In order to address some of the things which might be plaguing us, I would like to focus my contribution to the workshop around misunderstandings – more explicitly, the sort of communication misunderstandings caused by poorly employed metaphors, similes and analogies, by relying instead on malaphors and mixed metaphors (ex., when the combination of two expressions creates a new expression subverting the initial intended meaning). I propose to test a new type of story writing, meant for public reading, in which one rejects expressions, metaphors and analogies by wrongly employing them, deconstructing familiar figures of speech, and transforming such errors into a new layer of meaning within the story. This way of writing, presented as «against» metaphor and analogy, is a «double-edged» story-telling apparatus in the sense that for it to be against metaphor, it desperately depends on the figures of speech it claims to be against. The story is about a subject which heavily relies on figures of speech – the «Portuguese Discoveries» epic, an Imperialist narrative reinforced in school programs, considered to be an integral part of national identity and Portuguese history.
Biography
Mariana Tilly (*Lisbon) is an artist and researcher based in Basel. She holds a Bachelor in Painting by the Fine-Arts University of Lisbon, a Master of Arts by Institut Kunst, and is currently doing a PhD at the same Institute. She is a Doc.CH (SNSF) grantee since 2023.