Displacing metaphorical analysis: Reading with and against metaphors

Metaphorical analysis within a poststructuralist perspective displaces the assumed meanings of metaphors, especially if one expects those metaphors to provide stable epistemological connections. The analysis presented in this article produces alternative readings of participants’metaphors and illustrates how knowledge and truth are displaced once they are detached from positivism, intended meanings, or predetermined uses. Metaphor data from the interviews of successful, international scientists are used to show the dynamics of a poststructural analysis that rethinks the narratives of progress within Academia. The article concludes that more important than the stability of any methodological labels or academic ownership of a particular method is the way in which a specific analytic technique is used as well as how an individual researcher’s epistemology changes data and possible interpretations.