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differences to one another) but combine through an equivalential one. This chain of unsatisfied demands create an unfulfilled totality, inside of which one signifier subordinates the rest and assumes representation of the rest via a hegemonic process. The signifiers "empty" versus "floating" are distinct conceptually yet in practice meld as explained by Laclau: "As we can see, the categories of ‘empty’ and ‘floating’ signifiers are structurally different. The first concerns the construction of a popular identity once the presence of a stable frontier is taken for granted; the second tries conceptually to apprehend the logic of the displacements of that frontier." In an interview in
December 2013, Laclau clarified the distinction with an example:
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the end, Solidarność became the signifier of something much broader. When this universality comes about, it cuts off the connection between the signifier and the signified. In the case of
Solidarność, in the beginning it had a signifier but then, because the appeal increased too much, the reference to a particular signified was diluted. A floating signifier is different. It can be connected to different contexts, so the function of meaning therein is fully realized. Even when it is ambiguous, it is not empty. It fluctuates between different forms of articulation in different projects.
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As such, a "floating signifier" may "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". Such a floating signifier—which is said to possess "symbolic value zero"—necessarily results to "allow symbolic
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at the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk, Poland, in 1980. At the beginning, the demands of this movement were linked to a set of precise demands of the workers of the ship industry. However, they started to be employed in the context in which many other demands in different areas were also articulated. At
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frames the empty signifier in the context of social interactions. For Laclau, the empty signifier is the hegemonic representative of a collection of various demands, constituting a chain of equivalence whose members are distinguished through a differential logic (as in elements exist only in their
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series of films is an empty signifier because it is susceptible to multiple and even contradictory interpretations, suggesting that it does not have a specific meaning itself, but functions primarily as a vehicle for absorbing meanings that viewers want to impose upon it."
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also described the "freeplay" of signifiers, arguing that they are not fixed to their signifieds but point beyond themselves to other signifiers in an "indefinite referral of signifier to signified."
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is sometimes used as a synonym due to the empty signifier's nature to "resist the constitution of any unitary meaning", enabling its ability to remain open to different meanings in different contexts.
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Daniel
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refers to money as a "perpetually floating signifier" of pure potential, noting that "its promise to represent anything in particular is never fulfilled."
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Redescriptions: Political
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City of Gold: An
Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent
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The notion of floating signifiers can be applied to concepts such as
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thought to operate despite the contradiction inherent in it".
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Laclau exemplified an empty signifier with the case of the
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Semiotics for
Beginners: Modality and Representation
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The "Floating
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may be too technical for most readers to understand
382:French Freud: Structural Studies in Psychoanalysis
407:"Race: a Floating Signifier? Stuart Hall speech"
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542:"Global Citizenship as a Floating Signifier"
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