The Metaphorical Logic of (Political) Rape: The New Wor(l)d Order

• Published in: Metaphor and symbolic activity Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 115 - 137
• Main Author: Rohrer, Tim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc 01.06.1995
• ISSN: 0885-7253
• DOI: 10.1207/s15327868ms1002_3

The 1991 Persian Gulf War dramatically punctuated the importance of metaphor in everyday life and reasoning about politics. Did the Gulf situation more closely resemble Vietnam or World War II? One's choice of metaphor yielded different practical inferences about what the United States and the world community ought to do in response to the Iraqi invasion. Using the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States series, I investigate the metaphors used by former President George Bush to conceptualize the political situation in the Persian Gulf during the prewar period of August 1990 through January 1991. I argue that the analogical reasoning behind the "new world order" rests on a complex system of metaphors and on Bush's assertion that the expression the rape of Kuwait is literal (nonmetaphorical) language. The practical outcome of accepting Bush's metaphors and his metaphorically projected inferences was the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf.