because they display, not
a ‘‘many-sided, somehow respectable knowledge of
things’’ grasping the full essence of things, but mere
designations of things in relation to us as knowers.
It is not the things that pass over into con-
sciousness, but the manner in which we stand
toward them. . . The full essence of things will
never be grasped (Nietzsche, 1872–1873/1989,
p. 23).
As such, knowledge is perspectival. It is construed
from some particular point of view, some perspec-
tive, as things are known only in relation to the
‘‘manner in which we stand toward them’’ convey-
ing not the full essential knowledge of a thing, but a
posture, an opinion, a valuation. Signs and words
also represent imperfect knowledge of ‘things’
because, with respect to their meanings, they them-
selves are invariably tropic—synecdochic, meta-
phorical, and metonymical—in nature. Since words
‘never express something completely but display
only a characteristic which appears prominent’,
they are synecdochic, re-presenting partially and in
a partisan manner. Additionally, since words habi-
tually assimilate new meanings by metaphorical
transfer, they do not remain true to things being
re-presented. Moreover, because words often
name metonymically, from the perspective of
some other thing, they thereby change, perhaps
reverse (in cause and e?ect), the nature of things
as they actually exist (see Nietzsche, 1872–1873,
for further discussion). Knowing then cannot be
purely or truly descriptive. There can be no knowl-
edge of ‘things in themselves’ because this would
presume direct, intuitive knowing of the full essence
of things without the metaphorical intervention of
signs. We know ‘things’ only through metaphor.
The ‘thing in itself’. . . is . . . something quite
incomprehensible to the creator of langua-
ge. . .This creator only designates the relations
of things to men, and for expressing these
relations he lays hold of the boldest meta-
phors . . . we believe that we know something
about the things themselves when we speak of
trees, colors, snow, and ?owers; and yet we
possess nothing but metaphors for things—
metaphors which correspond in no way to the
original entities. . . and all of the material
within and with which the man of truth, the
scientist, and the philosopher later work and
build, if not derived from never-never land, is
at least not derived from the essence of
things. (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, pp. 82–83,
emphasis added).
‘Higher-order’ epistemic transfers, beyond those
simple perceptual and cognitive transferences or
re-presentations noted above, are also implied in
Nietzsche’s account of the process of knowledge
production (although they are not articulated as
bluntly or clearly as in his ‘?rst’ and ‘second’
metaphors). The most obvious being the transfer
of meaning from one sphere of signs to another
completely di?erent sphere of signs as occurs for
instance, when Nietzsche refers to ‘knowledge as
metaphorical’ or ‘knowledge as perspectival’. The
reference ‘knowledge as perspectival’ juxtaposes
the two di?erent epistemic spheres of ‘knowing’
and ‘seeing’, forcing them to coexist by force of
language. This implies a likeness between two
160 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
otherwise presumably dissimilar things and
thereby induces a transfer or generalization of
terms, attributes, understanding, implications, or
inferential premises from one sphere (having to do
with vision) to another di?erent one (having to do
with knowledge) (and vice versa). The epistemic
generalization from the sphere of ‘vision’ to the
sphere of ‘knowing’ allows Nietzsche to ‘know’
and say something insightful
3
about knowing.
Likewise, a reference to ‘accounting as language’
sets up a transfer of understanding about signs,
signi?cation, communication, and/or rhetoric
from the epistemic sphere of language to the epis-
temic sphere of accounting so that we might
‘know’, through its re-presentation, something
about the nature, purpose, structure, functions,
rationale, and implications of accounting (and vice
versa). In short, metaphors allow us to ‘know’, by
transfer, one thing in terms of another.
4
Most
creative insight and higher understanding in
science and philosophy is constructed based on
such metaphorical activity (see Boyd, 1993; Brown,
1976; Derrida, 1982; Kuhn, 1993). However, it is
Nietzsche’s notion of the concept and its forma-
tion by metaphorical transfer that most plainly
reveals how metaphor works to subdue, simplify,
and organize experience in the construction of
knowledge (Breazeale, 1999; Kofman, 1993).
The idea of the ‘concept’ is key to Nietzsche’s
account of knowledge and truth; and indeed, dis-
cussion of its formation by metaphorical transfer
and the problematic implications of the conceptual
occupies much of his attention in the essay ‘‘On
Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’’. A concept
is formed when a sign (a word and its associated
meaning) is generalized by metaphorical transfer,
not to refer to a single instance of some other thing,
but to refer to an inde?nitely large number of more
of less similar instances of something.
Every word instantly becomes a concept
insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a
reminder of the unique and entirely individual
original experience to which it owes its origin;
but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar
as it simultaneously has to ?t countless more
or less similar cases—which means, purely
and simply, cases which are never equal and
thus altogether unequal (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, 1, p 83).
This amounts to the designation, by transfer, of
classes or categories of things. The ‘general con-
cept’ is created by preserving and assimilating the
similar and by arbitrarily discarding irregular or
individually distinguishing aspects; the result
being an abstract notion that concurs with an
average impression common to the group, one
that comes to be presupposed as the original or
proper form. Nietzsche expounds,
The omitting of what is individual provides us
with the concept, and with this our knowledge
begins: in categorizing, in the establishment of
classes (Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 150, p. 51).
We know nothing whatsoever about an essen-
tial quality called ‘honesty’; but we do know of
countless individualized and consequently
unequal actions which we equate by omitting
the aspects in which they are unequal and
which we now designate as ‘honest’ actions.
Finally we formulate from them a qualitas
occulta [occult quality] which has the name
‘honesty.’ We obtain the concept, as we do
the form, by overlooking what is individual
and actual. . . (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 83).
We might also say the same of accounting
concepts such as ‘asset’, ‘materiality’, or ‘neu-
trality’. Many such abstract notions may be
placed along side one another and organized into
a metaphorical schema, an edi?ce of concepts, the
status of which eventually becomes that of the
construct, model, theory, or paradigm. The con-
ceptual edi?ce is constructed and continually built
upon by multiplication of metaphors and sys-
tematic ordering of concepts: by arranging
concepts relative to one another, by hierarchizing
them into class structures, and by further sub-
3
Metaphorical pun intended.
4
It should be noted that my analysis of metaphorical
transfer in this and in later sections of this essay is heavily
in?uenced by the writings of Richards (1936), Black (1962a,
1962b, 1993), Lako? and Johnson (1980), and Lako? (1993).
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 161
dividing concepts into subclasses or subcategories
(creating new metaphors). Describing and
explaining of things proceed by means of naming,
designating or including within a category or
class, and knowing, by reference to the concept
itself which serves as metaphor (Kofman, 1993).
The concept thereby reduces what is individual to
what is typical so that we may ‘know’ (Wilcox,
1974).
Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells
and ?lls them with honey, so science works
unceasingly on this great columbarium of
concepts, the graveyard of perceptions. It is
always building new, higher stories and shor-
ing up, cleaning, and renovating the old cells;
above all, it takes pains to ?ll up this mon-
strously towering framework and to arrange
therein the entire empirical world. . .
(Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 88).
Consider the representation of any number of
individual organizations in terms of generalizable
?nancial concepts systematically arranged and
ordered into the accounting model (accounting
practice). Each organization is described in terms
of activities or events classi?ed as ‘transactions’
5
and transactions as involving ‘assets’, ‘liabilities,
‘revenues’ or ‘expenses’ according to the repre-
sentative notion of each. Each concept is system-
atically arranged relative to the others so that we
may, by such classi?catory categories, ‘put things
where they belong’, and thereby construct some
kind of knowledge about an organization; and in
the process of knowledge construction, every
organization is metaphorically reduced to a typical
set of ?nancial constructs. The accounting model
is a metaphorical schema within which we orga-
nize, describe, evaluate, and ‘know’ organizations.
The same is arguably descriptive of the production
of knowledge about Accounting, its theories,
functions, purposes, and rationalities (accounting
research), as well as the production of knowledge
about accounting knowledge and its production
(epistemological research). In these epistemic are-
nas (or at least, in the mainstream version of
them), the natural science model and the positivist
paradigm have provided a great conceptual edi?ce
within which the accounting world has been
placed and arranged, thus providing terms within
which accounting has been ‘explained’ or ‘descri-
bed’. The mainstream conceptual edi?ce exists as a
complex schema of logical positivism, the empiri-
cal tradition, the quantitative tradition, the logico-
hypothetico-deductive model of science, and
modernism. To this conceptual foundation have
been added a host of associated epistemic concepts
(in the form of theories and models predominantly
derived from neoclassical economic theory) such
as positive theory, agency theory, analytical mod-
eling, capital markets theory, and the e?cient
market hypothesis as well as those ?tting (and
more obviously metaphorical) functional re-pre-
sentations of accounting practice itself such as
‘accounting as historical record’, ‘accounting as
current economic reality’, ‘accounting as an
impartial tool of economic e?ciency’, ‘accounting
as passive’, ‘accounting as techno-rational’,
‘accounting as information system’, ‘accounting as
a commodity’, ‘accounting as neutral representa-
tion’, ‘accounting as cartography’, ‘accounting as
score-keeping’, ‘accounting as bean counting’, and
‘accounting as journalism’ (see Davis, Menon, &
Morgan, 1982; Morgan, 1988; Solomons, 1991;
Tinker, 1991). It is in terms of this conceptual
edi?ce, its constructs, models, and theories, that
mainstream accounting researchers have identi?ed
object(s) of inquiry, ‘named’ and interpreted these
objects, arranged these objects into structured and
well-ordered categories with de?ned priorities,
constructed conducts of evaluation, and based
thereon, o?ered value judgments concerning the
e?cacy and e?ciency of such accounting objects.
The mainstream version of accounting research
has thus named, de?ned, and arranged the entire
accounting world into logical, rational categories
and all without realizing that it is engaged in the
most primal metaphorical activity. The positivist
conceptual edi?ce, its construction by metapho-
rical means, serves as a metaphor for accounting
and its study; and it is in terms of this conceptual
5
This is in no way represents the ‘full essence’ of an orga-
nization’s functioning but only ‘those characteristics which
appear prominent’ from the perspective of the accounting
model. The accounting model is thereby synecdochic as well as
metaphorical.
162 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
schema that we have come to ‘know’ accounting
(again, at least in the mainstream sense).
The concepts within which we attempt to describe
and explain the world are both constructed by
means of and serve as metaphors for knowing.
Every epistemic sphere, accounting included, con-
structs (by metaphorical transfer) and continually
builds upon arti?cial nomenclatures and taxo-
nomies to erect a conceptual edi?ce for itself, each
distinctive, and each able to serve as metaphor for
another epistemic sphere (Kofman, 1993).
Here one may certainly admire man as a
mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in
piling up an in?nitely complicated dome of
concepts upon an unstable foundation . . . As a
genius of construction man raises himself far
above the bee in the following way: whereas
the bee builds with wax that he gathers from
nature, man builds with the far more delicate
conceptual material which he ?rst has to man-
ufacture from himself. In this he is greatly to be
admired. . . (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 85).
We can never truly ‘know’ the world; we can
only describe it in terms of the metaphorical and
the conceptual (a condensate of multiple meta-
phors) material we ourselves construct. Our power
of knowledge production then, resides absolutely
in our power of metaphor formation for ‘‘we have
nothing but metaphors for things’’. As such, the
accumulation of knowledge is not an accumula-
tion of ‘things’ or even adequate descriptions of
the ‘true’ nature of ‘things’ but rather, an accumu-
lation of metaphors. But we must not omit that
knowing also always involves a choice. When
mainstream accounting research refers to ‘knowl-
edge’ it generally means ‘as observable by positi-
vist science’. However, since it has yet to come to
terms with the metaphorical nature of epistemic
activity, it mistakenly equates knowledge with
positivist science confusing the re-presentation
with its domain of application, overlooking that it
is thinking of accounting knowledge as positivist
science, that it is thinking metaphorically in terms
of positivist science and is thereby constantly
striving to understand the accounting world as
something analogous to these terms. As such,
mainstream accounting research has generally felt
compelled to favor and thereby privilege a single
conceptualization of the world towards which all
epistemic activity in accounting should strive and
against which all epistemic products should be
evaluated. But positivist science is a conceptual
edi?ce, a metaphorical schema, no more, no less;
and despite its presumed exclusivity, it is only one
among the many that are possible. Knowing then,
involves a choice (albeit sometimes an unwitting
one) between metaphors, a value-laden choice
between presumably more or less acceptable con-
cepts, and the metaphor of choice in so far as
mainstream epistemic activity is concerned is the
positivist science metaphor. Accounting knowl-
edge then, is not an accumulation of facts per se
but an accumulation of a speci?c subset of favored
and accepted metaphors and the conceptual edi?ce
that is constructed there from. Nietzsche elo-
quently summarizes:
Knowing is nothing but working with the
favorite metaphors, an imitating which is no
longer felt to be an imitation. Naturally
therefore, it cannot penetrate the realm of
truth (Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 149, p. 51).
Truth as metaphorical: e?acement and
forgetfulness
If knowing, by its metaphorical nature, ‘‘cannot
penetrate the realm of truth’’, then from where does
our sense of ‘truth’ derive? It is in fact, the exclusiv-
ity of a single metaphor by its favoritism and privi-
lege that leads to e?acement and forgetting of its
metaphorical nature and thereby its eventual
‘truth’ status. Privileged metaphors become fre-
quently used as a consequence of their exclusivity,
familiar and unobtrusive as a result of habitual
usage, hard and ?xed as a consequence of unwitting
compulsion, and ultimately, by custom or conven-
tion, are accordingly a?orded the status of truth
concepts. The privileged metaphor, which by its
exclusivity and repetition ‘sti?ens’ and ‘hardens’
thereby e?acing its genesis, passes for immediate
necessity and assumes the status of the ‘proper’
(Kofman, 1993). Nietzsche poetically summarizes,
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 163
The most accustomed metaphors, the usual
ones, now pass for truths and as standards for
measuring the rarer ones. The only intrinsic
di?erence here is the di?erence between cus-
tom and novelty, frequency and rarity
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, pp. 50–51).
What then is truth? A moveable host of
metaphors, metonymies, and anthro-
pomorphisms: in short, a sum of human rela-
tions which have been poetically and
rhetorically intensi?ed, transferred, and
embellished, and which, after long usage,
seem to a people to be ?xed, canonical, and
binding. Truths are illusions which we have
forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors
that have become worn out and have been
drained of sensuous force, coins which have
lost their embossing and are now considered
as metal and no longer as coins (Nietzsche,
1873/1999, p. 84).
It is only through the e?acement of metaphor, this
process of ‘forgetting’ the ‘as’ structure of knowing
that we may fancy ourselves to possess ‘truth’
(Nietzsche, 1873/1999). Epistemological ‘truths’ are
merely privileged metaphorical understandings that
have become e?aced, ossi?ed, conventionalized, and
taken-for-granted to the point where their originary
metaphoricity is forgotten; maintaining truth is
simply a matter of discursive practice (Nietzsche
1872/1999, 1873/1999).
6
Nietzsche explains,
Now man of course forgets that this is the
way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the
manner indicated, unconsciously and in
accordance with habits which are centuries
old; and precisely by means of this uncon-
sciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his
sense of truth. (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 84,
emphasis in original)
It is a consequence of this forgetting that we are
hardly, if at all, aware of the metaphorical nature
of our concepts and truth-values. Were we asked
to provide perfectly incontrovertible examples of
the metaphorical, our ?rst inclination would
probably not be to suggest a rudimentary concept
such as ‘time’ nor I imagine, would we think of
suggesting that our conceptualization of ‘causa-
tion’ is metaphorical.
7
Likewise, few of us would
think of o?ering up such canonical concepts as
deductive mathematics, the scienti?c method,
Bohr’s model of the atom, the kinetic theory of
gases, the central dogma of molecular biology, the
Linnaean taxonomical system for zoological clas-
si?cation, or the Keynesian model of the economic
system;
8
and if we did, we would most likely be
met with considerable resistance perhaps even
hostility. How many mainstream accounting
researchers would suggest positivist science or
regression analysis as unquali?ed examples of
metaphor? How many Certi?ed Public Accoun-
tants would o?er the accounting model itself as an
unequivocal example of metaphor? Yet each is a
concept, constructed by metaphorical means,
which serves as metaphor—terms within which we
conduct epistemic activity and ‘know’ the world.
However, the metaphoricity is su?ciently e?aced
in such concepts as not to appear at all metapho-
rical permitting the equating of the metaphor with
that which it has re-presented, so much so, that we
are lead to ‘‘. . . presume that the chaotic processes
of the world have the purely formal properties of
mathematics. . .to believe that the world really is
mathematically organized. . . (Brown, 1976, p. 174)
(metaphorically speaking of course). We forget
that our metaphors are indeed metaphors for
7
Yet, ‘‘Time, space, and causality are only metaphors of
knowledge, with which we explain things to ourselves’’
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 140, p. 47, emphasis in original). See
Nietzsche (1872/1999) sections 139 and 140 for further exposi-
tion; also see Lako? and Johnson (1980) and Lako? (1993) for
analysis of such concepts as metaphorical.
8
Some of these illustrations of e?aced or ‘dead’ epistemo-
logical metaphor were taken from Black (1962b), Brown
(1976), Ho?man (1980), and McCloskey (1983). Also see Lak-
o? (1980, 1993) and Lako? and Johnson (1980) for enumerable
examples of e?aced or what Lako? (1993) refers to as ‘mun-
dane’ (as opposed to poetic or novel) metaphors as a basis for
our ordinary, everyday conceptual systems.
6
It should probably be noted that this ‘forgetting’ as a con-
sequence of e?acement is a secondary repression in Nietzsche’s
account; there is, as well, an originary forgetting as man has
already forgotten that ‘he himself is an artistically creating sub-
ject’ from the beginning and that he remains such an artist in all
things (Nietzsche, 1873/1999; Kofman, 1993).
164 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
things, re-presentations of things, and take them
instead to be the things themselves.
. . .he proceeds from the error of believing
that he has these things [which he intends to
measure] immediately before him as mere
objects. He forgets that the original percep-
tual metaphors are metaphors and takes them
to be the things themselves (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, p. 86).
It is in this su?ciently e?aced form at the level
of concept that metaphor, because its nature is so
concealed, becomes most deceptive because it
permits the illusion that the metaphor of choice is
‘proper’ or ‘truth’.
Forgetting as concealment: maintaining the
conceptual edi?ce
Note however, that this ‘forgetting of meta-
phor’ is not necessarily natural, innocent, or ran-
dom as there is a desire for such truths, a desire
for the ‘‘. . .pleasant, life preserving consequences
of truth. . .’’ (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 81), and it
is only by means of ‘forgetfulness’ that we may
attain them. The e?acement and ‘hardening’ of
metaphor into the ‘proper’ does not result from a
natural or random evolution, an innocent wearing
away of sensory force or vitality as a con-
sequence of simple repetition and the mere pas-
sage of time (Kofman, 1993); ‘‘. . .it is rather an
active and in the strictest sense positive faculty
of repression’’ (Nietzsche, 1887/1968, II, 1,
p. 493). The ‘proper’ is only a proper as a
consequence of a favored metaphor, its privilege
and exclusivity providing it a provisional center
of perspective. It cannot admit that its concept is
metaphorical, that its perspective is a perspective,
lest it lose its privilege and perish accordingly; it
can only preserve itself by concealing its meta-
phorical nature and passing o? its concepts as
truth proper (Kofman, 1993).
. . .knowing certainly does not want to
admit any transference, but wishes instead
to cling to the impression without meta-
phor and apart from its consequences. The
impression is petri?ed for this purpose; it is
captured and stamped by means of con-
cepts. Then it is killed, skinned, mummi-
?ed, and preserved as a concept (Nietzsche,
1872/1999, 149, p. 50).
The very idea of the concept is itself a product
of the deliberate abandonment of metaphoricity
for logic, systematism, and reason. Its logical and
systematic character allow it to master the world
by reducing what is individual to what is typical,
subduing it within its edi?ce and perhaps more
importantly, to protect itself by concealing its
artistic (metaphorical) creativity.
. . .the great edi?ce of concepts displays the
rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium [a
vault with niches for funeral urns] and exhales
in logic that strength and coolness which is
characteristic of mathematics. Anyone who has
felt this cool breath [of logic] will hardly believe
that even the concept . . . is nevertheless merely
the residue of a metaphor . . . (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, p. 85, exposition added).
The concept ?nds a ‘proper’ place for itself by
?rst, perpetrating the e?acement of its own meta-
phorical genesis and hiding it in logic, regularity,
and generality and second, by putting itself for-
ward in opposition to metaphor and thereby
attesting to its ‘treacherousness’ (Kofman, 1993).
Its metaphorical origins, already forgotten, are
thus repressed further by deliberately denouncing
metaphoricity as ‘other’ and thereby ‘untruth’
(relative to the concept) and thus raising the con-
cept into a prior position as ‘truth’ (see Kofman,
1993). Forgetting permits the belief in the concept
as an a priori idea. But the concept is neither an a
priori idea nor a ‘truth’; the ?xation and the illu-
sion that passes it o? as proper are a product of
forgotten metaphor. The genesis of the truth
proper is one of e?aced metaphoricity and is
motivated by the promise of the repose and
security that comes with a priori status (Kofman,
1993; Nietzsche, 1873/1999).
Mainstream accounting research has denied its
metaphoricity because it ‘wishes instead to cling to
the impression without metaphor and apart from
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 165
its consequences’.
9
The mainstream conceptual
edi?ce seeks the illusion of an a priori world pre-
cisely because the authority a?orded mainstream
accounting re-presentations as arbiters of epis-
temic legitimacy and truth rests on the e?acement
of their metaphorical nature. It rests precisely on
our not remembering that these re-presentations
are merely favored metaphors raised into truth
concepts (Derrida, 1982) and perhaps more
importantly, on our not recognizing that there are
alternative metaphorical understandings to choose
from, none of which can truly claim ultimate
epistemic priority over others. Mainstream
accounting has concealed its ‘artistically creating’
nature by hiding it in the ‘cool logic’ and ‘rigid
regularity’ of positivist science and moreover, has
deliberately repressed its con?icted metaphorical
origins, its choice, in order to perpetuate the
deception that it operates as the true and accurate
and above all, objective characterization of reality.
The pretence that its concepts reveal something
naturally inherent in the object of inquiry allows
mainstream re-presentations to masquerade as
authentic, legitimate, and objective means of
representation and accounts for the illusion that
passes them o? as ‘proper’. ‘Proper’ status
unjustly inhibits the emergence of alternative,
possibly harmful re-presentations, those that
would be disruptive to the obviousness of its logic,
o?ering the ‘‘repose, security, and consistency’’
that Nietzsche so eloquently alludes to. The
mainstream concept is a deliberate abandonment
and concealment of metaphoricity in the interest
of maintaining the privilege to speak ‘properly’
and ‘objectively’ (cf. Kofman, 1993). ‘‘For-
getfulness’ and the pretence of the ‘truth proper’
are rudimentary to mainstream accounting
metaphor continuing in the sovereign and uni-
versally valid form that it has traditionally been
a?orded.
Alternative accounting epistemics as ‘metaphorical
drive’: the unforgetting of accounting metaphor
By embracing the idealized scienti?c rigor of
positivist science and by bestowing highly restric-
tive limits on epistemic activity (that is, metapho-
rical activity) in accounting, mainstream
accounting research has been able to conceal the
metaphoricity in its own concepts and maintain
the pretence of its ‘propers’. Alternative account-
ing thought, in its broadest sense, has stood out as
a bold a?ront to such mainstream ‘propers’ by
o?ering liberation from metaphorical ?xation and
dogmatism through deliberate assertion of alter-
native metaphors. Such epistemic activity within
alternative accounting thought may be read as a
manifestation of Nietzsche’s ‘metaphorical drive’,
previously repressed in mainstream epistemic and
conceptual activity. The metaphorical drive or the
‘‘drive toward the formation of metaphors’’ in
Nietzsche’s account is a fundamental creative
force, an imaginative artistic will, which plays at
deconstructing and reconstructing worlds; delib-
erately bringing forth new metaphors, it seeks to
displace and transform the norms of thought and
release the intellect from its conceptual prison
(Kofman, 1993; Nietzsche, 1873/1999).
10
The drive toward the formation of metaphors
. . . continually confuses the conceptual
categories and cells by bringing forward
new transferences, metaphors, and metony-
mies. It continually manifests an ardent
desire to refashion the world which presents
itself to waking man, so that it will be as
colorful, irregular, lacking in results and
coherence, charming, and eternally new as
10
It strikes me that the ‘metaphorical drive’ in Nietzsche’s
account is a particularly Romantic notion. Romanticism, a lit-
erary rejection of the ordered rationality of the Enlightenment
and an opposition to its hatred for the imaginative, profoundly
a?ected Western attitudes with respect to art and literature. It
embraced the creative, the imaginative, ‘the artistically creating
subject’ and acted as a powerful disruptive and inventive force
displacing rules of conventional form, renouncing conventional
genres, and rejecting norms of objectively in lieu of its own
artistic ‘truths’.
9
Please note that this brief discussion is not intended as an
extensive deconstruction/critique of mainstream epistemics as
such discourses maybe found elsewhere in the alternative
accounting literature (see for instance, Arrington, 1990;
Arrington & Francis, 1989; Tinker, Merino, & Neimark, 1982),
but rather, to provide a rhetorical vehicle for situating alter-
native accounting thought as a rehabilitative metaphorical
a?ront to mainstream accounting ‘propers’.
166 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
the world of dreams (Nietzsche, 1873/1999,
pp. 88–89).
