![]() ![]() 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. 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 differences to one another) but combine through an equivalential one. In Emancipation(s), Ernesto Laclau frames the empty signifier in the context of social interactions. Such a floating signifier-which is said to possess "symbolic value zero"-necessarily results to "allow symbolic thought to operate despite the contradiction inherent in it". ![]() 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". Daniel Chandler defines the term as "a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified". ![]() Claude Lévi-Strauss originated this term, where he identifies terms like mana (magical mystical substance of which the magic is formed) "to represent an undetermined quantity of signification, in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning". ![]()
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