How is it that a mouth or an anus can substitute for a vagina? How is it that a child theorizes that children come into this world through their mothers' anuses? And, this object in my mouth, is it a breast or a penis? One erotic concavity can substitute for another, as can the erotic convexities. Is there any explanation for this madness of substitution, that is not fantastic? The mouth, the anus, the penis, and the vagina are all symbolic organs, at once real and unreal, and overdetermined. Imagination is the source of substitution.

A metaphor is a substitution: "The original mistake in every sentence: metaphor. Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.... Mehaphor is mistake or impropriety; a faux pas, or slip of the tongue; a little madness; petite mal; a little seizure or inspiration." Love's Body. 244. To make a metaphor is to attempt an escape from conceptual confinement. The attempt is always unsuccesful.

In human experience, imagination and conceptuality are fused. The process of abstraction fails to tell the whole story. I have never experienced my fantastic self except in the most intimate of relationships with my body and never have I experienced my body in abstraction; the two of us have been together from the get-go.