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In semiotics and discourse analysis, floating signifiers (also referred to as empty signifiers, [1] although these terms have been made distinct [2]) are signifiers without a referent. The term open signifier is sometimes used as a synonym due to the empty signifier's nature to "resist the constitution of any unitary meaning", enabling its ...
There is a 'barrier' of repression between Signifiers (the unconscious mind: 'discourse of the Other') and the signified […] a 'chain' of signifiers is analogous to the 'rings of a necklace that is a ring in another necklace made of rings' […] 'The signifier is that which represents a subject (fantasy-construct) for another signifier'. [9 ...
An 'empty' or 'floating signifier' is variously defined as a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified. Such signifiers mean different things to different people: they may stand for many or even any signifieds; they may mean whatever their interpreters want them to mean. [27]
Building on his earlier work, Laclau argued that the basis of populism lies in the creation of "empty signifiers": words and ideas that express a universal idea of justice, and symbolically structure the political environment. Against those who see populism as a threat to democracy, Laclau argued that it is an essential component of it.
Evidence that this is the correct view comes from the fact that each language can encode signifiers with whichever signified they wish to communicate. Hence, for example, the letters comprising "air" signify what humans breathe in English, and what fish breathe in Malay, i.e. water.
The uncanny, the plane of empty signifiers, is found in relations between intersections of the interior-self and exterior-Other, a "return of the repressed" as an eternal return of the path of the objet petit a that disturbs familiarity and further deterritorializes the subject. [232] [233] [234]
The term is a combination of two Japanese words: "kara" (short for "karappo," meaning empty) and "oke" (short for "okestora," a transliteration of "orchestra").
By the virtue of trace, signifiers always simultaneously differ and defer from the illusive signified. This is something Derrida calls "différance".According to Derrida, "Différance is the non-full, non-simple "origin"; it is the structured and differing origin of differences". [10]