With creative pleasure it [the intellect released
from its former slavery] throws metaphors into
confusion and displaces the boundary stones of
abstractions. . . it smashes this framework [of
concepts] to pieces, throws it into confusion,
and puts it back together in an ironic fashion,
pairing the most alien things and separating
the closest . . . [man] speaks only in forbidden
metaphors and in unheard-of combinations
of concepts . . . shattering and mocking the
old conceptual barriers. . . (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, p. 90, exposition added).
The metaphorical drive is thus a rehabilitation
and revitalization of metaphorical activity as well
as an ‘unforgetting’ or unmasking of the meta-
phoricity which constitutes the ‘proper’. Such a
drive puts the sovereignty of mainstream epistemic
activity in jeopardy because it denies it exclusivity
and betrays the existence of the ‘artistically creat-
ing subject’, the metaphorical, in all epistemic and
conceptual activity.
The rehabilitation of accounting metaphor:
‘bringing forward new transferences and
metaphors’
Alternative accounting thought revitalizes epis-
temic activity and rehabilitates its metaphoricity by
bring forward new transferences, new re-presenta-
tions of accounting, by multiplying metaphors; mul-
tiplication of metaphors reveals the plurality of
perspectives available and denies the mainstream
‘proper’ of its exclusivity. Alternative accounting
epistemics seem to mimic the less orthodox, more
radical version of the social sciences and may be
read as a shape-shifting chimera of anti—(or post-)
positivism, neo—(or post-) empiricism,
11
anti-rea-
lism, anti-foundationalism, social constructionism,
qualitative and/or quantitative methods, and mod-
ernist and/or post-modernist intent. The chimerical
nature of the radical social science paradigm gives
license to multiply metaphorical activity through
liberal reference to radical social theory, political
theory, social psychology, cultural anthropology,
literary theory, semiology, feminist theory, and
philosophy (in lieu of neoclassical ?nancial eco-
nomic theory) to construct a theoretical basis for
epistemic activity in accounting. Reference to these
alternative discourses and their accompanying
metaphors (theories, models, and constructs) has
spawned a multitude of associated re-presentations
of accounting study and practice.
12
As illustration of
such multiplicity consider the following: ‘account-
ing as social construction’ (e.g. Arnold & Oakes,
1998; Hines, 1988; Preston & Oakes, 2000),
‘accounting as partisan’ (e.g. Tinker, 1991; Tinker
et al., 1982), ‘accounting as politics’ (e.g. Burchell,
Clubb, Hopwood, & Hughes, 1980; Covaleski &
Dirsmith 1981, 1983, 1986); ‘accounting as ideol-
ogy’ (Cooper, 1995; Lehman, 1992, Lehman &
Tinker, 1987; Tinker et al., 1982; Tinker & Nei-
mark, 1987); ‘accounting as domination’ (Tinker,
1985); ‘accounting as legitimization’ (e.g. Ansari &
Euske, 1987; Berry et al., 1985; Covaleski & Dir-
smith, 1988, 1991); ‘accounting as power’ (e.g.
Miller & O’Leary, 1987); ‘accounting as discipline’
(Hoskin & Macve, 1986; Knights & Collinson,
1987), ‘accounting as text’ (e.g. Arrington &
Francis 1989, 1993; Boland, 1989; Cooper &
Puxty, 1994; Macintosh & Baker, 1999); ‘account-
ing as signi?cation’ (Arrington, 1990; Arrington &
Francis, 1989, 1993; Lavoie, 1987; Tinker, Leh-
man, & Neimark, 1988; Tinker, 1991); ‘accounting
as metaphorical’ (e.g. Mouck, 1992; Morgan,
1988; Walters-York, 1996; Young, 1999); ‘account-
11
It is worthy of mention that there are alternative empirical
studies however, they are the exception rather than the rule (see
Morgan & Willmott, 1993) and they are typically a bit more
liberal in their interpretation of what constitutes ‘empirical’, at
least relative to the orthodox empirical tradition as derived
from the classical British empiricists Locke, Berkeley, and
Hume (see Palmer, 1994); thus the use of the phrase ‘neo-
empiricism’ here.
12
The metaphors chosen for illustrative purposes in this
essay are not intended to pass for either an objective sampling
or an exhaustive list of the metaphorical re-presentations that
have in?uenced alternative accounting thought. Rather, the
metaphors presented here are those that caught my attention
and memory (and as such, re?ect my readings) and those that I
believe are either particularly interesting (as alternative voices)
or strong (from the perspective of their potentiality to displace
mainstream propers) or those that I believe occupy or have
occupied a particularly in?uential or privileged epistemological
position in alternative accounting discourse.
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 167
ing as communication’ (e.g. Arrington & Puxty,
1991; Wright, 1994); ‘accounting as rhetoric’ (e.g.
Arrington & Francis, 1989; Arrington & Schweiker,
1992; Mouck, 1992; Phiddian, 1996; Young, 2000),
‘accounting as narrative’ (e.g. Colville & McAulay,
1996; Reiter, 1997); ‘accounting as art’ (Gallhofer &
Haslam, 1996); ‘accounting as witchcraft/magic’
(e.g. Gambling, 1977, 1985, 1987; Covaleski & Dir-
smith, 1981), ‘accounting as masculine’ (e.g.
Cooper, 1992; Hines, 1992; Tinker & Neimark,
1987), ‘accounting as simulacrum’ (e.g. Macin-
tosh, Shearer, Thornton, & Welker, 2000; Preston,
Wright, & Young, 1996), and ‘accounting as show
business’ (e.g. Graves, Flesher, & Jordan, 1996).
Moreover, most academic researchers assimilate
multiple metaphors into their texts in an attempt to
construct a compelling and coherent alternative
understanding.
13
For example Tinker (1991)
assimilates several metaphors into his text to con-
struct a rhetorically potent argument including
‘accounting as partisan’, ‘accounting as signi?ca-
tion’, ‘accounting as social construction’, and
‘accounting as ideological’. As an additional illus-
tration of the multiplication of metaphors within a
particular text consider Arrington and Schweiker
(1992); in this text the authors coherently assimilate
metaphors of accounting research as ‘argument’,
‘rhetoric’, ‘metaphorical’, ‘constructive’, ‘partisan’
(or ‘partial’), and ‘political’.
The unforgetting of accounting metaphor:
‘confusing conceptual categories and cells’
14
Mainstream re-presentations are so worn from
use, so e?aced, that it requires more than a simple
unmasking to destroy the spell that such powerful
metaphors exude. Simply pointing out the illusion of
the proper and its unjust privilege is not enough; it
requires, so to speak, a process of unforgetting. This
process of unforgetting requires negative, destruc-
tive insight; it requires not only that we eschew the
organization of knowledge and experience as pre-
ordained by mainstream ‘propers’, it requires that
we ‘see’ the metaphor in the truth concept and
perhaps more importantly, that we subvert its
generality, privilege and obviousness (cf. Brown,
1976; Kofman, 1993; Schon, 1993 for related
ideas). Alternative accounting thought perpetrates
such a process of unforgetting in part by asserting
non-stereotypical as well as antithetical metaphors
for accounting, by thinking of accounting as or in
terms of something unusual, unconventional or per-
haps, disturbing. Such non-stereotypical metaphors
are disruptive, provoking reevaluation of conven-
tional ‘proper’ metaphors, undermining their
implications and challenging their presupposition.
Defamiliarizing accounting ‘propers’: ‘‘speaking in
forbidden metaphors and unheard-of combinations’
One manner in which the assertion of non-ste-
reotypical metaphors disrupts the illusion of
mainstream propers is through the process of
defamiliarization. That is, the ‘unforgetting’
brought about by asserting non-stereotypical
metaphors may be likened to Shklovsky’s (1965)
concept of ostranenie (‘making strange’) or ‘defa-
miliarization’ whereby one is perceptually and
epistemologically detached from the routine,
‘automatized’ or ‘proper’ understanding of an
object, disrupting the ?uency of the familiar logic
and reminding us of its arti?ciality, through a re-
presentation of that object in new and unusual
terms.
15
Attaching a ‘forbidden’ or ‘unheard-of’
?gure to a stereotyped concept provokes a reex-
amination and reevaluation of the concept, the
15
It is worthy of mention that this idea of ‘making the
familiar strange’ actually predates Shklovsky’s Russian Form-
alist writings and is implicit in early English Romanticism in
particular, in the writings of poets such as Coleridge and Shel-
ley (Baldick, 1990). For instance, Shelley in his essay A Defence
of Poetry (1821) wrote that poetry may make ‘familiar objects
be as if they were not familiar’ by lifting the ‘veil of familiarity
from the world’.
13
Lako? and Johnson (1980) contend that concepts are often
structured by multiple metaphors that ?t together in coherent
fashion; this assimilation of more than one metaphor is made pos-
sible by at least some shared implications or what the authors call
‘shared entailments’ across or between metaphors. Lako? and
Johnson suggest that the assimilation of multiple metaphors for
epistemic purposes is necessary as a single metaphor is often insuf-
?cient to provide complete and coherent understanding. As pre-
viously mentioned, in Nietzsche’s account, the conceptual edi?ce
itself is complex schema of multiple metaphors.
14
The metaphorical ‘modes’ of unforgetting suggested in the
following three subsections are not intended to be construed as
mutually exclusive (they interconnect and overlap in many
obvious ways) and are separated textually for academic and
rhetorical convenience only.
168 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
‘proper’ metaphor, revitalizing it and calling
attention to its inadequacies. Often the re-pre-
sentational metaphor and its domain of applica-
tion are perceived as very remote which is due at
least in part, to the tension with and dissimilarity
to the familiar, e?aced metaphor already in place.
For example, consider re-presenting ‘accounting
as art’, ‘accounting as literature’, or ‘accounting as
witchcraft/magic’; such metaphors are far
removed from the familiar, ossi?ed mainstream
technocratic conceptualizations of accounting and
antagonistic to their implications of rationality.
16
For example, the non-stereotypical metaphor
‘accounting as literature’ conjures up images of
the imaginative, the creative, and the artistic
rather than the rational, the systematic, or the
logical, and suggests poetic, dramatic, and ?c-
tional forms of writing (literary forms of writing)
rather than didactic or technical writing. The per-
ceived remoteness from and/or tension between
the familiar or ‘proper’ representation of an object
and an unfamiliar re-presentation is precisely what
creates the estranging e?ect that disturbs our faith
in conventional perceptions. The disturbing e?ect
of asserting these ‘other’ metaphors is not merely
to create new meaning (although this obviously
occurs) but to deconstruct perceptions thereby
upsetting the habitual mainstream conceptions of
accounting experience and reminding us of the ‘as’
structure of accounting knowledge; a non-stereo-
typical metaphor violates and disrupts our ‘com-
mon sense’ in that it does not seem to represent
the world ‘as it really is’ (Brown, 1976). Speaking
in ‘forbidden metaphors and unheard-of combi-
nations of concepts’ retards understanding and
provokes a re-evaluation of that which received
and e?aced mainstream metaphors allow us to
pass over unfettered by question or re?ection; that
is, such unfamiliar re-presentations juxtaposed
with habitual ones force us to ‘see’ the metapho-
rical in what is taken as ‘proper’ (the concept)
disclosing the gaps in its familiar rational patterns
that we may attend to its inadequacies and chal-
lenge the obviousness of its prescriptions. Meta-
phorical defamiliarization is a way of fragmenting
and dismantling ossi?ed knowledge and perhaps
more importantly, a way of disturbing the
obviousness of mainstream conceptual ‘propers’;
that which seems immediately necessary and
obvious may, given the re?ective advantage of an
antithetical metaphor, seem utterly mistaken and
false (cf. Kofman, 1993; Schon, 1993).
There are a number of illustrations of defami-
liarization in the alternative accounting literature,
indeed the alternative accounting discourse as a
whole might read (directly or indirectly) as a
metaphorical ‘unforgetting’ of mainstream dogma.
By way of example, consider the following alter-
native re-presentations. Tinker et al. (1982) con-
trast mainstream Positivism with Historical
Materialism (o?ered as an alternative set of epis-
temic terms in which to think of accounting study)
to reveal the former’s epistemic inadequacies for
the study of accounting and thereby provoke a
reevaluation of an epistemological foundation that
the mainstream study of accounting accepts ‘on
faith’. Arrington and Francis (1989) implicitly
assert a root metaphor of ‘accounting epistemol-
ogy as text/rhetoric’ (or rather, to be more speci?c,
‘positive accounting theory as text/rhetoric’) and
based thereon engage Derridean deconstructive
textual analysis (along with its accompanying
metaphors) to disrupt the ?uency and obviousness
of the received logic of positive theory and to
remind us of the arti?ciality of its privilege. The
16
Note that metaphors that seem less strange or remote for
alternative accounting researchers may seem very strange or
remote for a researcher of the mainstream cause (such as
‘accounting as signi?cation’, ‘accounting as rhetoric,’ ‘account-
ing as social construction’, or ‘accounting as partisan’). More-
over, some metaphors may now seem less remote to alternative
researchers than others. Metaphors such as ‘accounting as sig-
ni?cation’, ‘accounting as rhetoric,’ ‘accounting as social con-
struction’, or ‘accounting as partisan’ now seem much less
remote to alternative researchers than ‘accounting as art’,
accounting as simulacrum’ or ‘accounting as show business’.
This may be attributed to the repetitive use, conventionaliza-
tion and legitimatization of certain metaphors in the alternative
literature. Once a metaphor becomes accepted as familiar,
legitimate, or intuitive within a particular domain of applica-
tion (mainstream or alternative) it may lose the tension and
estranging potential it may originally have had. This is not to
suggest that alternative metaphors that are accepted as intuitive
by alternative accounting researchers no longer have disruptive
potential with regards to mainstream thought as they are likely
to still be very remote from and still be capable of generating
tension with the re-presentations privileged in the mainstream
domain of application. They may however, lose their disruptive
potential with regards to alternative accounting thought.
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 169
so-named ‘new accounting histories’ (Miller,
Hopper, & Laughlin, 1991) also provide particu-
larly good examples of defamiliarization; ‘new
accounting histories’ such as those engaging Fou-
cault’s writings and his accompanying metaphors
of archaeology and/or genealogy (e.g. Miller &
O’Leary, 1987; Hopwood, 1987; Hoskin & Macve,
1986; Preston, 1992), re-present accounting history
to interrogate the familiar mainstream logic that
accounting evolves teleologically (in response to
changes in environmental or societal needs) as a
techno-rational, functional, and passive tool of
economic e?ciency (Arrington & Francis, 1989;
Cooper & Puxty, 1996; Miller & O’Leary, 1987;
Tinker & Neimark, 1987).
Un-making/re-making accounting ‘things’:
‘smashing the framework and putting it back in
ironic fashion’
Defamiliarization is only one consequence of
asserting non-stereotypical metaphors, as meta-
phor is also a principle device for re-structuring
and re-organizing our concepts and categories
(Black, 1962a, 1993; Johnson 1980, 1981). As
such, in addition to disturbing and challenging the
obviousness of mainstream ‘propers’, the assertion
of non-stereotypical metaphors also results in the
creative ‘re-making’ of accounting (and account-
ing study) by giving novel or modi?ed senses to its
various concepts. It is important to emphasize that
what is created as a consequence of such meta-
phoric activity is not merely a new emphasis or
alternative perspective on some objectively pre-
existing but hitherto unnoticed object or property
of the metaphor’s domain of application; rather,
the production and empowerment of an alter-
native metaphor introduces a very real change into
the world constructing new meaning, new connec-
tions, new objects of inquiry, and new properties,
and ultimately, generating new facts and knowl-
edge which once perceived, are then ‘truly present’
(Black, 1962a, 1993; Brown, 1976). A non-stereo-
typical metaphor changes the very nature of the
thing metaphorized and the epistemic products
that derive there from. As with defamiliarization
above, it is the dissimilarity or tension with the
familiar, e?aced metaphor already in place that
invites us to alter our thinking and enables the
critical and liberating potential of the alternative
metaphor. That is, the suggestive power and radical
insight created by the non-stereotypical re-pre-
sentation is less a consequence of initially per-
ceived similarities between the metaphor and its
domain of application and rather more a result of
tensions or dissimilarities between A (as currently
represented) and B (the alternative re-presenta-
tion) that force us to cognitively re-structure the
domain of application in order to explore the
implications suggested by the new metaphor
(Brown, 1976; Johnson, 1981; Khatchadourian,
1968; Richards, 1936).
The consequence of this re-making is to con-
struct and o?er insights and knowledge previously
unavailable, ignored, denied, and/or excluded by
the limited modes of visibility provided for by
mainstream accounting’s privileged metaphors.
An earlier and quite bold (and rather more
obviously metaphorical) example of a re-making
of the accounting craft may be provided by Gam-
bling’s (1977) reference to anthropologist Evans-
Pritchard’s (1937) relativist anthropology and his
accompanying metaphorical re-presentations of
‘accounting as witchcraft’, ‘accountants as witch-
doctors’ and ‘accounting/budgeting as religious
ceremony’. Gambling o?ered his radical re-con-
ceptualization of the accounting craft as a basis
for re?ecting upon and interrogating the received
mainstream assumption of rationality in account-
ing. The initially perceived dissimilarity between
our current ‘rational’ representation of accounting
and the ‘irrationality’ implied by ‘accounting
magic’ (which violates our ‘common sense’) cre-
ates substantial cognitive tension. This tension
forces us, by way of attempted resolution, to ima-
ginatively re-conceptualize our received way of
comprehending accounting practice (in terms of
‘magic and superstition’, ‘spells and incantations’
and ‘ceremonial rain dances’) in order to ‘see’ and
explore the alternative implications of Gambling’s
‘anthropology of accounting’ for the mainstream
presumption of accounting rationality. Notice that
once we have come to understand Gambling’s
‘accounting magic’ as Gambling himself appears
to have done, the e?ect is dramatic; the new meta-
phor introduces a very real change into our under-
standing of accounting rationality (or irrationality,
170 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
as it were); we become privy to new facts (e.g.
numerous instances of irrationality in accounting)
and knowledge (e.g. the roles that such irration-
ality may serve and the basis for its justi?cation).
The alternative accounting literature is replete
with such re-makings of the accounting practice
and research (see illustrations of alternative meta-
phor as discussed above) albeit many are less
obviously metaphorical and most are perhaps a
bit less melodramatic than Gambling’s, although
no less bold in their intent; indeed as above, the
alternative accounting discourse as a whole
might be read, explicitly or implicitly, as an
attempted re-making of accounting research and
practice.
Transgressing conceptual barriers: ‘displacing the
boundary stones of abstractions’
Another consequence of asserting non-stereo-
typical metaphors is to extend accounting dis-
course beyond its traditional normalized
categories and conventional understandings, ‘dis-
placing the boundary stones of abstractions’ and
‘mocking the old conceptual boundaries’. This is a
somewhat Romantic view of metaphor. The
Romantic view of metaphor was one of more than
idle escapism or fanciful frivolity; rather, meta-
phor was seen as a creative cathartic activity with
the potential to transcend the prosaic and to
transgress rigid ‘literal’ understandings and
oppressive rational categories (Eagleton, 1983;
Johnson, 1981). Re-conceptualizing accounting
through assertion of non-stereotypical metaphors
transgresses the oppressive epistemic categories,
priorities, presumptions, and conducts of evalua-
tion of mainstream epistemology by o?ering and
putting forward as legitimate, alternative resour-
ces with which to pursue epistemic activity. For
example, re-conceptualizing ‘accounting texts as
literature/novels’ and ‘accountants as literary
authors/writers’ makes the rich and varied history
of literary criticism and critical poetics suddenly
and dramatically available as epistemic resources;
re-conceptualizing ‘accounting as narrative’ opens
up the literary study of narratology as an epis-
temic resource and re-conceptualizing ‘accounting
as rhetoric’ makes the rich tradition of classical
rhetoric and ?guration and its critique immediately
and opportunely available as an epistemic resource.
Such alternative epistemic resources open up the
study of accounting to encompass alternative sour-
ces of insight, alternative modes of inquiry, and
alternative issues and concerns. The re-presenta-
tion of ‘positive accounting theory as rhetoric’ for
example, has opened accounting study up to
include the insights of Derrida and deMan, their
associated deconstructive modes of inquiry, and a
concern for issues such as authorial privilege, epis-
temic privilege, and the in/determinacy of knowl-
edge (e.g. see Arrington & Francis, 1989, Arrington
& Schweiker, 1992; Phiddian, 1996).
Interestingly, some of the alternative re-pre-
sentations of accounting practice and research
extend accounting discourse beyond traditional
mainstream understandings not by o?ering a new
metaphor as such, but by challenging, changing or
extending the implications that are conventionally
carried by an existing metaphor in e?ect, changing
the interpretation of the metaphor. One major
function of poetic metaphor is to take a con-
ventionalized metaphor and extend it in an
unconventional manner or change it in a way that
transcends the ordinary, the familiar, or the
received (Lako? & Turner, 1989). In alternative
accounting thought, this unconventional extension
or more often, outright alteration of the inter-
pretation of a conventional metaphor generally
manifests in terms of alternative theoretical for-
mations based on what Black (1993, following
Aristotle) referred to as di?ering endoxa. Black’s
endoxa refer to opinions, understandings, and/or
rationalizations concerning the nature and
implications of the metaphorical subject that are
shared by members of a certain speech community
or by subscribers to a certain discourse (which
may in the case of alternative accounting re-con-
ceptualizations, be ontological, epistemic, or
socio-political). For instance, the ‘accounting as
language/signi?cation’ metaphor as in ‘accounting
is the language of business’ (which often appears
in elementary accounting textbooks) is not a par-
ticularly novel or radical metaphor, nor is
‘accounting as communication’. They do however
carry distinctly and radically di?erent ontological,
epistemic, and social implications in their alter-
native accounting form than in their mainstream
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 171
form due to a di?erent understanding of the nature,
purpose, structure, functions, rationale, and
implications of language, signi?cation, and
communication; that is, alternative accounting
researchers bring radically di?erent implications
to the secondary (metaphorical) subjects ‘lan-
guage’ and ‘communication’ in the construction of
metaphorical meaning through for instance, sub-
scription to the discourses surrounding the writ-
ings of de Saussure (e.g. Tinker, 1991), Gadamer
(e.g. Lavoie, 1987), Riceour (e.g. Arrington &
Francis, 1993), Habermas (e.g. Arrington &
Puxty, 1991), or Derrida (e.g. Arrington & Fran-
cis, 1989). By way of brief example, consider
Lavoie’s (1987) metaphorical conceptualization of
‘accounting as language’ and his subscription to
the discourse surrounding hermeneutical philoso-
phy and to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s writings in par-
ticular as a basis for interpreting this metaphor.
Through such interpretive references, Lavoie brings
to his central language metaphor distinctively
anti-realist, non-objectivist implications in sharp
contrast to the markedly realist implications of
the conventional mainstream version of the
metaphor (cf. Moore, 1991). As further example,
consider Arrington and Francis’ (1993) central
metaphor of ‘accounting as language’ as inter-
preted through subscription to the discourse sur-
rounding the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de
Saussure and to the hermeneutics of Paul Riceour.
Through the authors’ alternative interpretation of
this central language metaphor, the assumption of
‘?xed meaning’ and the presumption of a necessary
correspondence between ‘signs’ and ‘meanings’
characteristic of the more conventional main-
stream form of this metaphor give way to a con-
cern for the polysemic nature of the sign and
meaning as actively produced as a consequence of
discursive practice. As one further example, con-
sider Tinker’s (1991) metaphor of ‘accounting as
signi?cation’ as interpreted via his subscription to
de Saussure’s semiology and in particular, to his
principle of the arbitrariness of signs as a basis for
discrediting the mainstream’s (and in particular,
Solomons’, 1991) presumption of neutrality of
accounting symbols and for authenticating the dis-
cretionary and partisan status of such accounting
‘signs’.
Alternative accounting epistemics as ‘will to
power’
By bringing forth multiple, non-stereotypical
and antithetical metaphors for accounting,
alternative accounting research, as a manifesta-
tion of Nietzsche’s ‘metaphorical drive’, has
interrogated and ridiculed the exclusivity and
sovereignty of supposed mainstream accounting
‘propers’. In Nietzsche’s account, however, the
metaphorical drive is not merely an imaginative
liberating force, it is a creative force which allows
us to remake the world so as to master it; that is,
metaphorical activity coincides with the ‘will to
power’ (Breazeale, 1999; Kofman, 1993; Nietzsche,
1873/1999, 1901/1967). Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’
is an artistic force that metaphorically ‘‘. . .posits
forms but seeks also to master by means of
them. . .’’ (Kofman, 1993, p. 82). Copleston (1994)
provides a brief but insightful exposition of
Nietzsche’s’ ‘will to power’ as it manifests in
knowledge production.
The desire for knowledge, the will to know,
depends on the will to power, that is, on a
given kind of being’s impulse to master a
certain ?eld of reality and to enlist it in its
service. The aim of knowledge is not to know,
in the sense of grasping absolute truth for its
sake, but to master (Copleston, 1994, p. 408,
emphasis added).
