ABSTRACT
In metaphor, the substitution is based on resemblance or analogy; in metonymy, it is based on a relation or association other than that of similarity. Two problems immediately arise that render the opposition between metaphor and metonymy at once more interesting and more problematic than at first appears. The first is that there are not two poles here but four: similarity, contiguity, semantic connection and syntactic connection. The second problem that arises in any attempt to apply the metaphor/metonymy distinction is that it is often very hard to tell the two apart. The sign of an authentic voice is not self-identity but self-difference. If the woman's voice, to be authentic, must incorporate and articulate division and self-difference, so, too, has Afro-American literature always had to assume its double-voicedness. Richard Wright, in his review of Their Eyes Were Watching God, makes it plain that for him, too, the black female experience is nonexistent.
