Hyperbole is one of the most effective ways of trying to express the
often confounding and inexpressible positions that characterize the liti-
gious discussions of impossibility and the struggle with transcendence
and immanence, the conceptual (re)articulation of subjectivity, and the
destabilization of systems of knowledge and economy. It is employed
when language or thought must transcend epistemological and ontological
boundaries in order to describe the magnitude of an extraordinary perspec-
tive or situation. It stretches language to its breaking point and responds
in abundance, in copia. Hyperbole is more than a stylistic figure of speech.
It is a “sophisticated, discursive figure of thought” ( Johnson 2010, 44), an
“inordinate movement and a violent impulsion” (Webb 1993a, 18), that can
be a generator of thought and meaning (Stanivukovic 2007), a men-
tal phenomenon (Holmqvist and Pluciennik 2008), a propelling toward
transcendence from an immanent exigency (Simpson 2009), a tool
of philosophical and religious inquiry (Ettenhuber 2007) as well as
an argumentative form (Ricoeur 1992; Schlueter 1994; Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca 2003).