The alternative accounting drive, from the per-
spective of Nietzsche’s account, may be read as an
attempt at gaining mastery over the accounting
world, an attempt that is, at gaining mastery over
the construction of accounting ‘truths’ through its
alternative metaphors. Each new metaphor is new
and a unique interpretation. To interpret a thing is
to impose meaning on it from a particular view-
point, to confer on oneself ownership of the thing,
that is, to become master of it (Kofman, 1993;
Nietzsche, 1901/1967); as such, ‘‘. . . interpretation
itself is a form of the will to power. . .’’ (Nietzsche,
1901/1967, 556, p. 302). Each new alternative
accounting metaphor is an imposition of meaning
from a particular perspective, an appropriation of
172 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
the accounting world by a speci?c will, equivalent
to an attempt at mastery and as such, seeks a
provisional center of perspective, a ‘proper’ place,
for itself. The will to power manifests within
alternative epistemic activity in the form of drives
to establish and empower these alternative meta-
phors as perspectival centers, as concepts. The
ensuing assertion, formation, and validation of
these metaphors, as symptomatic of the alter-
native will, bring about e?acement and abandon-
ment of their metaphoricity. Such metaphors are
easily forgotten, their artistic and disruptive vital-
ity ironically fading to dull familiarity, unobtru-
siveness, and custom, their metaphoricity lost to
the very rhetorical and conceptual means necessary
to establish and empower them as epistemic forces.
This is equivalent to a deliberate desertion of the
metaphorical drive in favor of conceptual status;
the ironic result being, privilege, ?xation, and
presupposition of the like that the alternative
accounting drive has sought to undermine.
The e?acement of metaphoricity: losing the ‘as’
structure of knowledge
In the rhetorical assertion of metaphor: ‘will to
know’
Epistemic metaphors, especially when elevated
to the status of theories, models, and paradigms,
constitute validity claims and by their very nature
carry the strong suggestion of verity; thus, we
might say that such metaphors are emphatically
asserted and not merely entertained (Black, 1993).
Black explains,
Whether we consider Kelvin’s ‘rude mechan-
ical models’, Rutherford’s solar system,
Bohr’s model of the atom, we can hardly
avoid concluding that the physicists con-
ceived themselves to be describing the atom
as it is, and not merely o?ering mathematical
formulas in fancy dress . . . They used lan-
guage appropriate to the [metaphorical]
model in thinking about the domain of
application . . . Their models were conceived to
be more than expository or heuristic devices.
(Black, 1962b, p. 229, exposition and some
emphasis added).
That is to say, an epistemic metaphor is more
than a casual invitation to regard something in a
particular way; it is presented emphatically as a
statement of actuality. We may refer, for example,
to ‘the rhetoric of accounting’, not merely imply-
ing that we are casually comparing A with B, or
even that we are self-consciously thinking of A as
if it were or could be B but to say decisively and
with authority and conviction that ‘accounting is a
rhetorical construction’, in short, to think of
accounting as being ‘a deliberate exploitation of
textual construction to achieve a desired e?ect’ (cf.
Black, 1993, p. 31). This is to suggest an episte-
mological di?erence between a conditional heur-
istic statement (‘as if’) and an existential statement
(‘as being’). Merely, thinking of A ‘as if’ it were or
could be like B suggests a conscious, willful, tem-
porary and most importantly, reticent suspension
of ontological disbelief in the form of a detached
comparison
17
or heuristic ?ction (Black, 1962b). It
su?ers from lack of commitment; and the price
paid is an absence of epistemological power as the
potential ‘to know’ the thing through metaphor is
prematurely closed o? for lack of ontological
empathy (Black, 1962b). Thinking of A ‘as being’
B is not a mere matter of heuristic convenience but
rather, a matter of the metaphorical construction
of things as experienced; we treat the metaphor as
the measure of the thing and use the language and
logic appropriate to the metaphor to attribute to
the thing properties and implications, belonging
not to the thing as it is but to the metaphor, and
now through its view, our rendering of the thing. It
17
It has been argued extensively in the literature, particularly
by proponents of the interaction view of metaphor, that meta-
phor cannot be reduced to a matter of simple literal comparison
(see Black, 1962a, 1993; Brown, 1976; Hausman, 1984; John-
son, 1980, 1981; Riceour, 1973; Richards, 1936; Waggoner,
1990 for discussion). Black (1993, pp. 30–31) eloquently argues,
‘‘. . . to suppose that the metaphorical statement is an abstract
or precis of a literal point-by-point comparison, in which the
primary and secondary subjects are juxtaposed for the sake of
noting dissimilarities as well as similarities, is to misconstrue
the function of metaphor. In discursively comparing one sub-
ject with another, we sacri?ce the distinctive power and e?ec-
tiveness of a good metaphor. Literal comparison lacks the
ambience and suggestiveness, and the imposed ‘view’ of the
primary subject, upon which a metaphor’s power to illuminate
depends (emphasis in original).’’
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 173
is through and by means of this rendering, an
appropriation and mastering of the thing, that we
may ‘know’ the thing.
When we make reference to ‘the rhetoric of
accounting standards’ (Young, 2000, p.1) or the
‘rhetoric of accounting research’ (Arrington &
Schweiker, 1992, p. 511; ‘accounting as rhetoric’)
we make an emphatic epistemic statement of
actuality about something essential to the nature
of accounting as practiced or studied. We may
then attribute to ‘accounting’ the properties of the
rhetorical (e.g. invention, argumentation, situa-
tional adaptation, audience positioning, diction,
stylistics, ?guration, textual composition and
arrangement) and the logic of motivated textual
construction (e.g. discursive practices as forms of
power, performance, justi?cation and desire)
thereby appropriating and rendering an account-
ing object (the standard setting process or
accounting research practices) for epistemic pur-
poses. Treating the rhetoric metaphor as the
measure of accounting standard setting, Young
(2000) was able to make compelling epistemic
statements regarding the persuasive nature of the
process of standard setting, concluding that stan-
dard setters actually do attempt to convince us,
through deliberate textual constructions and
authorial choice, that a particular standard is
‘good’, that the alternatives are ‘not so good’, and
that the FASB is a ‘good’ standard setter. Treating
the rhetoric metaphor as the measure of account-
ing research practices, Arrington and Schweiker
(1992) were able to attribute to accounting
knowledge claims rhetorical properties of audience
positioning, invention, stylistics, and justi?cation
and thereby make emphatic epistemic statements
regarding the argumentative genesis of accounting
knowledge.
When we make reference to ‘accounting sig-
ni?cation’ or to the ‘accounting sign’ (Tinker,
1991, pp. 302, 303; ‘accounting as signi?cation’),
we do not imply in a reticent manner that we may
(if we so choose) think of accounting numbers ‘as
if’ they were like or could be compared to a basic
element (linguistic or non-linguistic) of communi-
cation; rather, we make a statement of actuality
that ‘accounting numbers are signs’ that
‘Accounting is a sign system’. We may then attri-
bute to ‘accounting representation’ the properties
of ‘signs’ (e.g. the distinction between the signi?er
and signi?ed, arbitrariness, and the unimportance
of the external referent) and the logic of ‘sign sys-
tems’ (e.g. the interrelationship between and
mutual dependence of signs themselves and the
production of meaning based on social processes
and shared conventions)
18
thereby appropriating
accounting representation and imposing meaning
on it from a particular perspective. Treating the
‘signi?cation’ metaphor as the measure of
accounting, Tinker (1991) was able to make pro-
blematising epistemic statements regarding the
arbitrariness, lack of faithfulness to an external
objective reality, and thereby discretionary, parti-
san nature of accounting signs, concluding as
logically evident, that ?nancial representation is
not neutral and that accounting signi?cation, in
actuality, arbitrarily and prejudicially ‘takes sides’
in social and political con?icts.
There is, in such metaphorical appropriations
and renderings, however, the implication of direct
description; emphatic enough so as to make one
believe that we truly possess a thing in its essenti-
ality. In treating the metaphor as the actual
measure of things, we create the illusion that we
have things themselves before us so as to ‘know’
them and thus allow descriptive adequacy; this
e?aces the metaphoricity of the claim and in its
stead presents the metaphor as the ‘thing-in-itself’
and thereby, as the correct or ‘proper’ perception
of the thing. Rhetorically, the e?acement is stra-
tegic; the implication of direct description is
empowering, giving the metaphor necessary con-
ceptual force. It creates the illusion of appro-
priateness, conferring on the metaphor a
provisional center of perspective and presenting it
as ‘proper in itself’. As symptomatic of the ‘will to
know’, we treat the metaphor as the veritable nat-
ure of things so that we may ‘know’ a thing in its
essentiality and thus make existential statements,
not merely ?ctionally conditional ones. As symp-
tomatic of ‘will to power’ we designate, through
the illusion of direct description, the metaphor as
18
Tinker (1991) interpreted ‘accounting as a system of
signi?cation’ from the perspective of Saussurean/Derridean
semiology.
174 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
appropriate and tend to impose the metaphor on
others, as concept. This is the nature of ‘knowing’;
metaphor (as ‘will to know’) produces the procliv-
ity for verity and rhetoric (as ‘will to power’) has
designated the illusion that passes the metaphor
o? as ‘proper’ as epistemic necessity.
In the cognitive formation of metaphor:
19
‘will of
the mind’
In its simplest and least abstract formation,
metaphor involves two distinct ideas, spheres of
signs, or subjects referred to here (following Black,
1993) as the primary (non-metaphorical) and sec-
ondary (metaphorical) subjects ‘‘. . .which co-
operate in an inclusive meaning’’ (Richards, 1936,
p. 119). For example, we might again refer to the
‘rhetoric of accounting’ (‘accounting as rhetoric’),
the primary subject being ‘accounting’ and the sec-
ondary (metaphorical) subject being ‘rhetoric’. Both
the primary and secondary subjects evoke a system
of associated implications, or implicative complexes,
consisting of attributes and relations that may,
based on currently held opinions or beliefs, be
attributed to, associated with, or predicable of each
subject, constituting therefore an idea of each sub-
ject. The formation of metaphor juxtaposes the two
subjects, forcing them to coexist in common space;
and two things that appear together by means of a
metaphor ‘‘. . .arouse the idea (notion) of a con-
nection. . .’’ (Nietzsche, 1872/1999, p. 49). That is,
when two subjects, such as ‘rhetoric’ and
‘accounting’, generally thought to belong to dif-
ferent ‘orders of experience’, are discursively
placed together, there is an implication of similar-
ity; one is therefore incited to cognitively ‘connect’
the two disparate sets of implications and the two
ideas are ‘forced to co-operate’ in a semantic
fashion (Black, 1962a; Richards, 1936).
20
This is
the ‘will of the mind’, an essentially unjust will to
mastery, to seek similarity between one thing and
another, to subdue and reduce di?erences, to
digest and assimilate, and to achieve unity out of
diversity (Kofman, 1993, p. 33; Nietzsche, 1872/
1999, 1873/1999).
The primal procedure is to seek out some
likeness between one thing and another, to
identify like with like. (Nietzsche, 1872/1999,
144, p. 49).
Like recalls like and compares itself to it.
That is what knowing consists in: the rapid
classi?cation of things that are similar to each
other. Only like perceives like . . . The per-
ception of something new is also the same as
memory. It is not thought piled upon thought
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 131, p. 45).
. . .through assimilation and generalization
which are ‘illegitimate’, treacherous, and
unjust . . .metaphoricity, by its exercise of sole
mastery, implies the loss of individuality and
the reduction of di?erences. . . (Kofman,
1993, p. 34).
In the metaphor, ‘the rhetoric of accounting’,
the co-presence of two terms ‘accounting’ and
‘rhetoric’ as supported by a single phrase insists on
a cognitive co-operation between our idea of
‘accounting’ and the evoked rhetoric-system of
related implications (cf. Black, 1962a; Richards,
1936). This forced co-operation creates the pre-
sumption of similarity between ‘accounting’ and
‘rhetoric’, and leads to a strongly motivated
attempt to perceive analogy between the two dis-
parate subjects, an attempt that is, ‘to identify like
19
The discussion in this subsection draws heavily on the
interaction account of metaphor as originally proposed by I. A.
Richards (1936), developed and modi?ed by Max Black (1954–
1955,1962a, 1978, 1993), and further elaborated on by a num-
ber of other philosophers (e.g. Hausman, 1983, 1984, 1989;
Johnson, 1980, 1981; Riceour 1973, 1977, 1978). See Black
(1993) and Waggoner (1990) for further discussion of the
interaction account of metaphor. See Walters-York (1996) for
an application of Black’s interaction account of metaphor to
metaphor in accounting texts.
20
I would suggest that this juxtaposing of two subjects of
di?erent orders of experience and the ensuing ‘forced co-oper-
ation’ that Richards (1936) and Black (1962a) refer to is not
unlike the intertextuality that Derrida incites when he places
two very di?erent texts side-by-side on a single page (as in his
essays Glas and ‘‘The Double Session’’). The juxtaposition of
the two di?erent texts holds them active together forcing the
reader to shift incessantly back and forth between what nor-
mally would be considered, when held separately, two sets of
remotely incompatible ideas, the meaning of which eventually
emerges in the interplay of juxtaposed associations (see Norris,
1987 for further discussion).
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 175
with like’ and make the primary subject ‘?t’ (in
some sense) the secondary subject’s implications
(and vice versa). The desire for analogous ?t
incites the search for and construction of a set of
conceptual or ontological correspondences,
abstract ‘places’ where the evoked realities of
‘accounting’ and ‘rhetoric’ may be perceived to
‘connect’ or ‘touch’ in either normal or abnormal
senses (Black, 1962a; Lako?, 1993).
21
The con-
struction of ontological correspondences allows
for the making of epistemic correspondences so
that our knowledge about rhetoric may be trans-
ferred and thereby used to ‘know’ about
accounting (cf. Lako?, 1993); such corre-
spondences tell us ‘where’ (in the rhetorical
sphere) to transfer the knowledge from and
‘where’ (in the accounting sphere) to transfer it to
(and vice versa). These correspondences once
constructed, are perceived as similarities (and
most often antecedently existing similarities) and
are then given precedence over any dissimilarity
between the two subjects. In our ‘rhetoric of
accounting’ example, attributes and relations from
the accounting sphere that are found to ontologi-
cally and epistemologically correspond with the
rhetoric-system will be privileged and re-struc-
tured in terms of rhetorical implications and those
incompatible, those too uncooperative or dissim-
ilar to be forced to ?t in some sense, will be
excluded or suppressed by force of language; that
is, any attributes and relations that can without
undue di?culty be thought about in terms of
‘rhetoric language’ will be made prominent and
those that can not (as disanalogies) will be sub-
dued and ignored (cf. Black, 1962a). Moreover, it
should be noted that the interaction between the
two subjects is reciprocal; both subjects play a part
in appropriating and imposing meaning on each
other as either subject may serve as an interpretive
base for the other (Black, 1962a, 1993; Hausman,
1983, 1989). There is a transfer of properties and
logic from the sphere of ‘rhetoric’ to the sphere of
‘accounting’ as well as a reciprocal transfer of
properties and logic from the sphere of ‘account-
ing’ to the sphere of ‘rhetoric’. As such, there is a
secondary repression of dissimilarity, intensifying
the transition from the analogous to the identical,
as any ontological or epistemological properties
from the rhetorical sphere that can be reconciled to
‘accounting-language’ will be privileged and those
that cannot (as disanalogies) will be subdued and
subordinated to the presumed similarity of the
metaphor.
The consequence of the forced co-operation and
reciprocity then is to bring the two subjects closer
together perceptually, the formation and relative
position of both subjects e?ected, so that our ideas
of ‘rhetoric’ and ‘accounting’ seem more compa-
tible, more as belonging to similar (rather than
remotely di?erent) ‘orders of experience’ as a
consequence of the metaphorical juxtaposition
(Walters-York, 1996). The original perceptual
tension is eventually lost with the privileging of
similarity and perhaps more importantly, the sup-
pression of dissimilarity and the constructed
ontological and epistemic correspondences create
the powerful illusion that the metaphor reveals
(not constructs) something naturally inherent in
the object of inquiry, a revelation that accounting
is and always has been inherently rhetorical. The
rhetoric metaphor appears to correspond to the
accounting ‘facts’ (thus satisfying the correspon-
dence theory of truth) and is thus taken as self
evident, an obvious and direct description of
accounting phenomena. The resulting illusion is so
complete that we forget that the similarity does
not originate in the essence of things; we forget
that we have artistically and imaginatively,
through metaphorical juxtaposition, created the
correspondences, the similarity that suggests such
verity, for epistemic purposes and are thus
inclined to presume that the metaphor re-presents
the primary subject ‘‘as it really is’’ (see Kofman,
1993, for related discussion). By Nietzsche’s
account, this is the transition to the concept, an
‘equating of unequal things’, a ‘discarding of indi-
vidual di?erences and a forgetting of distinguish-
ing aspects’; and by its privileging of similarity and
21
I would argue that this forced search for ontological cor-
respondences is the basis for Black’s (1962a, p. 37) con-
troversial claim that that metaphor constructs or creates
similarity rather than formulating similarity antecedently exist-
ing. Thus, it might be said that the metaphorical juxtaposition
forces the construction (not revelation) of an analogy that
strongly implicates a likeness statement. See Black (1962a,
1993) for further discussion.
176 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
subduing of di?erences, it is an appropriation of
the accounting world by a fundamentally unjust
will to power.
. . . there is a power which emphasizes rhyth-
mic similarity beyond actual inexactitude.
This must be an artistic power, because it is
creative. Its chief creative means are omit-
ting, overlooking, and ignoring. It is there-
fore an antiscienti?c power, because it does
not have the same degree of interest in
everything that is perceived (Nietzsche,
1872/1999, 55, p. 20).
The transition from the analogous to the iden-
tical e?aces the metaphoricity of the knowledge
claim and accounts for the illusion of revelation
and verity in the concept, giving it force and
imposing its evaluations as absolute.
The abandonment of metaphoricity: seeking
conceptual validity
The drive for authenticity: ‘will to rationality’
With respect to knowledge production, the drive
for authenticity has much to do with avoidance of
false, imaginative, or imitative status and as such,
we seek to authenticate our epistemic processes
and products through scienti?c rationality, the
rhetorical antitheses of imagination.
As a ‘rational’ being, he [man] now places his
behavior under the control of abstractions.
He will no longer tolerate being carried away
by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First, he
universalizes all these impressions into less
colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can
entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to
them. Everything which distinguishes man
from the animals depends upon this ability to
volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema,
and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.
For something is possible in the realm of
these schemata which could never be achieved
with vivid ?rst impressions . . . the creation of
a new world of laws, privileges, subordina-
tions, and clearly marked boundaries—a new
world, one which now confronts that other
world of vivid ?rst impressions as more solid,
more universal, better known, and more
human than the immediately perceived world
. . . (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 84, emphasis
added).
In contrast to the liberties that poetic metaphor
enjoys, epistemic metaphor is arguably expected to
enable rational analysis (Inns & Jones, 1996). This
is not to fall prey to the false dichotomy between
art and science and suggest that reason is absent
from poetry and that imagination is absent from
knowledge production (especially not in an essay
driven largely by Nietzsche’s insights); rather it is
only to suggest that there is, in scholarly activity,
the expectation that epistemic metaphors serve a
rational, purposive means to some end whereas
poetic metaphor may function purely as an aes-
thetic, a?ective, or imaginative end in itself with-
out further utilitarian expectation (see Brown,
1976; Debatin, 1997; Ho?man, 1980; Inns &
Jones, 1996). Thus, what is rhetorically e?ective in
metaphor for poetics may di?er markedly from
what is rhetorically e?ective in metaphor for
knowledge production. Consider the following
example of what has classically been considered
poetic metaphor from William Shakespeare’s tra-
gedy Macbeth,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing (Shakespeare, c1606–1607
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)
It is enough that Shakespeare’s metaphors serve
as powerful descriptive and emotive devices con-
veying MacBeth’s deepest and most tragic
insights into and sentiments about life; the meta-
phors need not be rationalized or justi?ed as
actuality and their implications need not be sys-
tematically spelled out and made more explicit
(and indeed the resulting implicative closure
might well destroy the poetic e?ect of the meta-
phors if they were, see Brown, 1976). In contrast, in
order to authenticate an epistemic metaphor and
have it serve as a ‘tool’ for knowledge production,
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 177
the metaphor ‘must be dissolved into concept’,
that is, it must be conceptualized, have a rational
end in mind, and its epistemic implications must be
made explicit for analytical purposes (Brown, 1976;
Ho?man, 1980). This involves setting up a system
of secondary rationalizations to logically motivate,
justify, and adduce ‘facts’ or implications for the
designation of the metaphor, in e?ect, e?acing the
artistic nature, the metaphoricity of the claim so as
to give it necessary conceptual and epistemic
force. For example, consider Tinker’s (1991)
foundational metaphor ‘accounting as signi?ca-
tion’ asserted as a rational means to deconstruct
and disrupt the mainstream presumption of neu-
trality in accounting re-presentation. In order to
accomplish this rational purpose, the author was
obliged ?rst, to motivate the designation of the
alternative metaphor (e.g. by problematising
mainstream and in particular, Solomon’s notions
of neutrality and representational faithfulness in
accounting representation) and second, to selec-
tively specify the properties and assumptions of
the metaphor (e.g. by providing an exposition of
Saussure’s Principle of the arbitrariness of signs).
Third, the author was further obliged to rationa-
lize the application of semiotics to accounting
phenomena as appropriate or ‘proper’ by rhetori-
cally situating it as a direct description of
accounting representation and by justifying this
designation (e.g. by arguing that semiotic study is
applicable to all systems of symbolic representa-
tion and by drawing a parallel between accounting
and other systems of symbolic representation
treated as sign systems). Fourth, the author was
compelled to meticulously spell out the epistemic
and political implications of the metaphor for the
accounting concepts of ‘representational faithful-
ness’ and ‘neutrality’ (making explicit and solidi-
fying the intended implications of the metaphor
being exploited, that accounting signs are arbi-
trary and thus not neutral or representationally
faithful) and ?nally to rhetorically situate those
implications as a legitimate rationale for account-
ing representation (e.g. by reference to other studies
in accounting that have similarly asserted the ‘sig-
ni?cation’ metaphor and/or derived similar proble-
matic implications). In an attempt to authenticate
the metaphor and justify its utility as a rational
framework for analysis, the metaphor was con-
ceptualized; from the meanings, associations and
implications opened up by the metaphor
‘accounting as signi?cation’, a subset was rhetori-
cally designated, provided motivational force,
rationalized as ‘proper’ or appropriate, explicated,
situated as legitimate, and petri?ed into notional
form all to suit a rational purpose. In the drive to
speak ‘rationally’ and demonstrate rhetorical
authenticity, the metaphoricity of the re-presenta-
tion was deliberately abandoned in favor of a logic
that a?orded epistemic utility and conceptual
validity. While such abandonment is rhetorically
necessary for metaphor to be considered useful for
epistemic purposes (even within the context of a
discourse that embraces a rhetoric of liberation),
authentication by conceptualization also works as
a positive faculty for forgetting and repression.
The drive for authority: ‘will to mastery’
The drive for authority has much to do with
desire for in?uence and power over knowledge
production. The ‘will to power’ presupposes
that various metaphors are at variance and
struggle with one another for mastery, that
epistemic activity is a ?eld of re-presentational
contention where authority and ‘truth’ status is
gained by a establishing a privileged position
among the terrain of competing metaphors
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 1901/1967; Kofman, 1993).
This is arguably a tenable assumption with respect
to epistemic activity in accounting, itself a hetero-
geneous discourse composed of con?icting epis-
temic interests struggling for power over the
construction of accounting knowledge (e.g. main-
stream versus non-mainstream or alternative
accounting thought); even within alternative
accounting epistemics, there are a plethora of con-
?icting interpretations and re-presentations vying
for authoritative status as knowledge claims. Each
new metaphor is symptomatic of the desire for
mastery over the construction of accounting
‘truth’ as all knowledge claims seek conceptual
validity and a provisional center of perspective for
themselves. Such status is ultimately a?orded to
only those claims that have been argued e?ectively
and won before the herd (society and one’s peers)
(Arrington & Schweiker, 1992). As such, there is
178 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
no purposiveness in the evolution of accounting
truth concepts; all accounting knowledge ‘evolves
at the whim of displacements in mastery and chance
developments in the struggle for power (cf. Kofman,
1993, p. 85).’
The ‘evolution’ of a thing . . . is . . . by no
means its progressus toward a goal, even less
a logical progressus by the shortest route and
with the smallest expenditure of force—but a
succession of more or less profound, more or
less mutually independent processes of sub-
duing, plus resistances they encounter, the
attempts at transformation for the purpose of
defence and reaction, and the result of suc-
cessful counter actions . . . in all events a will
to power is operating (Nietzsche, 1887/1968,
II, 12, pp. 513–514, emphasis in original).
Will to power manifests in the epistemic arena in
the desire to make one’s knowledge claims visible
and to win the argument, the desire that is, to gain
rational assent to a knowledge claim and in doing
so, subordinate the multiplicity of claims, the diver-
sity of metaphors, to the strongest which is then
established as a provisional center, as concept. Each
new metaphor, each new interpretation is equivalent
to a new mastering which constructsauthority for
itself by e?acing, subduing, or displacing any pre-
vious and, in particular antithetical, meanings. An
authoritative knowledge claim, that is, is one that
has succeeded in mastering something less powerful
than itself in e?ect, forcing a change in mastery.
. . . whatever exists, having somehow come
into being, is again and again reinterpreted to
new ends, taken over, transformed and redir-
ected by some power superior to it . . . a sub-
duing, a becoming master, and all subduing
and becoming master involves a fresh inter-
pretation, and adaptation through which any
previous ‘meaning’ and purpose are necessa-
rily obscured or even obliterated (Nietzsche,
1887/1968, II, 12, p. 513).
