The role of visual metonymy in leadership symbolism: Mapping its dynamics through the Sphinx

Abstract

Despite the long-standing relevance of symbols in culture studies on leadership, research has rarely examined significations of leadership through metonymy, an important trope that pervades symbolism but is often overlooked. This paper offers a typology of visual metonymy that outlines forms pertinent to leadership. The study draws on the Sphinx in cultural history to map out various metonymies and chart their dynamics. It then traces these metonymies in historical and recent political cartoons on leadership in contexts of colonization, nation building, and revolution. The work also delineates patterns in composite metonymy and its combination with metaphor. Metonymy has paradoxical effects on the discursive construction of leadership, both maintaining and changing extant values and views. So visual metonymy facilitates iconoclasm, the destruction of images or statues, based on shifts in value judgments of leadership and its symbols. These findings compel us to think differently about symbolism and leadership. They show how a symbol's meaning and value are positional and provisional, temporarily located within multiple relationships and realities. Similarly, leadership is wrought through positionality and provisionality, constantly reshaped by various contextual positions and contingent relationships that render it inherently fluid and contested. The paper further contributes to theorization on leadership by offering new grounds for its visual analysis and a fresh perspective through which to explore its embodiment. Altogether, the work instigates us to rethink extant adages on "leaders using symbols" and "leaders as symbols." It calls for research on leadership that supplements the interest in symbols with an emphasis on symbolization.

Approaching intersectionality through metonymy: Coloniality and recursion at work

“…Lastly, the paper offers insight to the literature on metonymy and organization (e.g., Cornelissen, 2008;Riad, 2019;Riad & Vaara, 2011;Schoeneborn et al, 2016) by outlining its pertinence to intersectionality and coloniality and by extending metonymies of difference implicated in work, race, and gender in organization studies. The turn to post-structural analysis places the emphasis on power and how one can intervene in its dynamics whereby metonymy can be deployed in reproducing and resisting discursive effects.…”

“…Interest here is in the discursive effects of the substitution that it facilitates. For example, part-for-whole and one-for-all metonymy can lead to homogenization and stereotyping, while the rendering of intangible into tangible form through materialization can lead to reification (Riad, 2019).…”

“…Since the same form of metonymy can be implicated in competing social realities, it is a valuable discursive resource in contexts of social controversy (Moore, 2003). Due to its undecidability (Derrida, 1981), a metonymically grounded sign has the "capacity for contradictory signification" and "carries with it the potential for irony" (Riad, 2019). So, metonymy enables the play on meaning; for example, by facilitating ironic subversion of stereotypes (Riad & Vaara, 2011).…”

“…Indeed, the sugar sphinx retains a ruler's headpiece (artifact for role or status, e.g., crown for monarchy); however, it simultaneously facilitates ironic subversion of the power dynamics underpinning its social standing. Through "metonymic morphing" (Riad, 2019), a mammy's kerchief is used in the traditional place of a pharaoh's crest, crowning the assertive posture of the Sugar Baby (Figure 3): "while the sphinx may be a mammy, she behaves as a queen" (Musser, 2016).…”

“…The latter encompasses “the symbolic, invisible and indelible traces of the colonial experience” (Giraldo, 2016, p. 161). We approach intersectionality through metonymy, a trope that replaces a sign or word with something else associated with it (e.g., Cornelissen, 2008; Lakoff,1987; Riad, 2019). We argue that a close examination of metonymy's dynamics offers meaningful analytical and conceptual possibilities through which to examine the nexus of intersectionality and coloniality in work and organization.…”