Alternative accounting thought and the prison-house of metaphor

This essay draws on Friedrich Nietzsche's profound insights into the problem of knowledge and the nature of truth to reflect on epistemic activity within alternative accounting thought. An essential ingredient in Nietzsche's analysis of the conundrum of knowledge and truth is his profound assertion that knowing always involves a 'transfer' from one epistemic sphere to another different one, that distinctive kind of creative transference of meaning that we attribute to metaphor. Through reference to Nietzsche's writings, this essay explores the epistemic implications of 'knowledge as metaphorical' and the habitual tendency of metaphor, through exclusivity, fixation, effacement and 'forgetfulness', to 'harden' into 'propers' or 'truths'-particularly of the sort we have come to associate with mainstream dogmatism. It then considers how alternative accounting thought has offered liberation from such metaphorical dogmatism through the deliberate assertion of alternative metaphorical re-presentations. Ironically however, through its very assertion, formation, and attempts to validate these non-stereotypical metaphors, alternative accounting thought itself tends toward the same sort of epistemic fixation and effacement it seeks to subvert. The question becomes one of whether such a Nietzschean reflection on alternative accounting epistemics leads us inevitably to nihilism and epistemological despair or rather, provides us with an affirmative foundation for the very possibility of constructing new accounting 'truths'. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.