By such an account, alternative accounting
epistemics may be read as an attempt to e?ect a
change in masters, a change in mastery over the
construction of accounting knowledge and its
non-stereotypical metaphors are attempts at sub-
duing or displacing the mainstream mastery of
accounting epistemics. Displacements in mastery
do not take place by the mere assertion of non-
stereotypical metaphors but by their demonstrated
e?ects and ‘proofs of strength’.
That is to say, ‘truths’ do not establish them-
selves by logical proofs, but by means of their
e?ects: proofs of strength. The truth and the
e?ective are taken to be identical; here too
one submits to force (Nietzsche, 1872/1999,
47, p. 17).
By Nietzsche’s account, a proof of strength is
one that demonstrates the truth of a claim by vir-
tue of the positive bene?ts of believing it to be true
(or by virtue of the detrimental e?ects of believing
its antithesis to be true); such ‘proofs’ are of
course, entirely rhetorical and ‘prove’ nothing
regarding the validity of the knowledge claim
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, editor/translator’s com-
mentary). It is by such rhetoric that alternative
accounting attempts to displace mainstream
‘propers’, validate its non-stereotypical meta-
phors, and thereby e?ect a change in mastery over
accounting knowledge production.
22
All scholarly
attempts at knowledge construction attempt to
persuade with respect to their plausibility and
‘truth’ status however, such rhetorical proofs of
strength are most obvious when the non-stereo-
typical metaphor is openly juxtaposed with the
stereotypical metaphor in an attempt to subdue or
displace by criticism or deconstruction. For
example, consider Morgan and Willmott (1993);
here the authors juxtapose ‘new’ accounting
research (‘as post-positivist social theory’ and ‘as
visibility’) with mainstream accounting research
22
The intent of this discussion is not to provide a systematic
analysis of the rhetoric of accounting epistemics or of the
rhetoric of argument; but rather, to merely to make the asser-
tion that such rhetorical practices provide the means by which
alternative accounting epistemics may e?ect displacements and
changes in mastery. See Arrington and Schweiker (1992) for an
in-depth account of the rhetoric of accounting epistemics.
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 179
(‘as positivism’ and ‘as invisibility’) in an attempt
to validate by virtue of new accounting research’s
problematization of mainstream positivism
(demonstrating the detrimental e?ects of positi-
vism) and its e?ect ‘to render visible’ that which it
has been rendered ‘invisible’ (demonstrating the
positive bene?ts of post-positivist social theory).
Aforementioned illustrations of defamiliarization,
un-making/re-making, and transgression, as symp-
tomatic of the metaphorical drive in alternative
epistemics, provide further examples of attempts to
subdue or displace mainstream ‘propers’.
In the attempt to gain mastery, to give one’s
knowledge claims epistemic force and validity,
however, the diversity of possible designations for
accounting is subordinated to one or a few that
have gained conceptual authority through rheto-
rical displacement and argument. While ‘proofs of
strength’ are a necessary, rational, and pragmatic
manner of justifying epistemic claims as knowl-
edge (Arrington & Schweiker, 1992), the accom-
panying drive to win, to master by rhetorical
means, constitutes an abandonment of meta-
phoricity for authoritative conceptual status and
accounts for the construction of an illusion that
passes it o? as ‘proper’ (Kofman, 1993).
The drive for legitimacy: ‘will to truth’
The drive for legitimacy has much to do with the
desire for acceptance (as authentic and author-
itative) of our epistemic products and the accom-
panying tendency to conform to recognized
designations or conventional re-presentations in
order to gain such acceptance. The desire for accep-
tance leads to attempts to construct rhetorical
legitimacy by relying on ideas, interpretations, or
perspectives already validated in ‘the literature’ and
through citation practices, by referencing what
would be considered ‘seminal papers’ or ‘important
texts’ (especially those that support or are consistent
with our designations for things) by our intended
audience (e.g. journal editors, reviewers, and our
peers). There is, in fact, a considerable ‘social’
pressure to assert that which is viewed as ‘appro-
priate’ as the complex of ‘appropriate’ metaphors
creates an intertext within which we may safely
situate our own knowledge claims as legitimate
and hopefully e?ect a positive adjudication by a
small audience of reviewers. Nietzsche poetically
exposits,
. . . the scienti?c investigator builds his hut
right next to the tower of science so that he
will be able to work on it and to ?nd shelter
for himself beneath those bulwarks which pre-
sently exist (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 88,
emphasis added)
From the necessity to ‘exist socially and with the
herd’ arises a moral impulse (as a duty which
society imposes) in regard to ‘truth’, a metapho-
rical ?ction in the form of custom, convention, or
privilege, as contrasted with the ‘lie’, a metapho-
rical ‘?ction’ of the same sort as a ‘truth’ but
without conventionally accepted social credibility,
validity, or utility as a designation (Kofman, 1993;
Nietzsche, 1872/1990, 1873/1999).
From the sense that one is obliged to desig-
nate one thing as ‘red,’ another as ‘cold,’ and
a third as ‘mute,’ there arises a moral impulse
in regard to truth. The venerability, relia-
bility, and utility of truth is something which
a person demonstrates for himself from the
contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and
everyone excludes (Nietzsche, 1873/1999,
p. 84, emphasis added).
One who uses valid designations or conven-
tional re-presentations for things lies with ‘truth’
and is privileged whereas the ‘liar’,
. . . misuses ?xed conventions by means of
arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of
names [novel, unconventional or forbidden
metaphors]. If he does this in a . . . harmful
manner, society will cease to trust him and
will thereby exclude him. (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, p. 81, exposition added).
As researchers, we generally desire to be on
the ‘truth’ rather than ‘lie’ side of things and as
such, seek validation and conceptual status for
our epistemic products by employing the usual
metaphors (Kofman, 1993; Nietzsche, 1873/1999).
This is,
180 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
. . . the duty which society imposes in order to
exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual
metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is
the duty to lie according to ?xed convention,
to lie with the herd and in a manner binding
on everyone (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 84,
emphasis added).
We are certainly familiar with the necessity of
sticking to the usual metaphors if we desire legiti-
macy (and to be published) in the mainstream
accounting arena (and with the potential con-
sequences if we choose to deviate from or contradict
those canonical re-presentations). Alternative
accounting thought, despite its rhetoric of libera-
tion, illustrates similar tendencies. For instance,
consider the metaphors ‘accounting as signi?cation’,
‘accounting as rhetorical’, ‘accounting as social
construction’, and ‘accounting as partisan’. These
metaphors (and there are certainly others) are well
used and well validated in the alternative accounting
literature and are commonly assimilated into many
alternative accounting texts. The assertion of these
metaphors (the ‘usual’ alternative accounting re-
presentations) rhetorically legitimizes a text within
the context of the alternative accounting discourse
by ‘sheltering it beneath the bulwarks which pre-
sently exist’ and by aligning it with ‘truth’ (rather
than ‘lie’).
23
Con?icting or antithetical alternatives
are perhaps not eschewed by the current endoxa, but
there is de?nitely something extra required in the
way of ‘proving’, ‘justifying’ or ‘substantiating’ if one
departs fromthe accepted metaphors too radically.
24
The tendency to stick to the usual metaphors
results in rhetorical repetition of certain meta-
phors to the exclusion of other metaphors (that
may be more di?cult to justify for epistemic pur-
poses), a deliberate abandonment (for rhetorical
purposes) of the metaphorical drive in favor of
those hardened metaphors that already serve in a
conceptual capacity. The drive for legitimization,
manifested as motivated rhetorical repetition, is a
particularly powerful force for e?acement and ?x-
ation. Kofman (1993) eloquently summarizes,
It is in fact the exclusivity of a single meta-
phor, its ?xation by hypnotic procedures, that
imposes a habit of using it; a habit which
becomes a necessity, with the result the that
the metaphor is taken for a ‘proper’, a norm
of thought and action. Thanks to the con-
vention of lying as established as truth, man
learns to think and act as a ‘herd animal’ a
‘reasonable being’ . . . for only the habitual
produces satisfaction and security. . .
(Kofman, 1993, pp. 56–57).
This may be evidenced by the familiarity, intui-
tiveness, and endurance of particular alternative
metaphors such as ‘accounting as social construc-
tion’, ‘accounting as signi?cation’, or ‘accounting
as partisan’ as contrasted with less worn meta-
phors such as ‘accounting as art’ or ‘accounting as
show business’. Moreover, once metaphors
become accepted as familiar and intuitive, they
tend to be taken as ‘given’, are considered without
question ‘appropriate’ and are, more often than
not, given over to presupposition
. . .we produce these representations in and
from ourselves with the same necessity with
which the spider spins. If we are forced to
comprehend all things only under these forms,
23
If this seems doubtful, consider the reaction of a reviewer
of the ‘alternative cause’ if a text were to posit the antithesis of
such metaphors: ‘accounting as disinterested’, ‘accounting as
non-constructive’, or ‘accounting as objective or neutral’. I
would argue that it would be de-legitimizing in the context of
alternative accounting epistemics.
24
I recall my ?rst non-mainstream attempt at a paper on
metaphor in accounting texts. Tony Puxty had graciously
o?ered to read and o?er comment on what I had written. I
remember that I had originally taken a position philosophically
at odds in many respects from that which was currently being
espoused in the alternative accounting literature and Tony’s
paramount comment was that to have legitimacy among ‘my
peers’ and incidentally, to get my paper published, I would
have to redirect my arguments (to be consistent with the cus-
tomary metaphors accepted by this discourse) or I would have
to go quite a long way to justify my antithetical position. Iro-
nically, the frustration I experienced then was the same frus-
tration I experienced when previously faced with the
restrictions placed on my doctoral work by ‘what had already
been validated in the literature’ and by ‘what was considered
acceptable’ in the context of mainstream positivism. This frus-
tration of course, was the driving force behind my subsequent
pursuit of alternative accounting studies.
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 181
then it ceases to be amazing that in all things
we actually comprehend nothing but these
forms . . . it of course follows, that the artistic
process of metaphor formation . . . already
presupposes these forms and thus occurs within
them (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, pp. 87–88).
It is the rare text in the alternative accounting
arena that does not presume that accounting is con-
stitutive (‘as constructive’), interested (‘as partisan’),
partial (‘as rhetoric’), and linguistically based (‘as
language/signi?cation’). In this, regardless of the
epistemic utility of the particular metaphors
involved, there is an e?ect of exclusivity and the
implication of a ‘proper’; such metaphors are
accepted and treated as conceptual ‘truths’ for epis-
temic purposes. And despite the multiplicity of
metaphors that have been proposed, most are epis-
temologically consistent with such alternative con-
cepts; that is, most are not antithetical and do not
constitute diversity in terms of Nietzsche’s ‘reso-
lute reversals of accustomed perspectives’. As such,
only a relative few have had profound in?uence on
epistemic activity in alternative accounting thought
and attained the status as ‘accounting truths’.
Closing remarks: ‘will to nothingness’ or ‘will to
life’?
Nietzsche’s analysis of the metaphorical nature
of knowledge and truth provides a rather dis-
tinctive vehicle for situating alternative accounting
thought in the struggle for the construction of
accounting truths—and for re?ecting on a unique
epistemological irony in that position. Inherent
within the metaphorical drive are both the poten-
tial for epistemic liberation and the tendency for
conceptual imprisonment. By bestowing highly
restrictive limits on epistemic activity in account-
ing and by deliberately abandoning and conceal-
ing the metaphoricity of its own concepts,
mainstream accounting thought has maintained,
by unjust means, the privilege to speak ‘properly’
and ‘objectively’. Alternative accounting thought,
read as a manifestation of Nietzsche’s metapho-
rical drive, has ridiculed such privilege and jeo-
pardized the sovereignty of mainstream ?ctions by
deliberately asserting non-stereotypical meta-
phors. However, each new alternative accounting
metaphor is the imposition of meaning from a
particular perspective, equivalent to an attempt at
usurping mastery, symptomatic of a speci?c will
and as such, a manifestation of Nietzsche’s will to
power. The ensuing assertion, formation, and
validation of these metaphors, as symptomatic of
the alternative will, bring about e?acement and
abandonment of their metaphoricity; ironically,
their metaphoricity may be lost to the very rheto-
rical and conceptual means necessary to establish
and empower them as epistemic forces. That is,
alternative accounting thought must use the same
means as mainstream science to create knowl-
edge—conceptual representation and validation.
The metaphorical drive is thus abandoned in favor
of a logic that a?ords conceptual validity and
epistemic force; and the alternative will becomes
susceptible to the very privilege, ?xation, and pre-
supposition it has sought to undermine. More-
over, establishing and validating our metaphors
contributes to a ‘narrowing’ of epistemic possibi-
lities as the multiplicity of proposed perspectives
becomes subordinate to those few that have
rhetorical force, speak rationally, have succeeded
in mastering or displacing something less powerful
than themselves, and have gained acceptance by
the ‘herd’. By such a Nietzschean account, alter-
native accounting thought, ironically, may be read
as both liberating (via asserting non-stereotypical
metaphors) and imprisoning (by subduing, ?xing,
and conceptually validating its own metaphors).
The question becomes one of whether or not
such a re?ection on alternative knowing leads us
inevitably to epistemological despair and nihilism.
I think not. By a Nietzschean account, there are
two paths, two ways and the ?rst, which leads to
nihilism, is the sign of the ‘weak’ will, the will that
either denies or despairs in the faultiness of its
‘truths’ and remains trapped by them because it
lacks the strength to escape from its self-made
imprisonment and create new ?ctions.
This same species of man, grown one stage
poorer, no longer possessing the strength to
interpret, to create ?ctions, produces nihilists.
A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as
182 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
it is that it ought not to be, and of the world
as it ought to be that it does not exist
(Nietzsche, 1901/1967, III, 585, pp. 317–318).
The second path, that of the ‘strong’ will, does
not allow itself to remain trapped nor is it daunted
by the faultiness of its provisionally accepted
‘truths’. It realizes that knowledge is perspectival
and will use many metaphors, realizing each to be
faulty and accepting it as such; it will, despite its
need for the conceptual, remain true to the meta-
phorical drive and continue to create new ?ctions
to the purpose and in the service of ‘knowing’
(Nietzsche, 1887/1968; Wilcox, 1974). And
whereas the weak will veils itself, the strong will
reveals itself for what it is—appropriating, usurp-
ing, subduing, artistic—as the creator of these new
?ctions; it ‘‘. . .treats illusion as illusion; therefore it
does not wish to deceive; it is true (Nietzsche,
1872/1999, 184, p. 96).’’ Moreover, the strong will,
although quite capable of purposefully a?rming a
particular metaphor (in the name of concept), is
nevertheless still capable of changing it, even
reversing it, diversifying (not merely multiplying),
to see the world with ‘other eyes’ (Kofman, 1993).
. . .precisely because we seek knowledge, let us
not be ungrateful to such resolute reversals of
accustomed perspectives and valuations with
which the spirits has, with apparent mis-
chievousness and futility, raged against itself
for so long: to see di?erently in this way for
once, to want to see di?erently, is no small
discipline and preparation of the intellect for
its future ‘objectivity’—the latter understood
not as ‘contemplation without interest’
(which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the
ability to control one’s Pro and Con and to
dispose of them, so that one knows how to
employ a variety of perspectives and a?ective
interpretations in the service of knowledge . . .
There is only perspectival seeing, only per-
spectival ‘knowing’; and the more a?ects we
allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes,
di?erent eyes, we can use to observe one thing,
the more complete will our ‘concept’ of the is
thing, our ‘objectivity’, be (Nietzsche, 1887/
1968, III, 12, p. 555, some emphasis added).
That mainstream accounting thought has found
need to conceal the metaphoricity of its claims, deny
the faultiness of its truths, cling to worn ideals, and
take refuge not far from the tower of positivist
science, is symptomatic of its weakness. Would we,
as an alternative will, not be just as weak to despair
in the ironies of our own position? As alternative
accounting writers we must not succumb to the
‘weak’ will, allowing ourselves to become trapped by
the logic of our concepts or despair in the faultiness
and irony of our position; nor must we denigrate the
‘will to truth’. It is in fact more a sign of a ‘strong’
and noble will (and more Nietzschean) to write
‘conceptually’ in the knowledge that our truth con-
cepts are metaphor and thus have no greater or less
value, than to scorn ‘truth’ and propose the ines-
capability of metaphor as evidence of a lacking and
futility in the will to truth (cf. Kofman, 1993).
Wilcox eloquently expounds,
. . .one can be beyond illusion . . .in two ways;
and one of those ways leads to nihilism. The
?rst way is to see the truth about truth, and to
despair—because one still clings to outworn
ideal, because one still wants truth to be more
that it actually is. The man who takes this
way says of truth as it is that it should not be,
and of truth as it should be that it is not. The
other way is the way of the creator of new
values . . . he creates a new norm, a new stan-
dard of truth. He says yes to what truth really
is—a human interpretation, a perspective, a
provisionally acceptable treasure from the
depths of mans passions, reason and
experience. To this truth Nietzsche’s man
wants to say yes. Nietzsche’s hero is a man
who says yes to truth which he knows is
error—not the error which has been over-
come in a new truth, not the error whose
those who lie to themselves accept, but the
inescapable error which is present even in
the new truth (Wilcox, 1974, p.170,
emphasis added).
Alternative accounting thought must move
beyond the negative and destructive standpoint of
criticism (cf. Breazeale, 1999); for ‘‘We can
destroy only as creators’ (Nietzsche, 1844–1900/
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 183
1974, 58, p. 122). ‘‘Our salvation lies not in
knowing but in creating’’ (Nietzsche, 1872/1999,
84, p. 32).’’ Our knowledge drive must remain
loyal to the metaphorical drive and must be
continually rehabilitated and revitalized by delib-
erate diversi?cation of non-habitual metaphors to
the strategic purposes of seeing with the greatest
possible number of eyes, revealing the contingent
validity in our own concepts, and creating new
accounting ‘truths’. In this, alternative accounting
writers must become a new type of philosopher-
artist, deconstructing and reconstructing the
accounting world as a serious art form, whereby
the very insights into the nature of knowing that
were previously grounds for destruction and
skepticism, provide an a?rmative force for the
very possibility of constructing new accounting
truths (Nietzsche, 1872/1999).
Epilogue
The drive toward the formation of metaphors
is the fundamental human drive, which one
cannot for a single instant dispense with in
thought, for one would thereby dispense with
man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished
and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular
and rigid new world is constructed as its prison
from its own ephemeral products, the concepts.
It seeks a new realm and another channel for
its activity, and it ?nds this in myth and in art
generally. This drive . . . continually manifests
an ardent desire to refashion the world . . .
(Nietzsche, 1873/1999, pp. 88–89, some
emphasis added).
Language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it
marks the before unapprehended relations of
things and perpetuates the apprehension,
until words, which represent them, become
through time, signs for portions or classes of
thought instead of pictures of integral
thoughts: and then, if no new poets should
arise to create afresh the associations which
have been thus disorganized, language will be
dead to all the nobler purposes of human inter-
course. (Percy Bysshe Shelley, Quoted in
Richards, 1936, p. 91, emphasis added).
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Alistair Preston, Joni
Young, and two anonymous AOS reviewers for
their most helpful insights and constructive com-
ments on earlier drafts of this essay.
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doc_458655351.pdf
This essay draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s profound insights into the problem of knowledge and the nature of truth
to reflect on epistemic activity within alternative accounting thought. An essential ingredient in Nietzsche’s analysis of
the conundrum of knowledge and truth is his profound assertion that knowing always involves a ‘transfer’ from one
epistemic sphere to another different one, that distinctive kind of creative transference of meaning that we attribute to
metaphor. Through reference to Nietzsche’s writings, this essay explores the epistemic implications of ‘knowledge as
metaphorical’ and the habitual tendency of metaphor, through exclusivity, fixation, effacement and ‘forgetfulness’, to
‘harden’ into ‘propers’ or ‘truths’—particularly of the sort we have come to associate with mainstream dogmatism. It
then considers how alternative accounting thought has offered liberation from such metaphorical dogmatism through
the deliberate assertion of alternative metaphorical re-presentations. Ironically however, through its very assertion, formation,
and attempts to validate these non-stereotypical metaphors, alternative accounting thought itself tends toward
the same sort of epistemic fixation and effacement it seeks to subvert. The question becomes one of whether such a
Nietzschean reflection on alternative accounting epistemics leads us inevitably to nihilism and epistemological despair or
rather, provides us with an affirmative foundation for the very possibility of constructing new accounting ‘truths’.
Alternative accounting thought and the prison-house
of metaphor
Melissa Walters*
School of Business Administration, Rinker Institute of Tax & Accountancy, Stetson University, 421 Woodland Boulevard, Unit 8398,
Deland, FL 32720-3774, USA
Abstract
This essay draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s profound insights into the problem of knowledge and the nature of truth
to re?ect on epistemic activity within alternative accounting thought. An essential ingredient in Nietzsche’s analysis of
the conundrum of knowledge and truth is his profound assertion that knowing always involves a ‘transfer’ from one
epistemic sphere to another di?erent one, that distinctive kind of creative transference of meaning that we attribute to
metaphor. Through reference to Nietzsche’s writings, this essay explores the epistemic implications of ‘knowledge as
metaphorical’ and the habitual tendency of metaphor, through exclusivity, ?xation, e?acement and ‘forgetfulness’, to
‘harden’ into ‘propers’ or ‘truths’—particularly of the sort we have come to associate with mainstream dogmatism. It
then considers how alternative accounting thought has o?ered liberation from such metaphorical dogmatism through
the deliberate assertion of alternative metaphorical re-presentations. Ironically however, through its very assertion, for-
mation, and attempts to validate these non-stereotypical metaphors, alternative accounting thought itself tends toward
the same sort of epistemic ?xation and e?acement it seeks to subvert. The question becomes one of whether such a
Nietzschean re?ection on alternative accounting epistemics leads us inevitably to nihilism and epistemological despair or
rather, provides us with an a?rmative foundation for the very possibility of constructing new accounting ‘truths’.
#2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Prologue
Only by forgetting this primitive world of
metaphor can one live with any repose, secur-
ity, and consistency: only by means of the pet-
ri?cation and coagulation of a mass of images
which originally streamed from the primal
faculty of human imagination like a ?ery
liquid, only in the invincible faith that this
sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself,
in short, only by forgetting that he himself is
a artistically creating subject, does man live
with any repose, security, and consistency. If
but for an instant he could escape from the
prison walls of this faith, his ‘self consciousness’
would be immediately destroyed (emphasis in
original) (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 86).
Awareness of our use of metaphor provides
an escape hatch from the prison house of
language, or at least lets us know how we are
con?ned. Such awareness is two-sided: it
enables us to see the metaphoric in what is
taken as literal, and also to make-believe that
metaphors are literally true. The ?rst is an act
of unmasking as when, for example, we come
to understand Descartes’ ‘machine of nature’
as Descartes himself appears to have done. . .
0361-3682/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0361-3682(02)00054-5
Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
www.elsevier.com/locate/aos
* Tel.: +1-386-822-7412; fax: +386-822-7426.
E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Walters).
There is a universe of di?erence between such
awareness and the view that the world actu-
ally is a machine (emphasis added) (Brown,
1976, pp. 175–176)
Opening remarks
This essay draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s pro-
found insights into the problem of knowledge and
the nature of truth to re?ect on epistemic activity
within alternative accounting thought.
1
Writing
about metaphor and knowledge is tricky business,
a task made that much more di?cult by relying on
Nietzsche to do so. Nietzsche was not, by
accounts, a systematic thinker and his writings are
intensely and deliberately metaphorical (meta-
leptically so) in themselves, so much so that his
philosophical writings, more often than not, run
the risk of being confused with Symbolist poetry
(Kofman, 1993). Nevertheless, he had some fairly
radical, rather profound things to say about
metaphor and epistemic activity to the con-
templative thinker. Of particular interest to this
essay are Nietzsche’s theses that all knowledge is
metaphorical and that supposed ‘propers’ and our
sense of ‘truth’ derive from the e?aced and per-
haps unjust, ?xation and generalization of our
metaphors. What we perceive we perceive meta-
phorically, what we know we know metaphori-
cally, and what we consider to be ‘truths’ are
naught but ossi?ed and e?aced metaphors that
we have transferred generally and forgotten
are metaphors (Nietzsche, 1872/1999,1873/1999).
Nietzsche’s analysis of the metaphorical nature of
knowledge and truth provides a rather distinctive
vehicle for situating alternative accounting
thought in the struggle for the construction of
accounting truths—and for re?ecting on a unique
epistemological irony in that position.
This essay re?ects, from the perspective of
Nietzschean philosophy, on the metaphorics that
drive alternative accounting research. Alternative
accounting thought, in its broadest sense, may be
read as a manifestation of Nietzsche’s ‘metapho-
rical drive’, and as such, stands out as an a?ront
to mainstream accounting ‘propers’ by o?ering
liberation from epistemic ?xation and dogmatism
through the deliberate assertion of alternative
metaphors. But just how liberated are we? In
rejecting the canonical metaphors of mainstream
thought, are we privileging, ?xing, and empower-
ing others that are potentially as exclusive, appro-
priating, and subjugating as those we seek to
depose, rejecting one set of ‘propers’ only to raise
up another in their place? Are we thus imprisoning
ourselves by the very metaphors with which we
sought escape?
Drawing on the writings of Nietzsche, this essay
puts forth the following re?ections and theses
presented here roughly in order of their discussion
in the main text to follow.
1. Knowing always involves metaphor. Thus,
knowing in accounting, as in all epistemic
arenas, is invariably metaphorical.
Accounting knowledge then, is not the
accumulation of facts per se but an accu-
mulation of a speci?c subset of favored,
accepted metaphors and the conceptual
edi?ce that is constructed there from.
1
This reference is my (for lack of a more philosophically
suitable one) convenient umbrella label for ‘other’, ‘new’,
‘interdisciplinary’, ‘radical’ or ‘non-mainstream’ accounting
thought. It is, in itself, metaphorical in constructing a connec-
tion (that strongly implicates a likeness statement) between
arguably di?erent (sometimes antithetical) discourses by refer-
ring to the whole of the growing body of literature appearing in
journals such as Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Jour-
nal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Advances in Public
Interest Accounting, and Critical Perspectives on Accounting by
a single name. This is rather like the historical convention
(attributed to Aristotle) of using the word ‘metaphor’ as a
broad category term to encompass all of those (arguably dis-
tinctive) instances of rhetorical linguistic forms known as
tropes. In using a single name, I realize that I am taking a
naming liberty (and one which some accounting theorists might
take exception to) however, I would argue that while this
‘alternative’ discourse encompasses diverse and often quite dis-
parate perspectives, it may be distinguished as a set of dis-
cursive practices in its explicit or implicit, direct or indirect
eschewing, questioning, and/or problematization of the pre-
scriptions and pretensions of mainstream accounting thought.
In this essay I take ‘alternative accounting thought’ (following
somewhat what Moore, 1991 labels as ‘critical’) to suggest a set
of discursive practices with a radical ontological, epistemologi-
cal and/or political stance which questions the ‘propers’ or
‘truths’ of mainstream accounting thought and seeks to put
forth and empower alternative re-presentations of and ration-
alities for accounting theory and/or practice.
158 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
2. Mainstream accounting metaphors have
been established as resolute ‘propers’—as
conceptual accounting ‘truths’—through
unjust exclusivity and ?xation and an e?a-
cement of their metaphoricity. Maintenance
of the mainstream conceptual edi?ce is
e?ected through ‘forgetfulness’ and con-
cealment of its metaphorical nature.
3. Alternative accounting thought may be
read as a manifestation of Nietzsche’s
‘metaphorical drive’ previously repressed in
mainstream conceptual activity. The alter-
native accounting drive intentionally mul-
tiplies metaphors to deprive mainstream
‘propers’ of their exclusivity and deliber-
ately asserts non-stereotypical metaphors
to jeopardize the sovereignty of main-
stream conceptual ?ctions and to betray
and ridicule the existence of the metapho-
rical in supposed mainstream ‘propers’.
4. Metaphorical activity coincides with
Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ and manifests
within alternative accounting epistemic
activity in the form of drives to establish
and empower its alternative metaphorical
re-presentations. The ensuing assertion,
formation, and attempts at validating these
non-stereotypical metaphors, as sympto-
matic of a speci?c will, e?ect e?acement
and abandonment of their metaphoricity,
in the end, allowing it to it be forgotten; the
ironic result being, a susceptibility to privi-
lege, ?xation, and presupposition of the
like that the alternative accounting drive
has sought to undermine and destabilize.
5. The question becomes one of whether such
a Nietzschean re?ection on alternative
accounting epistemics leads us inevitably to
nihilism and epistemological despair or
rather, provides us with an a?rmative
foundation for the very possibility of con-
structing new accounting ‘truths’.
One author note is in order. This paper is a
philosophical essay designed to re?ect on and
make assertions about epistemic activity within
the arena of alternative accounting thought from
the unique perspective of Nietzsche’s account of
knowledge and truth (a metaphor in itself). That
is, it is an appropriation of the alternative
accounting research ‘world’ by a unique perspec-
tive that, through this essay, imposes its will upon
it. It is less about the metaphors themselves or
whether accounting is more appropriately con-
ceptualized as one metaphor versus another and
rather more about the abstract Nietzschean impli-
cations of ‘knowledge as metaphor’ for alternative
accounting epistemics and its writers. As such,
while metaphorical instances are employed illus-
tratively, this text does not address a particular
alternative accounting metaphor (or subset of
metaphors) nor does it explore any one of them in
any great detail.
Philosophical exposition: Nietzsche on metaphor,
knowing, and truth
Knowledge as metaphorical: metaphors for things
Nietzsche asserted that knowing always involves
metaphor, that all knowledge is metaphorical;
indeed,
. . . there is no ‘real’ expression, and no real
knowing apart from metaphor (Nietzsche,
1872/1999, 149, p. 50, emphasis in original).
Nietzsche seems to have based this profound
epistemological assertion on the very broad sense
of metaphor, suggested by the etymology of the
Greek word itself, as ‘transfer’, or more speci?-
cally as a ‘transfer’ or ‘transference’ of meaning
from one sphere to another di?erent one (Brea-
zeale, 1999).
2
He began elaboration of his asser-
tion regarding the metaphorical nature of
knowledge in his analysis of the transfers or re-
presentations involved in simple perceptions, the
‘?rst’ uses of metaphor. He argued that the human
2
Reference to Nietzsche’s writings also suggests extended
senses of metaphor as ‘imitation’, ‘re-presentation’, ‘perspec-
tive’, ‘translation’ and ‘transformation’ or ‘metamorphosis’ (of
meaning) and moreover, the metaphorical assimilation of other
tropes (in particular, metonymy, synecdoche, and metastasis)
into his analysis (implying his use of the word ‘metaphor’, fol-
lowing Aristotle, as a metaphor for all forms of trope).
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 159
mind’s ?rst use of metaphor is the translation of
sensual experience into a particular image and then
the translation of a perceived image into language
(as when a visual image is designated by the word
‘leaf’); thus, the very act of cognition involves re-
presentations of our world through metaphor.
To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred
into an image: ?rst metaphor. The image, in
turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor.
And each time there is a complete overleaping
of one sphere, right into the middle of an
entirely new and di?erent one (Nietzsche,
1873/1999, p. 82).
We perceive ‘things’ only re-presented as ima-
ges; we understand images only re-presented as
words (and their meanings). Cognition then, does
not grasp ‘things in themselves’ but things in terms
of signs, imitations or re-presentations of things; for,
‘‘What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve
stimulus (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 81)’’. Moreover,
signs do not metaphorically present accurate or
‘true’ representations of ‘things’. Signs or words re-
present partial knowledge because they display, not
a ‘‘many-sided, somehow respectable knowledge of
things’’ grasping the full essence of things, but mere
designations of things in relation to us as knowers.
It is not the things that pass over into con-
sciousness, but the manner in which we stand
toward them. . . The full essence of things will
never be grasped (Nietzsche, 1872–1873/1989,
p. 23).
As such, knowledge is perspectival. It is construed
from some particular point of view, some perspec-
tive, as things are known only in relation to the
‘‘manner in which we stand toward them’’ convey-
ing not the full essential knowledge of a thing, but a
posture, an opinion, a valuation. Signs and words
also represent imperfect knowledge of ‘things’
because, with respect to their meanings, they them-
selves are invariably tropic—synecdochic, meta-
phorical, and metonymical—in nature. Since words
‘never express something completely but display
only a characteristic which appears prominent’,
they are synecdochic, re-presenting partially and in
a partisan manner. Additionally, since words habi-
tually assimilate new meanings by metaphorical
transfer, they do not remain true to things being
re-presented. Moreover, because words often
name metonymically, from the perspective of
some other thing, they thereby change, perhaps
reverse (in cause and e?ect), the nature of things
as they actually exist (see Nietzsche, 1872–1873,
for further discussion). Knowing then cannot be
purely or truly descriptive. There can be no knowl-
edge of ‘things in themselves’ because this would
presume direct, intuitive knowing of the full essence
of things without the metaphorical intervention of
signs. We know ‘things’ only through metaphor.
The ‘thing in itself’. . . is . . . something quite
incomprehensible to the creator of langua-
ge. . .This creator only designates the relations
of things to men, and for expressing these
relations he lays hold of the boldest meta-
phors . . . we believe that we know something
about the things themselves when we speak of
trees, colors, snow, and ?owers; and yet we
possess nothing but metaphors for things—
metaphors which correspond in no way to the
original entities. . . and all of the material
within and with which the man of truth, the
scientist, and the philosopher later work and
build, if not derived from never-never land, is
at least not derived from the essence of
things. (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, pp. 82–83,
emphasis added).
‘Higher-order’ epistemic transfers, beyond those
simple perceptual and cognitive transferences or
re-presentations noted above, are also implied in
Nietzsche’s account of the process of knowledge
production (although they are not articulated as
bluntly or clearly as in his ‘?rst’ and ‘second’
metaphors). The most obvious being the transfer
of meaning from one sphere of signs to another
completely di?erent sphere of signs as occurs for
instance, when Nietzsche refers to ‘knowledge as
metaphorical’ or ‘knowledge as perspectival’. The
reference ‘knowledge as perspectival’ juxtaposes
the two di?erent epistemic spheres of ‘knowing’
and ‘seeing’, forcing them to coexist by force of
language. This implies a likeness between two
160 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
otherwise presumably dissimilar things and
thereby induces a transfer or generalization of
terms, attributes, understanding, implications, or
inferential premises from one sphere (having to do
with vision) to another di?erent one (having to do
with knowledge) (and vice versa). The epistemic
generalization from the sphere of ‘vision’ to the
sphere of ‘knowing’ allows Nietzsche to ‘know’
and say something insightful
3
about knowing.
Likewise, a reference to ‘accounting as language’
sets up a transfer of understanding about signs,
signi?cation, communication, and/or rhetoric
from the epistemic sphere of language to the epis-
temic sphere of accounting so that we might
‘know’, through its re-presentation, something
about the nature, purpose, structure, functions,
rationale, and implications of accounting (and vice
versa). In short, metaphors allow us to ‘know’, by
transfer, one thing in terms of another.
4
Most
creative insight and higher understanding in
science and philosophy is constructed based on
such metaphorical activity (see Boyd, 1993; Brown,
1976; Derrida, 1982; Kuhn, 1993). However, it is
Nietzsche’s notion of the concept and its forma-
tion by metaphorical transfer that most plainly
reveals how metaphor works to subdue, simplify,
and organize experience in the construction of
knowledge (Breazeale, 1999; Kofman, 1993).
The idea of the ‘concept’ is key to Nietzsche’s
account of knowledge and truth; and indeed, dis-
cussion of its formation by metaphorical transfer
and the problematic implications of the conceptual
occupies much of his attention in the essay ‘‘On
Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’’. A concept
is formed when a sign (a word and its associated
meaning) is generalized by metaphorical transfer,
not to refer to a single instance of some other thing,
but to refer to an inde?nitely large number of more
of less similar instances of something.
Every word instantly becomes a concept
insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a
reminder of the unique and entirely individual
original experience to which it owes its origin;
but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar
as it simultaneously has to ?t countless more
or less similar cases—which means, purely
and simply, cases which are never equal and
thus altogether unequal (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, 1, p 83).
This amounts to the designation, by transfer, of
classes or categories of things. The ‘general con-
cept’ is created by preserving and assimilating the
similar and by arbitrarily discarding irregular or
individually distinguishing aspects; the result
being an abstract notion that concurs with an
average impression common to the group, one
that comes to be presupposed as the original or
proper form. Nietzsche expounds,
The omitting of what is individual provides us
with the concept, and with this our knowledge
begins: in categorizing, in the establishment of
classes (Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 150, p. 51).
We know nothing whatsoever about an essen-
tial quality called ‘honesty’; but we do know of
countless individualized and consequently
unequal actions which we equate by omitting
the aspects in which they are unequal and
which we now designate as ‘honest’ actions.
Finally we formulate from them a qualitas
occulta [occult quality] which has the name
‘honesty.’ We obtain the concept, as we do
the form, by overlooking what is individual
and actual. . . (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 83).
We might also say the same of accounting
concepts such as ‘asset’, ‘materiality’, or ‘neu-
trality’. Many such abstract notions may be
placed along side one another and organized into
a metaphorical schema, an edi?ce of concepts, the
status of which eventually becomes that of the
construct, model, theory, or paradigm. The con-
ceptual edi?ce is constructed and continually built
upon by multiplication of metaphors and sys-
tematic ordering of concepts: by arranging
concepts relative to one another, by hierarchizing
them into class structures, and by further sub-
3
Metaphorical pun intended.
4
It should be noted that my analysis of metaphorical
transfer in this and in later sections of this essay is heavily
in?uenced by the writings of Richards (1936), Black (1962a,
1962b, 1993), Lako? and Johnson (1980), and Lako? (1993).
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 161
dividing concepts into subclasses or subcategories
(creating new metaphors). Describing and
explaining of things proceed by means of naming,
designating or including within a category or
class, and knowing, by reference to the concept
itself which serves as metaphor (Kofman, 1993).
The concept thereby reduces what is individual to
what is typical so that we may ‘know’ (Wilcox,
1974).
Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells
and ?lls them with honey, so science works
unceasingly on this great columbarium of
concepts, the graveyard of perceptions. It is
always building new, higher stories and shor-
ing up, cleaning, and renovating the old cells;
above all, it takes pains to ?ll up this mon-
strously towering framework and to arrange
therein the entire empirical world. . .
(Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 88).
Consider the representation of any number of
individual organizations in terms of generalizable
?nancial concepts systematically arranged and
ordered into the accounting model (accounting
practice). Each organization is described in terms
of activities or events classi?ed as ‘transactions’
5
and transactions as involving ‘assets’, ‘liabilities,
‘revenues’ or ‘expenses’ according to the repre-
sentative notion of each. Each concept is system-
atically arranged relative to the others so that we
may, by such classi?catory categories, ‘put things
where they belong’, and thereby construct some
kind of knowledge about an organization; and in
the process of knowledge construction, every
organization is metaphorically reduced to a typical
set of ?nancial constructs. The accounting model
is a metaphorical schema within which we orga-
nize, describe, evaluate, and ‘know’ organizations.
The same is arguably descriptive of the production
of knowledge about Accounting, its theories,
functions, purposes, and rationalities (accounting
research), as well as the production of knowledge
about accounting knowledge and its production
(epistemological research). In these epistemic are-
nas (or at least, in the mainstream version of
them), the natural science model and the positivist
paradigm have provided a great conceptual edi?ce
within which the accounting world has been
placed and arranged, thus providing terms within
which accounting has been ‘explained’ or ‘descri-
bed’. The mainstream conceptual edi?ce exists as a
complex schema of logical positivism, the empiri-
cal tradition, the quantitative tradition, the logico-
hypothetico-deductive model of science, and
modernism. To this conceptual foundation have
been added a host of associated epistemic concepts
(in the form of theories and models predominantly
derived from neoclassical economic theory) such
as positive theory, agency theory, analytical mod-
eling, capital markets theory, and the e?cient
market hypothesis as well as those ?tting (and
more obviously metaphorical) functional re-pre-
sentations of accounting practice itself such as
‘accounting as historical record’, ‘accounting as
current economic reality’, ‘accounting as an
impartial tool of economic e?ciency’, ‘accounting
as passive’, ‘accounting as techno-rational’,
‘accounting as information system’, ‘accounting as
a commodity’, ‘accounting as neutral representa-
tion’, ‘accounting as cartography’, ‘accounting as
score-keeping’, ‘accounting as bean counting’, and
‘accounting as journalism’ (see Davis, Menon, &
Morgan, 1982; Morgan, 1988; Solomons, 1991;
Tinker, 1991). It is in terms of this conceptual
edi?ce, its constructs, models, and theories, that
mainstream accounting researchers have identi?ed
object(s) of inquiry, ‘named’ and interpreted these
objects, arranged these objects into structured and
well-ordered categories with de?ned priorities,
constructed conducts of evaluation, and based
thereon, o?ered value judgments concerning the
e?cacy and e?ciency of such accounting objects.
The mainstream version of accounting research
has thus named, de?ned, and arranged the entire
accounting world into logical, rational categories
and all without realizing that it is engaged in the
most primal metaphorical activity. The positivist
conceptual edi?ce, its construction by metapho-
rical means, serves as a metaphor for accounting
and its study; and it is in terms of this conceptual
5
This is in no way represents the ‘full essence’ of an orga-
nization’s functioning but only ‘those characteristics which
appear prominent’ from the perspective of the accounting
model. The accounting model is thereby synecdochic as well as
metaphorical.
162 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
schema that we have come to ‘know’ accounting
(again, at least in the mainstream sense).
The concepts within which we attempt to describe
and explain the world are both constructed by
means of and serve as metaphors for knowing.
Every epistemic sphere, accounting included, con-
structs (by metaphorical transfer) and continually
builds upon arti?cial nomenclatures and taxo-
nomies to erect a conceptual edi?ce for itself, each
distinctive, and each able to serve as metaphor for
another epistemic sphere (Kofman, 1993).
Here one may certainly admire man as a
mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in
piling up an in?nitely complicated dome of
concepts upon an unstable foundation . . . As a
genius of construction man raises himself far
above the bee in the following way: whereas
the bee builds with wax that he gathers from
nature, man builds with the far more delicate
conceptual material which he ?rst has to man-
ufacture from himself. In this he is greatly to be
admired. . . (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 85).
We can never truly ‘know’ the world; we can
only describe it in terms of the metaphorical and
the conceptual (a condensate of multiple meta-
phors) material we ourselves construct. Our power
of knowledge production then, resides absolutely
in our power of metaphor formation for ‘‘we have
nothing but metaphors for things’’. As such, the
accumulation of knowledge is not an accumula-
tion of ‘things’ or even adequate descriptions of
the ‘true’ nature of ‘things’ but rather, an accumu-
lation of metaphors. But we must not omit that
knowing also always involves a choice. When
mainstream accounting research refers to ‘knowl-
edge’ it generally means ‘as observable by positi-
vist science’. However, since it has yet to come to
terms with the metaphorical nature of epistemic
activity, it mistakenly equates knowledge with
positivist science confusing the re-presentation
with its domain of application, overlooking that it
is thinking of accounting knowledge as positivist
science, that it is thinking metaphorically in terms
of positivist science and is thereby constantly
striving to understand the accounting world as
something analogous to these terms. As such,
mainstream accounting research has generally felt
compelled to favor and thereby privilege a single
conceptualization of the world towards which all
epistemic activity in accounting should strive and
against which all epistemic products should be
evaluated. But positivist science is a conceptual
edi?ce, a metaphorical schema, no more, no less;
and despite its presumed exclusivity, it is only one
among the many that are possible. Knowing then,
involves a choice (albeit sometimes an unwitting
one) between metaphors, a value-laden choice
between presumably more or less acceptable con-
cepts, and the metaphor of choice in so far as
mainstream epistemic activity is concerned is the
positivist science metaphor. Accounting knowl-
edge then, is not an accumulation of facts per se
but an accumulation of a speci?c subset of favored
and accepted metaphors and the conceptual edi?ce
that is constructed there from. Nietzsche elo-
quently summarizes:
Knowing is nothing but working with the
favorite metaphors, an imitating which is no
longer felt to be an imitation. Naturally
therefore, it cannot penetrate the realm of
truth (Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 149, p. 51).
Truth as metaphorical: e?acement and
forgetfulness
If knowing, by its metaphorical nature, ‘‘cannot
penetrate the realm of truth’’, then from where does
our sense of ‘truth’ derive? It is in fact, the exclusiv-
ity of a single metaphor by its favoritism and privi-
lege that leads to e?acement and forgetting of its
metaphorical nature and thereby its eventual
‘truth’ status. Privileged metaphors become fre-
quently used as a consequence of their exclusivity,
familiar and unobtrusive as a result of habitual
usage, hard and ?xed as a consequence of unwitting
compulsion, and ultimately, by custom or conven-
tion, are accordingly a?orded the status of truth
concepts. The privileged metaphor, which by its
exclusivity and repetition ‘sti?ens’ and ‘hardens’
thereby e?acing its genesis, passes for immediate
necessity and assumes the status of the ‘proper’
(Kofman, 1993). Nietzsche poetically summarizes,
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 163
The most accustomed metaphors, the usual
ones, now pass for truths and as standards for
measuring the rarer ones. The only intrinsic
di?erence here is the di?erence between cus-
tom and novelty, frequency and rarity
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, pp. 50–51).
What then is truth? A moveable host of
metaphors, metonymies, and anthro-
pomorphisms: in short, a sum of human rela-
tions which have been poetically and
rhetorically intensi?ed, transferred, and
embellished, and which, after long usage,
seem to a people to be ?xed, canonical, and
binding. Truths are illusions which we have
forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors
that have become worn out and have been
drained of sensuous force, coins which have
lost their embossing and are now considered
as metal and no longer as coins (Nietzsche,
1873/1999, p. 84).
It is only through the e?acement of metaphor, this
process of ‘forgetting’ the ‘as’ structure of knowing
that we may fancy ourselves to possess ‘truth’
(Nietzsche, 1873/1999). Epistemological ‘truths’ are
merely privileged metaphorical understandings that
have become e?aced, ossi?ed, conventionalized, and
taken-for-granted to the point where their originary
metaphoricity is forgotten; maintaining truth is
simply a matter of discursive practice (Nietzsche
1872/1999, 1873/1999).
6
Nietzsche explains,
Now man of course forgets that this is the
way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the
manner indicated, unconsciously and in
accordance with habits which are centuries
old; and precisely by means of this uncon-
sciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his
sense of truth. (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 84,
emphasis in original)
It is a consequence of this forgetting that we are
hardly, if at all, aware of the metaphorical nature
of our concepts and truth-values. Were we asked
to provide perfectly incontrovertible examples of
the metaphorical, our ?rst inclination would
probably not be to suggest a rudimentary concept
such as ‘time’ nor I imagine, would we think of
suggesting that our conceptualization of ‘causa-
tion’ is metaphorical.
7
Likewise, few of us would
think of o?ering up such canonical concepts as
deductive mathematics, the scienti?c method,
Bohr’s model of the atom, the kinetic theory of
gases, the central dogma of molecular biology, the
Linnaean taxonomical system for zoological clas-
si?cation, or the Keynesian model of the economic
system;
8
and if we did, we would most likely be
met with considerable resistance perhaps even
hostility. How many mainstream accounting
researchers would suggest positivist science or
regression analysis as unquali?ed examples of
metaphor? How many Certi?ed Public Accoun-
tants would o?er the accounting model itself as an
unequivocal example of metaphor? Yet each is a
concept, constructed by metaphorical means,
which serves as metaphor—terms within which we
conduct epistemic activity and ‘know’ the world.
However, the metaphoricity is su?ciently e?aced
in such concepts as not to appear at all metapho-
rical permitting the equating of the metaphor with
that which it has re-presented, so much so, that we
are lead to ‘‘. . . presume that the chaotic processes
of the world have the purely formal properties of
mathematics. . .to believe that the world really is
mathematically organized. . . (Brown, 1976, p. 174)
(metaphorically speaking of course). We forget
that our metaphors are indeed metaphors for
7
Yet, ‘‘Time, space, and causality are only metaphors of
knowledge, with which we explain things to ourselves’’
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 140, p. 47, emphasis in original). See
Nietzsche (1872/1999) sections 139 and 140 for further exposi-
tion; also see Lako? and Johnson (1980) and Lako? (1993) for
analysis of such concepts as metaphorical.
8
Some of these illustrations of e?aced or ‘dead’ epistemo-
logical metaphor were taken from Black (1962b), Brown
(1976), Ho?man (1980), and McCloskey (1983). Also see Lak-
o? (1980, 1993) and Lako? and Johnson (1980) for enumerable
examples of e?aced or what Lako? (1993) refers to as ‘mun-
dane’ (as opposed to poetic or novel) metaphors as a basis for
our ordinary, everyday conceptual systems.
6
It should probably be noted that this ‘forgetting’ as a con-
sequence of e?acement is a secondary repression in Nietzsche’s
account; there is, as well, an originary forgetting as man has
already forgotten that ‘he himself is an artistically creating sub-
ject’ from the beginning and that he remains such an artist in all
things (Nietzsche, 1873/1999; Kofman, 1993).
164 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
things, re-presentations of things, and take them
instead to be the things themselves.
. . .he proceeds from the error of believing
that he has these things [which he intends to
measure] immediately before him as mere
objects. He forgets that the original percep-
tual metaphors are metaphors and takes them
to be the things themselves (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, p. 86).
It is in this su?ciently e?aced form at the level
of concept that metaphor, because its nature is so
concealed, becomes most deceptive because it
permits the illusion that the metaphor of choice is
‘proper’ or ‘truth’.
Forgetting as concealment: maintaining the
conceptual edi?ce
Note however, that this ‘forgetting of meta-
phor’ is not necessarily natural, innocent, or ran-
dom as there is a desire for such truths, a desire
for the ‘‘. . .pleasant, life preserving consequences
of truth. . .’’ (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 81), and it
is only by means of ‘forgetfulness’ that we may
attain them. The e?acement and ‘hardening’ of
metaphor into the ‘proper’ does not result from a
natural or random evolution, an innocent wearing
away of sensory force or vitality as a con-
sequence of simple repetition and the mere pas-
sage of time (Kofman, 1993); ‘‘. . .it is rather an
active and in the strictest sense positive faculty
of repression’’ (Nietzsche, 1887/1968, II, 1,
p. 493). The ‘proper’ is only a proper as a
consequence of a favored metaphor, its privilege
and exclusivity providing it a provisional center
of perspective. It cannot admit that its concept is
metaphorical, that its perspective is a perspective,
lest it lose its privilege and perish accordingly; it
can only preserve itself by concealing its meta-
phorical nature and passing o? its concepts as
truth proper (Kofman, 1993).
. . .knowing certainly does not want to
admit any transference, but wishes instead
to cling to the impression without meta-
phor and apart from its consequences. The
impression is petri?ed for this purpose; it is
captured and stamped by means of con-
cepts. Then it is killed, skinned, mummi-
?ed, and preserved as a concept (Nietzsche,
1872/1999, 149, p. 50).
The very idea of the concept is itself a product
of the deliberate abandonment of metaphoricity
for logic, systematism, and reason. Its logical and
systematic character allow it to master the world
by reducing what is individual to what is typical,
subduing it within its edi?ce and perhaps more
importantly, to protect itself by concealing its
artistic (metaphorical) creativity.
. . .the great edi?ce of concepts displays the
rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium [a
vault with niches for funeral urns] and exhales
in logic that strength and coolness which is
characteristic of mathematics. Anyone who has
felt this cool breath [of logic] will hardly believe
that even the concept . . . is nevertheless merely
the residue of a metaphor . . . (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, p. 85, exposition added).
The concept ?nds a ‘proper’ place for itself by
?rst, perpetrating the e?acement of its own meta-
phorical genesis and hiding it in logic, regularity,
and generality and second, by putting itself for-
ward in opposition to metaphor and thereby
attesting to its ‘treacherousness’ (Kofman, 1993).
Its metaphorical origins, already forgotten, are
thus repressed further by deliberately denouncing
metaphoricity as ‘other’ and thereby ‘untruth’
(relative to the concept) and thus raising the con-
cept into a prior position as ‘truth’ (see Kofman,
1993). Forgetting permits the belief in the concept
as an a priori idea. But the concept is neither an a
priori idea nor a ‘truth’; the ?xation and the illu-
sion that passes it o? as proper are a product of
forgotten metaphor. The genesis of the truth
proper is one of e?aced metaphoricity and is
motivated by the promise of the repose and
security that comes with a priori status (Kofman,
1993; Nietzsche, 1873/1999).
Mainstream accounting research has denied its
metaphoricity because it ‘wishes instead to cling to
the impression without metaphor and apart from
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 165
its consequences’.
9
The mainstream conceptual
edi?ce seeks the illusion of an a priori world pre-
cisely because the authority a?orded mainstream
accounting re-presentations as arbiters of epis-
temic legitimacy and truth rests on the e?acement
of their metaphorical nature. It rests precisely on
our not remembering that these re-presentations
are merely favored metaphors raised into truth
concepts (Derrida, 1982) and perhaps more
importantly, on our not recognizing that there are
alternative metaphorical understandings to choose
from, none of which can truly claim ultimate
epistemic priority over others. Mainstream
accounting has concealed its ‘artistically creating’
nature by hiding it in the ‘cool logic’ and ‘rigid
regularity’ of positivist science and moreover, has
deliberately repressed its con?icted metaphorical
origins, its choice, in order to perpetuate the
deception that it operates as the true and accurate
and above all, objective characterization of reality.
The pretence that its concepts reveal something
naturally inherent in the object of inquiry allows
mainstream re-presentations to masquerade as
authentic, legitimate, and objective means of
representation and accounts for the illusion that
passes them o? as ‘proper’. ‘Proper’ status
unjustly inhibits the emergence of alternative,
possibly harmful re-presentations, those that
would be disruptive to the obviousness of its logic,
o?ering the ‘‘repose, security, and consistency’’
that Nietzsche so eloquently alludes to. The
mainstream concept is a deliberate abandonment
and concealment of metaphoricity in the interest
of maintaining the privilege to speak ‘properly’
and ‘objectively’ (cf. Kofman, 1993). ‘‘For-
getfulness’ and the pretence of the ‘truth proper’
are rudimentary to mainstream accounting
metaphor continuing in the sovereign and uni-
versally valid form that it has traditionally been
a?orded.
Alternative accounting epistemics as ‘metaphorical
drive’: the unforgetting of accounting metaphor
By embracing the idealized scienti?c rigor of
positivist science and by bestowing highly restric-
tive limits on epistemic activity (that is, metapho-
rical activity) in accounting, mainstream
accounting research has been able to conceal the
metaphoricity in its own concepts and maintain
the pretence of its ‘propers’. Alternative account-
ing thought, in its broadest sense, has stood out as
a bold a?ront to such mainstream ‘propers’ by
o?ering liberation from metaphorical ?xation and
dogmatism through deliberate assertion of alter-
native metaphors. Such epistemic activity within
alternative accounting thought may be read as a
manifestation of Nietzsche’s ‘metaphorical drive’,
previously repressed in mainstream epistemic and
conceptual activity. The metaphorical drive or the
‘‘drive toward the formation of metaphors’’ in
Nietzsche’s account is a fundamental creative
force, an imaginative artistic will, which plays at
deconstructing and reconstructing worlds; delib-
erately bringing forth new metaphors, it seeks to
displace and transform the norms of thought and
release the intellect from its conceptual prison
(Kofman, 1993; Nietzsche, 1873/1999).
10
The drive toward the formation of metaphors
. . . continually confuses the conceptual
categories and cells by bringing forward
new transferences, metaphors, and metony-
mies. It continually manifests an ardent
desire to refashion the world which presents
itself to waking man, so that it will be as
colorful, irregular, lacking in results and
coherence, charming, and eternally new as
10
It strikes me that the ‘metaphorical drive’ in Nietzsche’s
account is a particularly Romantic notion. Romanticism, a lit-
erary rejection of the ordered rationality of the Enlightenment
and an opposition to its hatred for the imaginative, profoundly
a?ected Western attitudes with respect to art and literature. It
embraced the creative, the imaginative, ‘the artistically creating
subject’ and acted as a powerful disruptive and inventive force
displacing rules of conventional form, renouncing conventional
genres, and rejecting norms of objectively in lieu of its own
artistic ‘truths’.
9
Please note that this brief discussion is not intended as an
extensive deconstruction/critique of mainstream epistemics as
such discourses maybe found elsewhere in the alternative
accounting literature (see for instance, Arrington, 1990;
Arrington & Francis, 1989; Tinker, Merino, & Neimark, 1982),
but rather, to provide a rhetorical vehicle for situating alter-
native accounting thought as a rehabilitative metaphorical
a?ront to mainstream accounting ‘propers’.
166 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
the world of dreams (Nietzsche, 1873/1999,
pp. 88–89).
With creative pleasure it [the intellect released
from its former slavery] throws metaphors into
confusion and displaces the boundary stones of
abstractions. . . it smashes this framework [of
concepts] to pieces, throws it into confusion,
and puts it back together in an ironic fashion,
pairing the most alien things and separating
the closest . . . [man] speaks only in forbidden
metaphors and in unheard-of combinations
of concepts . . . shattering and mocking the
old conceptual barriers. . . (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, p. 90, exposition added).
The metaphorical drive is thus a rehabilitation
and revitalization of metaphorical activity as well
as an ‘unforgetting’ or unmasking of the meta-
phoricity which constitutes the ‘proper’. Such a
drive puts the sovereignty of mainstream epistemic
activity in jeopardy because it denies it exclusivity
and betrays the existence of the ‘artistically creat-
ing subject’, the metaphorical, in all epistemic and
conceptual activity.
The rehabilitation of accounting metaphor:
‘bringing forward new transferences and
metaphors’
Alternative accounting thought revitalizes epis-
temic activity and rehabilitates its metaphoricity by
bring forward new transferences, new re-presenta-
tions of accounting, by multiplying metaphors; mul-
tiplication of metaphors reveals the plurality of
perspectives available and denies the mainstream
‘proper’ of its exclusivity. Alternative accounting
epistemics seem to mimic the less orthodox, more
radical version of the social sciences and may be
read as a shape-shifting chimera of anti—(or post-)
positivism, neo—(or post-) empiricism,
11
anti-rea-
lism, anti-foundationalism, social constructionism,
qualitative and/or quantitative methods, and mod-
ernist and/or post-modernist intent. The chimerical
nature of the radical social science paradigm gives
license to multiply metaphorical activity through
liberal reference to radical social theory, political
theory, social psychology, cultural anthropology,
literary theory, semiology, feminist theory, and
philosophy (in lieu of neoclassical ?nancial eco-
nomic theory) to construct a theoretical basis for
epistemic activity in accounting. Reference to these
alternative discourses and their accompanying
metaphors (theories, models, and constructs) has
spawned a multitude of associated re-presentations
of accounting study and practice.
12
As illustration of
such multiplicity consider the following: ‘account-
ing as social construction’ (e.g. Arnold & Oakes,
1998; Hines, 1988; Preston & Oakes, 2000),
‘accounting as partisan’ (e.g. Tinker, 1991; Tinker
et al., 1982), ‘accounting as politics’ (e.g. Burchell,
Clubb, Hopwood, & Hughes, 1980; Covaleski &
Dirsmith 1981, 1983, 1986); ‘accounting as ideol-
ogy’ (Cooper, 1995; Lehman, 1992, Lehman &
Tinker, 1987; Tinker et al., 1982; Tinker & Nei-
mark, 1987); ‘accounting as domination’ (Tinker,
1985); ‘accounting as legitimization’ (e.g. Ansari &
Euske, 1987; Berry et al., 1985; Covaleski & Dir-
smith, 1988, 1991); ‘accounting as power’ (e.g.
Miller & O’Leary, 1987); ‘accounting as discipline’
(Hoskin & Macve, 1986; Knights & Collinson,
1987), ‘accounting as text’ (e.g. Arrington &
Francis 1989, 1993; Boland, 1989; Cooper &
Puxty, 1994; Macintosh & Baker, 1999); ‘account-
ing as signi?cation’ (Arrington, 1990; Arrington &
Francis, 1989, 1993; Lavoie, 1987; Tinker, Leh-
man, & Neimark, 1988; Tinker, 1991); ‘accounting
as metaphorical’ (e.g. Mouck, 1992; Morgan,
1988; Walters-York, 1996; Young, 1999); ‘account-
11
It is worthy of mention that there are alternative empirical
studies however, they are the exception rather than the rule (see
Morgan & Willmott, 1993) and they are typically a bit more
liberal in their interpretation of what constitutes ‘empirical’, at
least relative to the orthodox empirical tradition as derived
from the classical British empiricists Locke, Berkeley, and
Hume (see Palmer, 1994); thus the use of the phrase ‘neo-
empiricism’ here.
12
The metaphors chosen for illustrative purposes in this
essay are not intended to pass for either an objective sampling
or an exhaustive list of the metaphorical re-presentations that
have in?uenced alternative accounting thought. Rather, the
metaphors presented here are those that caught my attention
and memory (and as such, re?ect my readings) and those that I
believe are either particularly interesting (as alternative voices)
or strong (from the perspective of their potentiality to displace
mainstream propers) or those that I believe occupy or have
occupied a particularly in?uential or privileged epistemological
position in alternative accounting discourse.
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 167
ing as communication’ (e.g. Arrington & Puxty,
1991; Wright, 1994); ‘accounting as rhetoric’ (e.g.
Arrington & Francis, 1989; Arrington & Schweiker,
1992; Mouck, 1992; Phiddian, 1996; Young, 2000),
‘accounting as narrative’ (e.g. Colville & McAulay,
1996; Reiter, 1997); ‘accounting as art’ (Gallhofer &
Haslam, 1996); ‘accounting as witchcraft/magic’
(e.g. Gambling, 1977, 1985, 1987; Covaleski & Dir-
smith, 1981), ‘accounting as masculine’ (e.g.
Cooper, 1992; Hines, 1992; Tinker & Neimark,
1987), ‘accounting as simulacrum’ (e.g. Macin-
tosh, Shearer, Thornton, & Welker, 2000; Preston,
Wright, & Young, 1996), and ‘accounting as show
business’ (e.g. Graves, Flesher, & Jordan, 1996).
Moreover, most academic researchers assimilate
multiple metaphors into their texts in an attempt to
construct a compelling and coherent alternative
understanding.
13
For example Tinker (1991)
assimilates several metaphors into his text to con-
struct a rhetorically potent argument including
‘accounting as partisan’, ‘accounting as signi?ca-
tion’, ‘accounting as social construction’, and
‘accounting as ideological’. As an additional illus-
tration of the multiplication of metaphors within a
particular text consider Arrington and Schweiker
(1992); in this text the authors coherently assimilate
metaphors of accounting research as ‘argument’,
‘rhetoric’, ‘metaphorical’, ‘constructive’, ‘partisan’
(or ‘partial’), and ‘political’.
The unforgetting of accounting metaphor:
‘confusing conceptual categories and cells’
14
Mainstream re-presentations are so worn from
use, so e?aced, that it requires more than a simple
unmasking to destroy the spell that such powerful
metaphors exude. Simply pointing out the illusion of
the proper and its unjust privilege is not enough; it
requires, so to speak, a process of unforgetting. This
process of unforgetting requires negative, destruc-
tive insight; it requires not only that we eschew the
organization of knowledge and experience as pre-
ordained by mainstream ‘propers’, it requires that
we ‘see’ the metaphor in the truth concept and
perhaps more importantly, that we subvert its
generality, privilege and obviousness (cf. Brown,
1976; Kofman, 1993; Schon, 1993 for related
ideas). Alternative accounting thought perpetrates
such a process of unforgetting in part by asserting
non-stereotypical as well as antithetical metaphors
for accounting, by thinking of accounting as or in
terms of something unusual, unconventional or per-
haps, disturbing. Such non-stereotypical metaphors
are disruptive, provoking reevaluation of conven-
tional ‘proper’ metaphors, undermining their
implications and challenging their presupposition.
Defamiliarizing accounting ‘propers’: ‘‘speaking in
forbidden metaphors and unheard-of combinations’
One manner in which the assertion of non-ste-
reotypical metaphors disrupts the illusion of
mainstream propers is through the process of
defamiliarization. That is, the ‘unforgetting’
brought about by asserting non-stereotypical
metaphors may be likened to Shklovsky’s (1965)
concept of ostranenie (‘making strange’) or ‘defa-
miliarization’ whereby one is perceptually and
epistemologically detached from the routine,
‘automatized’ or ‘proper’ understanding of an
object, disrupting the ?uency of the familiar logic
and reminding us of its arti?ciality, through a re-
presentation of that object in new and unusual
terms.
15
Attaching a ‘forbidden’ or ‘unheard-of’
?gure to a stereotyped concept provokes a reex-
amination and reevaluation of the concept, the
15
It is worthy of mention that this idea of ‘making the
familiar strange’ actually predates Shklovsky’s Russian Form-
alist writings and is implicit in early English Romanticism in
particular, in the writings of poets such as Coleridge and Shel-
ley (Baldick, 1990). For instance, Shelley in his essay A Defence
of Poetry (1821) wrote that poetry may make ‘familiar objects
be as if they were not familiar’ by lifting the ‘veil of familiarity
from the world’.
13
Lako? and Johnson (1980) contend that concepts are often
structured by multiple metaphors that ?t together in coherent
fashion; this assimilation of more than one metaphor is made pos-
sible by at least some shared implications or what the authors call
‘shared entailments’ across or between metaphors. Lako? and
Johnson suggest that the assimilation of multiple metaphors for
epistemic purposes is necessary as a single metaphor is often insuf-
?cient to provide complete and coherent understanding. As pre-
viously mentioned, in Nietzsche’s account, the conceptual edi?ce
itself is complex schema of multiple metaphors.
14
The metaphorical ‘modes’ of unforgetting suggested in the
following three subsections are not intended to be construed as
mutually exclusive (they interconnect and overlap in many
obvious ways) and are separated textually for academic and
rhetorical convenience only.
168 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
‘proper’ metaphor, revitalizing it and calling
attention to its inadequacies. Often the re-pre-
sentational metaphor and its domain of applica-
tion are perceived as very remote which is due at
least in part, to the tension with and dissimilarity
to the familiar, e?aced metaphor already in place.
For example, consider re-presenting ‘accounting
as art’, ‘accounting as literature’, or ‘accounting as
witchcraft/magic’; such metaphors are far
removed from the familiar, ossi?ed mainstream
technocratic conceptualizations of accounting and
antagonistic to their implications of rationality.
16
For example, the non-stereotypical metaphor
‘accounting as literature’ conjures up images of
the imaginative, the creative, and the artistic
rather than the rational, the systematic, or the
logical, and suggests poetic, dramatic, and ?c-
tional forms of writing (literary forms of writing)
rather than didactic or technical writing. The per-
ceived remoteness from and/or tension between
the familiar or ‘proper’ representation of an object
and an unfamiliar re-presentation is precisely what
creates the estranging e?ect that disturbs our faith
in conventional perceptions. The disturbing e?ect
of asserting these ‘other’ metaphors is not merely
to create new meaning (although this obviously
occurs) but to deconstruct perceptions thereby
upsetting the habitual mainstream conceptions of
accounting experience and reminding us of the ‘as’
structure of accounting knowledge; a non-stereo-
typical metaphor violates and disrupts our ‘com-
mon sense’ in that it does not seem to represent
the world ‘as it really is’ (Brown, 1976). Speaking
in ‘forbidden metaphors and unheard-of combi-
nations of concepts’ retards understanding and
provokes a re-evaluation of that which received
and e?aced mainstream metaphors allow us to
pass over unfettered by question or re?ection; that
is, such unfamiliar re-presentations juxtaposed
with habitual ones force us to ‘see’ the metapho-
rical in what is taken as ‘proper’ (the concept)
disclosing the gaps in its familiar rational patterns
that we may attend to its inadequacies and chal-
lenge the obviousness of its prescriptions. Meta-
phorical defamiliarization is a way of fragmenting
and dismantling ossi?ed knowledge and perhaps
more importantly, a way of disturbing the
obviousness of mainstream conceptual ‘propers’;
that which seems immediately necessary and
obvious may, given the re?ective advantage of an
antithetical metaphor, seem utterly mistaken and
false (cf. Kofman, 1993; Schon, 1993).
There are a number of illustrations of defami-
liarization in the alternative accounting literature,
indeed the alternative accounting discourse as a
whole might read (directly or indirectly) as a
metaphorical ‘unforgetting’ of mainstream dogma.
By way of example, consider the following alter-
native re-presentations. Tinker et al. (1982) con-
trast mainstream Positivism with Historical
Materialism (o?ered as an alternative set of epis-
temic terms in which to think of accounting study)
to reveal the former’s epistemic inadequacies for
the study of accounting and thereby provoke a
reevaluation of an epistemological foundation that
the mainstream study of accounting accepts ‘on
faith’. Arrington and Francis (1989) implicitly
assert a root metaphor of ‘accounting epistemol-
ogy as text/rhetoric’ (or rather, to be more speci?c,
‘positive accounting theory as text/rhetoric’) and
based thereon engage Derridean deconstructive
textual analysis (along with its accompanying
metaphors) to disrupt the ?uency and obviousness
of the received logic of positive theory and to
remind us of the arti?ciality of its privilege. The
16
Note that metaphors that seem less strange or remote for
alternative accounting researchers may seem very strange or
remote for a researcher of the mainstream cause (such as
‘accounting as signi?cation’, ‘accounting as rhetoric,’ ‘account-
ing as social construction’, or ‘accounting as partisan’). More-
over, some metaphors may now seem less remote to alternative
researchers than others. Metaphors such as ‘accounting as sig-
ni?cation’, ‘accounting as rhetoric,’ ‘accounting as social con-
struction’, or ‘accounting as partisan’ now seem much less
remote to alternative researchers than ‘accounting as art’,
accounting as simulacrum’ or ‘accounting as show business’.
This may be attributed to the repetitive use, conventionaliza-
tion and legitimatization of certain metaphors in the alternative
literature. Once a metaphor becomes accepted as familiar,
legitimate, or intuitive within a particular domain of applica-
tion (mainstream or alternative) it may lose the tension and
estranging potential it may originally have had. This is not to
suggest that alternative metaphors that are accepted as intuitive
by alternative accounting researchers no longer have disruptive
potential with regards to mainstream thought as they are likely
to still be very remote from and still be capable of generating
tension with the re-presentations privileged in the mainstream
domain of application. They may however, lose their disruptive
potential with regards to alternative accounting thought.
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 169
so-named ‘new accounting histories’ (Miller,
Hopper, & Laughlin, 1991) also provide particu-
larly good examples of defamiliarization; ‘new
accounting histories’ such as those engaging Fou-
cault’s writings and his accompanying metaphors
of archaeology and/or genealogy (e.g. Miller &
O’Leary, 1987; Hopwood, 1987; Hoskin & Macve,
1986; Preston, 1992), re-present accounting history
to interrogate the familiar mainstream logic that
accounting evolves teleologically (in response to
changes in environmental or societal needs) as a
techno-rational, functional, and passive tool of
economic e?ciency (Arrington & Francis, 1989;
Cooper & Puxty, 1996; Miller & O’Leary, 1987;
Tinker & Neimark, 1987).
Un-making/re-making accounting ‘things’:
‘smashing the framework and putting it back in
ironic fashion’
Defamiliarization is only one consequence of
asserting non-stereotypical metaphors, as meta-
phor is also a principle device for re-structuring
and re-organizing our concepts and categories
(Black, 1962a, 1993; Johnson 1980, 1981). As
such, in addition to disturbing and challenging the
obviousness of mainstream ‘propers’, the assertion
of non-stereotypical metaphors also results in the
creative ‘re-making’ of accounting (and account-
ing study) by giving novel or modi?ed senses to its
various concepts. It is important to emphasize that
what is created as a consequence of such meta-
phoric activity is not merely a new emphasis or
alternative perspective on some objectively pre-
existing but hitherto unnoticed object or property
of the metaphor’s domain of application; rather,
the production and empowerment of an alter-
native metaphor introduces a very real change into
the world constructing new meaning, new connec-
tions, new objects of inquiry, and new properties,
and ultimately, generating new facts and knowl-
edge which once perceived, are then ‘truly present’
(Black, 1962a, 1993; Brown, 1976). A non-stereo-
typical metaphor changes the very nature of the
thing metaphorized and the epistemic products
that derive there from. As with defamiliarization
above, it is the dissimilarity or tension with the
familiar, e?aced metaphor already in place that
invites us to alter our thinking and enables the
critical and liberating potential of the alternative
metaphor. That is, the suggestive power and radical
insight created by the non-stereotypical re-pre-
sentation is less a consequence of initially per-
ceived similarities between the metaphor and its
domain of application and rather more a result of
tensions or dissimilarities between A (as currently
represented) and B (the alternative re-presenta-
tion) that force us to cognitively re-structure the
domain of application in order to explore the
implications suggested by the new metaphor
(Brown, 1976; Johnson, 1981; Khatchadourian,
1968; Richards, 1936).
The consequence of this re-making is to con-
struct and o?er insights and knowledge previously
unavailable, ignored, denied, and/or excluded by
the limited modes of visibility provided for by
mainstream accounting’s privileged metaphors.
An earlier and quite bold (and rather more
obviously metaphorical) example of a re-making
of the accounting craft may be provided by Gam-
bling’s (1977) reference to anthropologist Evans-
Pritchard’s (1937) relativist anthropology and his
accompanying metaphorical re-presentations of
‘accounting as witchcraft’, ‘accountants as witch-
doctors’ and ‘accounting/budgeting as religious
ceremony’. Gambling o?ered his radical re-con-
ceptualization of the accounting craft as a basis
for re?ecting upon and interrogating the received
mainstream assumption of rationality in account-
ing. The initially perceived dissimilarity between
our current ‘rational’ representation of accounting
and the ‘irrationality’ implied by ‘accounting
magic’ (which violates our ‘common sense’) cre-
ates substantial cognitive tension. This tension
forces us, by way of attempted resolution, to ima-
ginatively re-conceptualize our received way of
comprehending accounting practice (in terms of
‘magic and superstition’, ‘spells and incantations’
and ‘ceremonial rain dances’) in order to ‘see’ and
explore the alternative implications of Gambling’s
‘anthropology of accounting’ for the mainstream
presumption of accounting rationality. Notice that
once we have come to understand Gambling’s
‘accounting magic’ as Gambling himself appears
to have done, the e?ect is dramatic; the new meta-
phor introduces a very real change into our under-
standing of accounting rationality (or irrationality,
170 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
as it were); we become privy to new facts (e.g.
numerous instances of irrationality in accounting)
and knowledge (e.g. the roles that such irration-
ality may serve and the basis for its justi?cation).
The alternative accounting literature is replete
with such re-makings of the accounting practice
and research (see illustrations of alternative meta-
phor as discussed above) albeit many are less
obviously metaphorical and most are perhaps a
bit less melodramatic than Gambling’s, although
no less bold in their intent; indeed as above, the
alternative accounting discourse as a whole
might be read, explicitly or implicitly, as an
attempted re-making of accounting research and
practice.
Transgressing conceptual barriers: ‘displacing the
boundary stones of abstractions’
Another consequence of asserting non-stereo-
typical metaphors is to extend accounting dis-
course beyond its traditional normalized
categories and conventional understandings, ‘dis-
placing the boundary stones of abstractions’ and
‘mocking the old conceptual boundaries’. This is a
somewhat Romantic view of metaphor. The
Romantic view of metaphor was one of more than
idle escapism or fanciful frivolity; rather, meta-
phor was seen as a creative cathartic activity with
the potential to transcend the prosaic and to
transgress rigid ‘literal’ understandings and
oppressive rational categories (Eagleton, 1983;
Johnson, 1981). Re-conceptualizing accounting
through assertion of non-stereotypical metaphors
transgresses the oppressive epistemic categories,
priorities, presumptions, and conducts of evalua-
tion of mainstream epistemology by o?ering and
putting forward as legitimate, alternative resour-
ces with which to pursue epistemic activity. For
example, re-conceptualizing ‘accounting texts as
literature/novels’ and ‘accountants as literary
authors/writers’ makes the rich and varied history
of literary criticism and critical poetics suddenly
and dramatically available as epistemic resources;
re-conceptualizing ‘accounting as narrative’ opens
up the literary study of narratology as an epis-
temic resource and re-conceptualizing ‘accounting
as rhetoric’ makes the rich tradition of classical
rhetoric and ?guration and its critique immediately
and opportunely available as an epistemic resource.
Such alternative epistemic resources open up the
study of accounting to encompass alternative sour-
ces of insight, alternative modes of inquiry, and
alternative issues and concerns. The re-presenta-
tion of ‘positive accounting theory as rhetoric’ for
example, has opened accounting study up to
include the insights of Derrida and deMan, their
associated deconstructive modes of inquiry, and a
concern for issues such as authorial privilege, epis-
temic privilege, and the in/determinacy of knowl-
edge (e.g. see Arrington & Francis, 1989, Arrington
& Schweiker, 1992; Phiddian, 1996).
Interestingly, some of the alternative re-pre-
sentations of accounting practice and research
extend accounting discourse beyond traditional
mainstream understandings not by o?ering a new
metaphor as such, but by challenging, changing or
extending the implications that are conventionally
carried by an existing metaphor in e?ect, changing
the interpretation of the metaphor. One major
function of poetic metaphor is to take a con-
ventionalized metaphor and extend it in an
unconventional manner or change it in a way that
transcends the ordinary, the familiar, or the
received (Lako? & Turner, 1989). In alternative
accounting thought, this unconventional extension
or more often, outright alteration of the inter-
pretation of a conventional metaphor generally
manifests in terms of alternative theoretical for-
mations based on what Black (1993, following
Aristotle) referred to as di?ering endoxa. Black’s
endoxa refer to opinions, understandings, and/or
rationalizations concerning the nature and
implications of the metaphorical subject that are
shared by members of a certain speech community
or by subscribers to a certain discourse (which
may in the case of alternative accounting re-con-
ceptualizations, be ontological, epistemic, or
socio-political). For instance, the ‘accounting as
language/signi?cation’ metaphor as in ‘accounting
is the language of business’ (which often appears
in elementary accounting textbooks) is not a par-
ticularly novel or radical metaphor, nor is
‘accounting as communication’. They do however
carry distinctly and radically di?erent ontological,
epistemic, and social implications in their alter-
native accounting form than in their mainstream
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 171
form due to a di?erent understanding of the nature,
purpose, structure, functions, rationale, and
implications of language, signi?cation, and
communication; that is, alternative accounting
researchers bring radically di?erent implications
to the secondary (metaphorical) subjects ‘lan-
guage’ and ‘communication’ in the construction of
metaphorical meaning through for instance, sub-
scription to the discourses surrounding the writ-
ings of de Saussure (e.g. Tinker, 1991), Gadamer
(e.g. Lavoie, 1987), Riceour (e.g. Arrington &
Francis, 1993), Habermas (e.g. Arrington &
Puxty, 1991), or Derrida (e.g. Arrington & Fran-
cis, 1989). By way of brief example, consider
Lavoie’s (1987) metaphorical conceptualization of
‘accounting as language’ and his subscription to
the discourse surrounding hermeneutical philoso-
phy and to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s writings in par-
ticular as a basis for interpreting this metaphor.
Through such interpretive references, Lavoie brings
to his central language metaphor distinctively
anti-realist, non-objectivist implications in sharp
contrast to the markedly realist implications of
the conventional mainstream version of the
metaphor (cf. Moore, 1991). As further example,
consider Arrington and Francis’ (1993) central
metaphor of ‘accounting as language’ as inter-
preted through subscription to the discourse sur-
rounding the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de
Saussure and to the hermeneutics of Paul Riceour.
Through the authors’ alternative interpretation of
this central language metaphor, the assumption of
‘?xed meaning’ and the presumption of a necessary
correspondence between ‘signs’ and ‘meanings’
characteristic of the more conventional main-
stream form of this metaphor give way to a con-
cern for the polysemic nature of the sign and
meaning as actively produced as a consequence of
discursive practice. As one further example, con-
sider Tinker’s (1991) metaphor of ‘accounting as
signi?cation’ as interpreted via his subscription to
de Saussure’s semiology and in particular, to his
principle of the arbitrariness of signs as a basis for
discrediting the mainstream’s (and in particular,
Solomons’, 1991) presumption of neutrality of
accounting symbols and for authenticating the dis-
cretionary and partisan status of such accounting
‘signs’.
Alternative accounting epistemics as ‘will to
power’
By bringing forth multiple, non-stereotypical
and antithetical metaphors for accounting,
alternative accounting research, as a manifesta-
tion of Nietzsche’s ‘metaphorical drive’, has
interrogated and ridiculed the exclusivity and
sovereignty of supposed mainstream accounting
‘propers’. In Nietzsche’s account, however, the
metaphorical drive is not merely an imaginative
liberating force, it is a creative force which allows
us to remake the world so as to master it; that is,
metaphorical activity coincides with the ‘will to
power’ (Breazeale, 1999; Kofman, 1993; Nietzsche,
1873/1999, 1901/1967). Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’
is an artistic force that metaphorically ‘‘. . .posits
forms but seeks also to master by means of
them. . .’’ (Kofman, 1993, p. 82). Copleston (1994)
provides a brief but insightful exposition of
Nietzsche’s’ ‘will to power’ as it manifests in
knowledge production.
The desire for knowledge, the will to know,
depends on the will to power, that is, on a
given kind of being’s impulse to master a
certain ?eld of reality and to enlist it in its
service. The aim of knowledge is not to know,
in the sense of grasping absolute truth for its
sake, but to master (Copleston, 1994, p. 408,
emphasis added).
The alternative accounting drive, from the per-
spective of Nietzsche’s account, may be read as an
attempt at gaining mastery over the accounting
world, an attempt that is, at gaining mastery over
the construction of accounting ‘truths’ through its
alternative metaphors. Each new metaphor is new
and a unique interpretation. To interpret a thing is
to impose meaning on it from a particular view-
point, to confer on oneself ownership of the thing,
that is, to become master of it (Kofman, 1993;
Nietzsche, 1901/1967); as such, ‘‘. . . interpretation
itself is a form of the will to power. . .’’ (Nietzsche,
1901/1967, 556, p. 302). Each new alternative
accounting metaphor is an imposition of meaning
from a particular perspective, an appropriation of
172 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
the accounting world by a speci?c will, equivalent
to an attempt at mastery and as such, seeks a
provisional center of perspective, a ‘proper’ place,
for itself. The will to power manifests within
alternative epistemic activity in the form of drives
to establish and empower these alternative meta-
phors as perspectival centers, as concepts. The
ensuing assertion, formation, and validation of
these metaphors, as symptomatic of the alter-
native will, bring about e?acement and abandon-
ment of their metaphoricity. Such metaphors are
easily forgotten, their artistic and disruptive vital-
ity ironically fading to dull familiarity, unobtru-
siveness, and custom, their metaphoricity lost to
the very rhetorical and conceptual means necessary
to establish and empower them as epistemic forces.
This is equivalent to a deliberate desertion of the
metaphorical drive in favor of conceptual status;
the ironic result being, privilege, ?xation, and
presupposition of the like that the alternative
accounting drive has sought to undermine.
The e?acement of metaphoricity: losing the ‘as’
structure of knowledge
In the rhetorical assertion of metaphor: ‘will to
know’
Epistemic metaphors, especially when elevated
to the status of theories, models, and paradigms,
constitute validity claims and by their very nature
carry the strong suggestion of verity; thus, we
might say that such metaphors are emphatically
asserted and not merely entertained (Black, 1993).
Black explains,
Whether we consider Kelvin’s ‘rude mechan-
ical models’, Rutherford’s solar system,
Bohr’s model of the atom, we can hardly
avoid concluding that the physicists con-
ceived themselves to be describing the atom
as it is, and not merely o?ering mathematical
formulas in fancy dress . . . They used lan-
guage appropriate to the [metaphorical]
model in thinking about the domain of
application . . . Their models were conceived to
be more than expository or heuristic devices.
(Black, 1962b, p. 229, exposition and some
emphasis added).
That is to say, an epistemic metaphor is more
than a casual invitation to regard something in a
particular way; it is presented emphatically as a
statement of actuality. We may refer, for example,
to ‘the rhetoric of accounting’, not merely imply-
ing that we are casually comparing A with B, or
even that we are self-consciously thinking of A as
if it were or could be B but to say decisively and
with authority and conviction that ‘accounting is a
rhetorical construction’, in short, to think of
accounting as being ‘a deliberate exploitation of
textual construction to achieve a desired e?ect’ (cf.
Black, 1993, p. 31). This is to suggest an episte-
mological di?erence between a conditional heur-
istic statement (‘as if’) and an existential statement
(‘as being’). Merely, thinking of A ‘as if’ it were or
could be like B suggests a conscious, willful, tem-
porary and most importantly, reticent suspension
of ontological disbelief in the form of a detached
comparison
17
or heuristic ?ction (Black, 1962b). It
su?ers from lack of commitment; and the price
paid is an absence of epistemological power as the
potential ‘to know’ the thing through metaphor is
prematurely closed o? for lack of ontological
empathy (Black, 1962b). Thinking of A ‘as being’
B is not a mere matter of heuristic convenience but
rather, a matter of the metaphorical construction
of things as experienced; we treat the metaphor as
the measure of the thing and use the language and
logic appropriate to the metaphor to attribute to
the thing properties and implications, belonging
not to the thing as it is but to the metaphor, and
now through its view, our rendering of the thing. It
17
It has been argued extensively in the literature, particularly
by proponents of the interaction view of metaphor, that meta-
phor cannot be reduced to a matter of simple literal comparison
(see Black, 1962a, 1993; Brown, 1976; Hausman, 1984; John-
son, 1980, 1981; Riceour, 1973; Richards, 1936; Waggoner,
1990 for discussion). Black (1993, pp. 30–31) eloquently argues,
‘‘. . . to suppose that the metaphorical statement is an abstract
or precis of a literal point-by-point comparison, in which the
primary and secondary subjects are juxtaposed for the sake of
noting dissimilarities as well as similarities, is to misconstrue
the function of metaphor. In discursively comparing one sub-
ject with another, we sacri?ce the distinctive power and e?ec-
tiveness of a good metaphor. Literal comparison lacks the
ambience and suggestiveness, and the imposed ‘view’ of the
primary subject, upon which a metaphor’s power to illuminate
depends (emphasis in original).’’
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 173
is through and by means of this rendering, an
appropriation and mastering of the thing, that we
may ‘know’ the thing.
When we make reference to ‘the rhetoric of
accounting standards’ (Young, 2000, p.1) or the
‘rhetoric of accounting research’ (Arrington &
Schweiker, 1992, p. 511; ‘accounting as rhetoric’)
we make an emphatic epistemic statement of
actuality about something essential to the nature
of accounting as practiced or studied. We may
then attribute to ‘accounting’ the properties of the
rhetorical (e.g. invention, argumentation, situa-
tional adaptation, audience positioning, diction,
stylistics, ?guration, textual composition and
arrangement) and the logic of motivated textual
construction (e.g. discursive practices as forms of
power, performance, justi?cation and desire)
thereby appropriating and rendering an account-
ing object (the standard setting process or
accounting research practices) for epistemic pur-
poses. Treating the rhetoric metaphor as the
measure of accounting standard setting, Young
(2000) was able to make compelling epistemic
statements regarding the persuasive nature of the
process of standard setting, concluding that stan-
dard setters actually do attempt to convince us,
through deliberate textual constructions and
authorial choice, that a particular standard is
‘good’, that the alternatives are ‘not so good’, and
that the FASB is a ‘good’ standard setter. Treating
the rhetoric metaphor as the measure of account-
ing research practices, Arrington and Schweiker
(1992) were able to attribute to accounting
knowledge claims rhetorical properties of audience
positioning, invention, stylistics, and justi?cation
and thereby make emphatic epistemic statements
regarding the argumentative genesis of accounting
knowledge.
When we make reference to ‘accounting sig-
ni?cation’ or to the ‘accounting sign’ (Tinker,
1991, pp. 302, 303; ‘accounting as signi?cation’),
we do not imply in a reticent manner that we may
(if we so choose) think of accounting numbers ‘as
if’ they were like or could be compared to a basic
element (linguistic or non-linguistic) of communi-
cation; rather, we make a statement of actuality
that ‘accounting numbers are signs’ that
‘Accounting is a sign system’. We may then attri-
bute to ‘accounting representation’ the properties
of ‘signs’ (e.g. the distinction between the signi?er
and signi?ed, arbitrariness, and the unimportance
of the external referent) and the logic of ‘sign sys-
tems’ (e.g. the interrelationship between and
mutual dependence of signs themselves and the
production of meaning based on social processes
and shared conventions)
18
thereby appropriating
accounting representation and imposing meaning
on it from a particular perspective. Treating the
‘signi?cation’ metaphor as the measure of
accounting, Tinker (1991) was able to make pro-
blematising epistemic statements regarding the
arbitrariness, lack of faithfulness to an external
objective reality, and thereby discretionary, parti-
san nature of accounting signs, concluding as
logically evident, that ?nancial representation is
not neutral and that accounting signi?cation, in
actuality, arbitrarily and prejudicially ‘takes sides’
in social and political con?icts.
There is, in such metaphorical appropriations
and renderings, however, the implication of direct
description; emphatic enough so as to make one
believe that we truly possess a thing in its essenti-
ality. In treating the metaphor as the actual
measure of things, we create the illusion that we
have things themselves before us so as to ‘know’
them and thus allow descriptive adequacy; this
e?aces the metaphoricity of the claim and in its
stead presents the metaphor as the ‘thing-in-itself’
and thereby, as the correct or ‘proper’ perception
of the thing. Rhetorically, the e?acement is stra-
tegic; the implication of direct description is
empowering, giving the metaphor necessary con-
ceptual force. It creates the illusion of appro-
priateness, conferring on the metaphor a
provisional center of perspective and presenting it
as ‘proper in itself’. As symptomatic of the ‘will to
know’, we treat the metaphor as the veritable nat-
ure of things so that we may ‘know’ a thing in its
essentiality and thus make existential statements,
not merely ?ctionally conditional ones. As symp-
tomatic of ‘will to power’ we designate, through
the illusion of direct description, the metaphor as
18
Tinker (1991) interpreted ‘accounting as a system of
signi?cation’ from the perspective of Saussurean/Derridean
semiology.
174 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
appropriate and tend to impose the metaphor on
others, as concept. This is the nature of ‘knowing’;
metaphor (as ‘will to know’) produces the procliv-
ity for verity and rhetoric (as ‘will to power’) has
designated the illusion that passes the metaphor
o? as ‘proper’ as epistemic necessity.
In the cognitive formation of metaphor:
19
‘will of
the mind’
In its simplest and least abstract formation,
metaphor involves two distinct ideas, spheres of
signs, or subjects referred to here (following Black,
1993) as the primary (non-metaphorical) and sec-
ondary (metaphorical) subjects ‘‘. . .which co-
operate in an inclusive meaning’’ (Richards, 1936,
p. 119). For example, we might again refer to the
‘rhetoric of accounting’ (‘accounting as rhetoric’),
the primary subject being ‘accounting’ and the sec-
ondary (metaphorical) subject being ‘rhetoric’. Both
the primary and secondary subjects evoke a system
of associated implications, or implicative complexes,
consisting of attributes and relations that may,
based on currently held opinions or beliefs, be
attributed to, associated with, or predicable of each
subject, constituting therefore an idea of each sub-
ject. The formation of metaphor juxtaposes the two
subjects, forcing them to coexist in common space;
and two things that appear together by means of a
metaphor ‘‘. . .arouse the idea (notion) of a con-
nection. . .’’ (Nietzsche, 1872/1999, p. 49). That is,
when two subjects, such as ‘rhetoric’ and
‘accounting’, generally thought to belong to dif-
ferent ‘orders of experience’, are discursively
placed together, there is an implication of similar-
ity; one is therefore incited to cognitively ‘connect’
the two disparate sets of implications and the two
ideas are ‘forced to co-operate’ in a semantic
fashion (Black, 1962a; Richards, 1936).
20
This is
the ‘will of the mind’, an essentially unjust will to
mastery, to seek similarity between one thing and
another, to subdue and reduce di?erences, to
digest and assimilate, and to achieve unity out of
diversity (Kofman, 1993, p. 33; Nietzsche, 1872/
1999, 1873/1999).
The primal procedure is to seek out some
likeness between one thing and another, to
identify like with like. (Nietzsche, 1872/1999,
144, p. 49).
Like recalls like and compares itself to it.
That is what knowing consists in: the rapid
classi?cation of things that are similar to each
other. Only like perceives like . . . The per-
ception of something new is also the same as
memory. It is not thought piled upon thought
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 131, p. 45).
. . .through assimilation and generalization
which are ‘illegitimate’, treacherous, and
unjust . . .metaphoricity, by its exercise of sole
mastery, implies the loss of individuality and
the reduction of di?erences. . . (Kofman,
1993, p. 34).
In the metaphor, ‘the rhetoric of accounting’,
the co-presence of two terms ‘accounting’ and
‘rhetoric’ as supported by a single phrase insists on
a cognitive co-operation between our idea of
‘accounting’ and the evoked rhetoric-system of
related implications (cf. Black, 1962a; Richards,
1936). This forced co-operation creates the pre-
sumption of similarity between ‘accounting’ and
‘rhetoric’, and leads to a strongly motivated
attempt to perceive analogy between the two dis-
parate subjects, an attempt that is, ‘to identify like
19
The discussion in this subsection draws heavily on the
interaction account of metaphor as originally proposed by I. A.
Richards (1936), developed and modi?ed by Max Black (1954–
1955,1962a, 1978, 1993), and further elaborated on by a num-
ber of other philosophers (e.g. Hausman, 1983, 1984, 1989;
Johnson, 1980, 1981; Riceour 1973, 1977, 1978). See Black
(1993) and Waggoner (1990) for further discussion of the
interaction account of metaphor. See Walters-York (1996) for
an application of Black’s interaction account of metaphor to
metaphor in accounting texts.
20
I would suggest that this juxtaposing of two subjects of
di?erent orders of experience and the ensuing ‘forced co-oper-
ation’ that Richards (1936) and Black (1962a) refer to is not
unlike the intertextuality that Derrida incites when he places
two very di?erent texts side-by-side on a single page (as in his
essays Glas and ‘‘The Double Session’’). The juxtaposition of
the two di?erent texts holds them active together forcing the
reader to shift incessantly back and forth between what nor-
mally would be considered, when held separately, two sets of
remotely incompatible ideas, the meaning of which eventually
emerges in the interplay of juxtaposed associations (see Norris,
1987 for further discussion).
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 175
with like’ and make the primary subject ‘?t’ (in
some sense) the secondary subject’s implications
(and vice versa). The desire for analogous ?t
incites the search for and construction of a set of
conceptual or ontological correspondences,
abstract ‘places’ where the evoked realities of
‘accounting’ and ‘rhetoric’ may be perceived to
‘connect’ or ‘touch’ in either normal or abnormal
senses (Black, 1962a; Lako?, 1993).
21
The con-
struction of ontological correspondences allows
for the making of epistemic correspondences so
that our knowledge about rhetoric may be trans-
ferred and thereby used to ‘know’ about
accounting (cf. Lako?, 1993); such corre-
spondences tell us ‘where’ (in the rhetorical
sphere) to transfer the knowledge from and
‘where’ (in the accounting sphere) to transfer it to
(and vice versa). These correspondences once
constructed, are perceived as similarities (and
most often antecedently existing similarities) and
are then given precedence over any dissimilarity
between the two subjects. In our ‘rhetoric of
accounting’ example, attributes and relations from
the accounting sphere that are found to ontologi-
cally and epistemologically correspond with the
rhetoric-system will be privileged and re-struc-
tured in terms of rhetorical implications and those
incompatible, those too uncooperative or dissim-
ilar to be forced to ?t in some sense, will be
excluded or suppressed by force of language; that
is, any attributes and relations that can without
undue di?culty be thought about in terms of
‘rhetoric language’ will be made prominent and
those that can not (as disanalogies) will be sub-
dued and ignored (cf. Black, 1962a). Moreover, it
should be noted that the interaction between the
two subjects is reciprocal; both subjects play a part
in appropriating and imposing meaning on each
other as either subject may serve as an interpretive
base for the other (Black, 1962a, 1993; Hausman,
1983, 1989). There is a transfer of properties and
logic from the sphere of ‘rhetoric’ to the sphere of
‘accounting’ as well as a reciprocal transfer of
properties and logic from the sphere of ‘account-
ing’ to the sphere of ‘rhetoric’. As such, there is a
secondary repression of dissimilarity, intensifying
the transition from the analogous to the identical,
as any ontological or epistemological properties
from the rhetorical sphere that can be reconciled to
‘accounting-language’ will be privileged and those
that cannot (as disanalogies) will be subdued and
subordinated to the presumed similarity of the
metaphor.
The consequence of the forced co-operation and
reciprocity then is to bring the two subjects closer
together perceptually, the formation and relative
position of both subjects e?ected, so that our ideas
of ‘rhetoric’ and ‘accounting’ seem more compa-
tible, more as belonging to similar (rather than
remotely di?erent) ‘orders of experience’ as a
consequence of the metaphorical juxtaposition
(Walters-York, 1996). The original perceptual
tension is eventually lost with the privileging of
similarity and perhaps more importantly, the sup-
pression of dissimilarity and the constructed
ontological and epistemic correspondences create
the powerful illusion that the metaphor reveals
(not constructs) something naturally inherent in
the object of inquiry, a revelation that accounting
is and always has been inherently rhetorical. The
rhetoric metaphor appears to correspond to the
accounting ‘facts’ (thus satisfying the correspon-
dence theory of truth) and is thus taken as self
evident, an obvious and direct description of
accounting phenomena. The resulting illusion is so
complete that we forget that the similarity does
not originate in the essence of things; we forget
that we have artistically and imaginatively,
through metaphorical juxtaposition, created the
correspondences, the similarity that suggests such
verity, for epistemic purposes and are thus
inclined to presume that the metaphor re-presents
the primary subject ‘‘as it really is’’ (see Kofman,
1993, for related discussion). By Nietzsche’s
account, this is the transition to the concept, an
‘equating of unequal things’, a ‘discarding of indi-
vidual di?erences and a forgetting of distinguish-
ing aspects’; and by its privileging of similarity and
21
I would argue that this forced search for ontological cor-
respondences is the basis for Black’s (1962a, p. 37) con-
troversial claim that that metaphor constructs or creates
similarity rather than formulating similarity antecedently exist-
ing. Thus, it might be said that the metaphorical juxtaposition
forces the construction (not revelation) of an analogy that
strongly implicates a likeness statement. See Black (1962a,
1993) for further discussion.
176 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
subduing of di?erences, it is an appropriation of
the accounting world by a fundamentally unjust
will to power.
. . . there is a power which emphasizes rhyth-
mic similarity beyond actual inexactitude.
This must be an artistic power, because it is
creative. Its chief creative means are omit-
ting, overlooking, and ignoring. It is there-
fore an antiscienti?c power, because it does
not have the same degree of interest in
everything that is perceived (Nietzsche,
1872/1999, 55, p. 20).
The transition from the analogous to the iden-
tical e?aces the metaphoricity of the knowledge
claim and accounts for the illusion of revelation
and verity in the concept, giving it force and
imposing its evaluations as absolute.
The abandonment of metaphoricity: seeking
conceptual validity
The drive for authenticity: ‘will to rationality’
With respect to knowledge production, the drive
for authenticity has much to do with avoidance of
false, imaginative, or imitative status and as such,
we seek to authenticate our epistemic processes
and products through scienti?c rationality, the
rhetorical antitheses of imagination.
As a ‘rational’ being, he [man] now places his
behavior under the control of abstractions.
He will no longer tolerate being carried away
by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First, he
universalizes all these impressions into less
colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can
entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to
them. Everything which distinguishes man
from the animals depends upon this ability to
volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema,
and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.
For something is possible in the realm of
these schemata which could never be achieved
with vivid ?rst impressions . . . the creation of
a new world of laws, privileges, subordina-
tions, and clearly marked boundaries—a new
world, one which now confronts that other
world of vivid ?rst impressions as more solid,
more universal, better known, and more
human than the immediately perceived world
. . . (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 84, emphasis
added).
In contrast to the liberties that poetic metaphor
enjoys, epistemic metaphor is arguably expected to
enable rational analysis (Inns & Jones, 1996). This
is not to fall prey to the false dichotomy between
art and science and suggest that reason is absent
from poetry and that imagination is absent from
knowledge production (especially not in an essay
driven largely by Nietzsche’s insights); rather it is
only to suggest that there is, in scholarly activity,
the expectation that epistemic metaphors serve a
rational, purposive means to some end whereas
poetic metaphor may function purely as an aes-
thetic, a?ective, or imaginative end in itself with-
out further utilitarian expectation (see Brown,
1976; Debatin, 1997; Ho?man, 1980; Inns &
Jones, 1996). Thus, what is rhetorically e?ective in
metaphor for poetics may di?er markedly from
what is rhetorically e?ective in metaphor for
knowledge production. Consider the following
example of what has classically been considered
poetic metaphor from William Shakespeare’s tra-
gedy Macbeth,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing (Shakespeare, c1606–1607
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)
It is enough that Shakespeare’s metaphors serve
as powerful descriptive and emotive devices con-
veying MacBeth’s deepest and most tragic
insights into and sentiments about life; the meta-
phors need not be rationalized or justi?ed as
actuality and their implications need not be sys-
tematically spelled out and made more explicit
(and indeed the resulting implicative closure
might well destroy the poetic e?ect of the meta-
phors if they were, see Brown, 1976). In contrast, in
order to authenticate an epistemic metaphor and
have it serve as a ‘tool’ for knowledge production,
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 177
the metaphor ‘must be dissolved into concept’,
that is, it must be conceptualized, have a rational
end in mind, and its epistemic implications must be
made explicit for analytical purposes (Brown, 1976;
Ho?man, 1980). This involves setting up a system
of secondary rationalizations to logically motivate,
justify, and adduce ‘facts’ or implications for the
designation of the metaphor, in e?ect, e?acing the
artistic nature, the metaphoricity of the claim so as
to give it necessary conceptual and epistemic
force. For example, consider Tinker’s (1991)
foundational metaphor ‘accounting as signi?ca-
tion’ asserted as a rational means to deconstruct
and disrupt the mainstream presumption of neu-
trality in accounting re-presentation. In order to
accomplish this rational purpose, the author was
obliged ?rst, to motivate the designation of the
alternative metaphor (e.g. by problematising
mainstream and in particular, Solomon’s notions
of neutrality and representational faithfulness in
accounting representation) and second, to selec-
tively specify the properties and assumptions of
the metaphor (e.g. by providing an exposition of
Saussure’s Principle of the arbitrariness of signs).
Third, the author was further obliged to rationa-
lize the application of semiotics to accounting
phenomena as appropriate or ‘proper’ by rhetori-
cally situating it as a direct description of
accounting representation and by justifying this
designation (e.g. by arguing that semiotic study is
applicable to all systems of symbolic representa-
tion and by drawing a parallel between accounting
and other systems of symbolic representation
treated as sign systems). Fourth, the author was
compelled to meticulously spell out the epistemic
and political implications of the metaphor for the
accounting concepts of ‘representational faithful-
ness’ and ‘neutrality’ (making explicit and solidi-
fying the intended implications of the metaphor
being exploited, that accounting signs are arbi-
trary and thus not neutral or representationally
faithful) and ?nally to rhetorically situate those
implications as a legitimate rationale for account-
ing representation (e.g. by reference to other studies
in accounting that have similarly asserted the ‘sig-
ni?cation’ metaphor and/or derived similar proble-
matic implications). In an attempt to authenticate
the metaphor and justify its utility as a rational
framework for analysis, the metaphor was con-
ceptualized; from the meanings, associations and
implications opened up by the metaphor
‘accounting as signi?cation’, a subset was rhetori-
cally designated, provided motivational force,
rationalized as ‘proper’ or appropriate, explicated,
situated as legitimate, and petri?ed into notional
form all to suit a rational purpose. In the drive to
speak ‘rationally’ and demonstrate rhetorical
authenticity, the metaphoricity of the re-presenta-
tion was deliberately abandoned in favor of a logic
that a?orded epistemic utility and conceptual
validity. While such abandonment is rhetorically
necessary for metaphor to be considered useful for
epistemic purposes (even within the context of a
discourse that embraces a rhetoric of liberation),
authentication by conceptualization also works as
a positive faculty for forgetting and repression.
The drive for authority: ‘will to mastery’
The drive for authority has much to do with
desire for in?uence and power over knowledge
production. The ‘will to power’ presupposes
that various metaphors are at variance and
struggle with one another for mastery, that
epistemic activity is a ?eld of re-presentational
contention where authority and ‘truth’ status is
gained by a establishing a privileged position
among the terrain of competing metaphors
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, 1901/1967; Kofman, 1993).
This is arguably a tenable assumption with respect
to epistemic activity in accounting, itself a hetero-
geneous discourse composed of con?icting epis-
temic interests struggling for power over the
construction of accounting knowledge (e.g. main-
stream versus non-mainstream or alternative
accounting thought); even within alternative
accounting epistemics, there are a plethora of con-
?icting interpretations and re-presentations vying
for authoritative status as knowledge claims. Each
new metaphor is symptomatic of the desire for
mastery over the construction of accounting
‘truth’ as all knowledge claims seek conceptual
validity and a provisional center of perspective for
themselves. Such status is ultimately a?orded to
only those claims that have been argued e?ectively
and won before the herd (society and one’s peers)
(Arrington & Schweiker, 1992). As such, there is
178 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
no purposiveness in the evolution of accounting
truth concepts; all accounting knowledge ‘evolves
at the whim of displacements in mastery and chance
developments in the struggle for power (cf. Kofman,
1993, p. 85).’
The ‘evolution’ of a thing . . . is . . . by no
means its progressus toward a goal, even less
a logical progressus by the shortest route and
with the smallest expenditure of force—but a
succession of more or less profound, more or
less mutually independent processes of sub-
duing, plus resistances they encounter, the
attempts at transformation for the purpose of
defence and reaction, and the result of suc-
cessful counter actions . . . in all events a will
to power is operating (Nietzsche, 1887/1968,
II, 12, pp. 513–514, emphasis in original).
Will to power manifests in the epistemic arena in
the desire to make one’s knowledge claims visible
and to win the argument, the desire that is, to gain
rational assent to a knowledge claim and in doing
so, subordinate the multiplicity of claims, the diver-
sity of metaphors, to the strongest which is then
established as a provisional center, as concept. Each
new metaphor, each new interpretation is equivalent
to a new mastering which constructsauthority for
itself by e?acing, subduing, or displacing any pre-
vious and, in particular antithetical, meanings. An
authoritative knowledge claim, that is, is one that
has succeeded in mastering something less powerful
than itself in e?ect, forcing a change in mastery.
. . . whatever exists, having somehow come
into being, is again and again reinterpreted to
new ends, taken over, transformed and redir-
ected by some power superior to it . . . a sub-
duing, a becoming master, and all subduing
and becoming master involves a fresh inter-
pretation, and adaptation through which any
previous ‘meaning’ and purpose are necessa-
rily obscured or even obliterated (Nietzsche,
1887/1968, II, 12, p. 513).
By such an account, alternative accounting
epistemics may be read as an attempt to e?ect a
change in masters, a change in mastery over the
construction of accounting knowledge and its
non-stereotypical metaphors are attempts at sub-
duing or displacing the mainstream mastery of
accounting epistemics. Displacements in mastery
do not take place by the mere assertion of non-
stereotypical metaphors but by their demonstrated
e?ects and ‘proofs of strength’.
That is to say, ‘truths’ do not establish them-
selves by logical proofs, but by means of their
e?ects: proofs of strength. The truth and the
e?ective are taken to be identical; here too
one submits to force (Nietzsche, 1872/1999,
47, p. 17).
By Nietzsche’s account, a proof of strength is
one that demonstrates the truth of a claim by vir-
tue of the positive bene?ts of believing it to be true
(or by virtue of the detrimental e?ects of believing
its antithesis to be true); such ‘proofs’ are of
course, entirely rhetorical and ‘prove’ nothing
regarding the validity of the knowledge claim
(Nietzsche, 1872/1999, editor/translator’s com-
mentary). It is by such rhetoric that alternative
accounting attempts to displace mainstream
‘propers’, validate its non-stereotypical meta-
phors, and thereby e?ect a change in mastery over
accounting knowledge production.
22
All scholarly
attempts at knowledge construction attempt to
persuade with respect to their plausibility and
‘truth’ status however, such rhetorical proofs of
strength are most obvious when the non-stereo-
typical metaphor is openly juxtaposed with the
stereotypical metaphor in an attempt to subdue or
displace by criticism or deconstruction. For
example, consider Morgan and Willmott (1993);
here the authors juxtapose ‘new’ accounting
research (‘as post-positivist social theory’ and ‘as
visibility’) with mainstream accounting research
22
The intent of this discussion is not to provide a systematic
analysis of the rhetoric of accounting epistemics or of the
rhetoric of argument; but rather, to merely to make the asser-
tion that such rhetorical practices provide the means by which
alternative accounting epistemics may e?ect displacements and
changes in mastery. See Arrington and Schweiker (1992) for an
in-depth account of the rhetoric of accounting epistemics.
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 179
(‘as positivism’ and ‘as invisibility’) in an attempt
to validate by virtue of new accounting research’s
problematization of mainstream positivism
(demonstrating the detrimental e?ects of positi-
vism) and its e?ect ‘to render visible’ that which it
has been rendered ‘invisible’ (demonstrating the
positive bene?ts of post-positivist social theory).
Aforementioned illustrations of defamiliarization,
un-making/re-making, and transgression, as symp-
tomatic of the metaphorical drive in alternative
epistemics, provide further examples of attempts to
subdue or displace mainstream ‘propers’.
In the attempt to gain mastery, to give one’s
knowledge claims epistemic force and validity,
however, the diversity of possible designations for
accounting is subordinated to one or a few that
have gained conceptual authority through rheto-
rical displacement and argument. While ‘proofs of
strength’ are a necessary, rational, and pragmatic
manner of justifying epistemic claims as knowl-
edge (Arrington & Schweiker, 1992), the accom-
panying drive to win, to master by rhetorical
means, constitutes an abandonment of meta-
phoricity for authoritative conceptual status and
accounts for the construction of an illusion that
passes it o? as ‘proper’ (Kofman, 1993).
The drive for legitimacy: ‘will to truth’
The drive for legitimacy has much to do with the
desire for acceptance (as authentic and author-
itative) of our epistemic products and the accom-
panying tendency to conform to recognized
designations or conventional re-presentations in
order to gain such acceptance. The desire for accep-
tance leads to attempts to construct rhetorical
legitimacy by relying on ideas, interpretations, or
perspectives already validated in ‘the literature’ and
through citation practices, by referencing what
would be considered ‘seminal papers’ or ‘important
texts’ (especially those that support or are consistent
with our designations for things) by our intended
audience (e.g. journal editors, reviewers, and our
peers). There is, in fact, a considerable ‘social’
pressure to assert that which is viewed as ‘appro-
priate’ as the complex of ‘appropriate’ metaphors
creates an intertext within which we may safely
situate our own knowledge claims as legitimate
and hopefully e?ect a positive adjudication by a
small audience of reviewers. Nietzsche poetically
exposits,
. . . the scienti?c investigator builds his hut
right next to the tower of science so that he
will be able to work on it and to ?nd shelter
for himself beneath those bulwarks which pre-
sently exist (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 88,
emphasis added)
From the necessity to ‘exist socially and with the
herd’ arises a moral impulse (as a duty which
society imposes) in regard to ‘truth’, a metapho-
rical ?ction in the form of custom, convention, or
privilege, as contrasted with the ‘lie’, a metapho-
rical ‘?ction’ of the same sort as a ‘truth’ but
without conventionally accepted social credibility,
validity, or utility as a designation (Kofman, 1993;
Nietzsche, 1872/1990, 1873/1999).
From the sense that one is obliged to desig-
nate one thing as ‘red,’ another as ‘cold,’ and
a third as ‘mute,’ there arises a moral impulse
in regard to truth. The venerability, relia-
bility, and utility of truth is something which
a person demonstrates for himself from the
contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and
everyone excludes (Nietzsche, 1873/1999,
p. 84, emphasis added).
One who uses valid designations or conven-
tional re-presentations for things lies with ‘truth’
and is privileged whereas the ‘liar’,
. . . misuses ?xed conventions by means of
arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of
names [novel, unconventional or forbidden
metaphors]. If he does this in a . . . harmful
manner, society will cease to trust him and
will thereby exclude him. (Nietzsche, 1873/
1999, p. 81, exposition added).
As researchers, we generally desire to be on
the ‘truth’ rather than ‘lie’ side of things and as
such, seek validation and conceptual status for
our epistemic products by employing the usual
metaphors (Kofman, 1993; Nietzsche, 1873/1999).
This is,
180 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
. . . the duty which society imposes in order to
exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual
metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is
the duty to lie according to ?xed convention,
to lie with the herd and in a manner binding
on everyone (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, p. 84,
emphasis added).
We are certainly familiar with the necessity of
sticking to the usual metaphors if we desire legiti-
macy (and to be published) in the mainstream
accounting arena (and with the potential con-
sequences if we choose to deviate from or contradict
those canonical re-presentations). Alternative
accounting thought, despite its rhetoric of libera-
tion, illustrates similar tendencies. For instance,
consider the metaphors ‘accounting as signi?cation’,
‘accounting as rhetorical’, ‘accounting as social
construction’, and ‘accounting as partisan’. These
metaphors (and there are certainly others) are well
used and well validated in the alternative accounting
literature and are commonly assimilated into many
alternative accounting texts. The assertion of these
metaphors (the ‘usual’ alternative accounting re-
presentations) rhetorically legitimizes a text within
the context of the alternative accounting discourse
by ‘sheltering it beneath the bulwarks which pre-
sently exist’ and by aligning it with ‘truth’ (rather
than ‘lie’).
23
Con?icting or antithetical alternatives
are perhaps not eschewed by the current endoxa, but
there is de?nitely something extra required in the
way of ‘proving’, ‘justifying’ or ‘substantiating’ if one
departs fromthe accepted metaphors too radically.
24
The tendency to stick to the usual metaphors
results in rhetorical repetition of certain meta-
phors to the exclusion of other metaphors (that
may be more di?cult to justify for epistemic pur-
poses), a deliberate abandonment (for rhetorical
purposes) of the metaphorical drive in favor of
those hardened metaphors that already serve in a
conceptual capacity. The drive for legitimization,
manifested as motivated rhetorical repetition, is a
particularly powerful force for e?acement and ?x-
ation. Kofman (1993) eloquently summarizes,
It is in fact the exclusivity of a single meta-
phor, its ?xation by hypnotic procedures, that
imposes a habit of using it; a habit which
becomes a necessity, with the result the that
the metaphor is taken for a ‘proper’, a norm
of thought and action. Thanks to the con-
vention of lying as established as truth, man
learns to think and act as a ‘herd animal’ a
‘reasonable being’ . . . for only the habitual
produces satisfaction and security. . .
(Kofman, 1993, pp. 56–57).
This may be evidenced by the familiarity, intui-
tiveness, and endurance of particular alternative
metaphors such as ‘accounting as social construc-
tion’, ‘accounting as signi?cation’, or ‘accounting
as partisan’ as contrasted with less worn meta-
phors such as ‘accounting as art’ or ‘accounting as
show business’. Moreover, once metaphors
become accepted as familiar and intuitive, they
tend to be taken as ‘given’, are considered without
question ‘appropriate’ and are, more often than
not, given over to presupposition
. . .we produce these representations in and
from ourselves with the same necessity with
which the spider spins. If we are forced to
comprehend all things only under these forms,
23
If this seems doubtful, consider the reaction of a reviewer
of the ‘alternative cause’ if a text were to posit the antithesis of
such metaphors: ‘accounting as disinterested’, ‘accounting as
non-constructive’, or ‘accounting as objective or neutral’. I
would argue that it would be de-legitimizing in the context of
alternative accounting epistemics.
24
I recall my ?rst non-mainstream attempt at a paper on
metaphor in accounting texts. Tony Puxty had graciously
o?ered to read and o?er comment on what I had written. I
remember that I had originally taken a position philosophically
at odds in many respects from that which was currently being
espoused in the alternative accounting literature and Tony’s
paramount comment was that to have legitimacy among ‘my
peers’ and incidentally, to get my paper published, I would
have to redirect my arguments (to be consistent with the cus-
tomary metaphors accepted by this discourse) or I would have
to go quite a long way to justify my antithetical position. Iro-
nically, the frustration I experienced then was the same frus-
tration I experienced when previously faced with the
restrictions placed on my doctoral work by ‘what had already
been validated in the literature’ and by ‘what was considered
acceptable’ in the context of mainstream positivism. This frus-
tration of course, was the driving force behind my subsequent
pursuit of alternative accounting studies.
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 181
then it ceases to be amazing that in all things
we actually comprehend nothing but these
forms . . . it of course follows, that the artistic
process of metaphor formation . . . already
presupposes these forms and thus occurs within
them (Nietzsche, 1873/1999, pp. 87–88).
It is the rare text in the alternative accounting
arena that does not presume that accounting is con-
stitutive (‘as constructive’), interested (‘as partisan’),
partial (‘as rhetoric’), and linguistically based (‘as
language/signi?cation’). In this, regardless of the
epistemic utility of the particular metaphors
involved, there is an e?ect of exclusivity and the
implication of a ‘proper’; such metaphors are
accepted and treated as conceptual ‘truths’ for epis-
temic purposes. And despite the multiplicity of
metaphors that have been proposed, most are epis-
temologically consistent with such alternative con-
cepts; that is, most are not antithetical and do not
constitute diversity in terms of Nietzsche’s ‘reso-
lute reversals of accustomed perspectives’. As such,
only a relative few have had profound in?uence on
epistemic activity in alternative accounting thought
and attained the status as ‘accounting truths’.
Closing remarks: ‘will to nothingness’ or ‘will to
life’?
Nietzsche’s analysis of the metaphorical nature
of knowledge and truth provides a rather dis-
tinctive vehicle for situating alternative accounting
thought in the struggle for the construction of
accounting truths—and for re?ecting on a unique
epistemological irony in that position. Inherent
within the metaphorical drive are both the poten-
tial for epistemic liberation and the tendency for
conceptual imprisonment. By bestowing highly
restrictive limits on epistemic activity in account-
ing and by deliberately abandoning and conceal-
ing the metaphoricity of its own concepts,
mainstream accounting thought has maintained,
by unjust means, the privilege to speak ‘properly’
and ‘objectively’. Alternative accounting thought,
read as a manifestation of Nietzsche’s metapho-
rical drive, has ridiculed such privilege and jeo-
pardized the sovereignty of mainstream ?ctions by
deliberately asserting non-stereotypical meta-
phors. However, each new alternative accounting
metaphor is the imposition of meaning from a
particular perspective, equivalent to an attempt at
usurping mastery, symptomatic of a speci?c will
and as such, a manifestation of Nietzsche’s will to
power. The ensuing assertion, formation, and
validation of these metaphors, as symptomatic of
the alternative will, bring about e?acement and
abandonment of their metaphoricity; ironically,
their metaphoricity may be lost to the very rheto-
rical and conceptual means necessary to establish
and empower them as epistemic forces. That is,
alternative accounting thought must use the same
means as mainstream science to create knowl-
edge—conceptual representation and validation.
The metaphorical drive is thus abandoned in favor
of a logic that a?ords conceptual validity and
epistemic force; and the alternative will becomes
susceptible to the very privilege, ?xation, and pre-
supposition it has sought to undermine. More-
over, establishing and validating our metaphors
contributes to a ‘narrowing’ of epistemic possibi-
lities as the multiplicity of proposed perspectives
becomes subordinate to those few that have
rhetorical force, speak rationally, have succeeded
in mastering or displacing something less powerful
than themselves, and have gained acceptance by
the ‘herd’. By such a Nietzschean account, alter-
native accounting thought, ironically, may be read
as both liberating (via asserting non-stereotypical
metaphors) and imprisoning (by subduing, ?xing,
and conceptually validating its own metaphors).
The question becomes one of whether or not
such a re?ection on alternative knowing leads us
inevitably to epistemological despair and nihilism.
I think not. By a Nietzschean account, there are
two paths, two ways and the ?rst, which leads to
nihilism, is the sign of the ‘weak’ will, the will that
either denies or despairs in the faultiness of its
‘truths’ and remains trapped by them because it
lacks the strength to escape from its self-made
imprisonment and create new ?ctions.
This same species of man, grown one stage
poorer, no longer possessing the strength to
interpret, to create ?ctions, produces nihilists.
A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as
182 M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187
it is that it ought not to be, and of the world
as it ought to be that it does not exist
(Nietzsche, 1901/1967, III, 585, pp. 317–318).
The second path, that of the ‘strong’ will, does
not allow itself to remain trapped nor is it daunted
by the faultiness of its provisionally accepted
‘truths’. It realizes that knowledge is perspectival
and will use many metaphors, realizing each to be
faulty and accepting it as such; it will, despite its
need for the conceptual, remain true to the meta-
phorical drive and continue to create new ?ctions
to the purpose and in the service of ‘knowing’
(Nietzsche, 1887/1968; Wilcox, 1974). And
whereas the weak will veils itself, the strong will
reveals itself for what it is—appropriating, usurp-
ing, subduing, artistic—as the creator of these new
?ctions; it ‘‘. . .treats illusion as illusion; therefore it
does not wish to deceive; it is true (Nietzsche,
1872/1999, 184, p. 96).’’ Moreover, the strong will,
although quite capable of purposefully a?rming a
particular metaphor (in the name of concept), is
nevertheless still capable of changing it, even
reversing it, diversifying (not merely multiplying),
to see the world with ‘other eyes’ (Kofman, 1993).
. . .precisely because we seek knowledge, let us
not be ungrateful to such resolute reversals of
accustomed perspectives and valuations with
which the spirits has, with apparent mis-
chievousness and futility, raged against itself
for so long: to see di?erently in this way for
once, to want to see di?erently, is no small
discipline and preparation of the intellect for
its future ‘objectivity’—the latter understood
not as ‘contemplation without interest’
(which is a nonsensical absurdity), but as the
ability to control one’s Pro and Con and to
dispose of them, so that one knows how to
employ a variety of perspectives and a?ective
interpretations in the service of knowledge . . .
There is only perspectival seeing, only per-
spectival ‘knowing’; and the more a?ects we
allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes,
di?erent eyes, we can use to observe one thing,
the more complete will our ‘concept’ of the is
thing, our ‘objectivity’, be (Nietzsche, 1887/
1968, III, 12, p. 555, some emphasis added).
That mainstream accounting thought has found
need to conceal the metaphoricity of its claims, deny
the faultiness of its truths, cling to worn ideals, and
take refuge not far from the tower of positivist
science, is symptomatic of its weakness. Would we,
as an alternative will, not be just as weak to despair
in the ironies of our own position? As alternative
accounting writers we must not succumb to the
‘weak’ will, allowing ourselves to become trapped by
the logic of our concepts or despair in the faultiness
and irony of our position; nor must we denigrate the
‘will to truth’. It is in fact more a sign of a ‘strong’
and noble will (and more Nietzschean) to write
‘conceptually’ in the knowledge that our truth con-
cepts are metaphor and thus have no greater or less
value, than to scorn ‘truth’ and propose the ines-
capability of metaphor as evidence of a lacking and
futility in the will to truth (cf. Kofman, 1993).
Wilcox eloquently expounds,
. . .one can be beyond illusion . . .in two ways;
and one of those ways leads to nihilism. The
?rst way is to see the truth about truth, and to
despair—because one still clings to outworn
ideal, because one still wants truth to be more
that it actually is. The man who takes this
way says of truth as it is that it should not be,
and of truth as it should be that it is not. The
other way is the way of the creator of new
values . . . he creates a new norm, a new stan-
dard of truth. He says yes to what truth really
is—a human interpretation, a perspective, a
provisionally acceptable treasure from the
depths of mans passions, reason and
experience. To this truth Nietzsche’s man
wants to say yes. Nietzsche’s hero is a man
who says yes to truth which he knows is
error—not the error which has been over-
come in a new truth, not the error whose
those who lie to themselves accept, but the
inescapable error which is present even in
the new truth (Wilcox, 1974, p.170,
emphasis added).
Alternative accounting thought must move
beyond the negative and destructive standpoint of
criticism (cf. Breazeale, 1999); for ‘‘We can
destroy only as creators’ (Nietzsche, 1844–1900/
M. Walters / Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004) 157–187 183
1974, 58, p. 122). ‘‘Our salvation lies not in
knowing but in creating’’ (Nietzsche, 1872/1999,
84, p. 32).’’ Our knowledge drive must remain
loyal to the metaphorical drive and must be
continually rehabilitated and revitalized by delib-
erate diversi?cation of non-habitual metaphors to
the strategic purposes of seeing with the greatest
possible number of eyes, revealing the contingent
validity in our own concepts, and creating new
accounting ‘truths’. In this, alternative accounting
writers must become a new type of philosopher-
artist, deconstructing and reconstructing the
accounting world as a serious art form, whereby
the very insights into the nature of knowing that
were previously grounds for destruction and
skepticism, provide an a?rmative force for the
very possibility of constructing new accounting
truths (Nietzsche, 1872/1999).
Epilogue
The drive toward the formation of metaphors
is the fundamental human drive, which one
cannot for a single instant dispense with in
thought, for one would thereby dispense with
man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished
and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular
and rigid new world is constructed as its prison
from its own ephemeral products, the concepts.
It seeks a new realm and another channel for
its activity, and it ?nds this in myth and in art
generally. This drive . . . continually manifests
an ardent desire to refashion the world . . .
(Nietzsche, 1873/1999, pp. 88–89, some
emphasis added).
Language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it
marks the before unapprehended relations of
things and perpetuates the apprehension,
until words, which represent them, become
through time, signs for portions or classes of
thought instead of pictures of integral
thoughts: and then, if no new poets should
arise to create afresh the associations which
have been thus disorganized, language will be
dead to all the nobler purposes of human inter-
course. (Percy Bysshe Shelley, Quoted in
Richards, 1936, p. 91, emphasis added).
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Alistair Preston, Joni
Young, and two anonymous AOS reviewers for
their most helpful insights and constructive com-
ments on earlier drafts of this essay.
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