Floating Signifiers And The Construction Of Hegemonies
In recent months, following the emergence of Can it has been spoken on numerous occasions about the “floating signifiers ” to explain the ideological triumph that has shaken the Spanish political landscape. What are floating signifiers? What theory do they refer us to?
The theory of floating signifiers and equivalences comes from the works of Jacques Lacan and Ernesto Laclau and is part of the tradition of psychoanalysis. The premise from which it starts is that the ideological space is made of unlinked, unmoored elements, whose identity is open, overdetermined by their articulation in a chain with other elements, that is, their “literal” meaning depends on its metaphorical plus significance.
At this point it is It is very important to remember that for Lacan there is always a primacy of the signifier over the signified (on language and psychoanalysis you can consult the article I wrote for Psychology and Mind a few weeks ago by clicking here).
Those elements that are unbound, that “float” in the signifying chain, can be such things as “corruption”, “rich”, “big businessmen”, “people”. The ideological struggle then resides in what Lacan calls ““Capiton points” (nodal points) that will be able to totalize and include all those “free”, “floating” elements in a single series of equivalences. In this way, each of these floating signifiers will be part of a series of equivalences. Through the metaphorical plus, they will connect with all the other elements of a signifying chain, thus determining their identity. For example, for a communist, fighting corruption is fighting against the capitalist order.
But as we are reminded Slavoj Zizek in The Sublime Object of Ideology: “The chaining is possible only on the condition that a certain signifier, the Lacanian One, “quilts” the entire field, and, by encompassing it, effects its identity.” The crucial point to understand both the success of Podemos and that of any hegemonic ideology is precisely this: knowing how to determine which is the Lacanian one that is capable of padding the rest of the floating signifiers.
Floating signifiers: practical examples
It is common, when debating with an orthodox communist, to end up encountering walls that prevent the discussion from moving forward. These walls are the materialization of the ideological nodal point of communism, which is usually the capitalist order In this way, the war will be the sole result of imperialist expansion of particular capitalist interests. The equivalence here is as follows: fighting for peace is fighting against the capitalist order. Another classic is that of patriarchy and machismo: capitalism is a masculinized system, made by and for men, fighting against machismo is fighting against capitalism. If we adjust our sights well, we will see that the pattern is reproduced eternally because the nodal point that cushions communist theory and gives it identity is the capitalist order. All free elements, all floating signifiers, can be reduced to the explanation of the contemporary capitalist order and the fight against it will give us the answers and solutions. Herein lies the success of a hegemonic ideology.
But, obviously, ideology is everywhere. For a neoliberal, for example, floating signifiers such as “freedom,” “property,” “individual,” are always padded under the nodal point of private property as they understand it. In this way, the concept of “freedom” will be inscribed in the plus metaphorical chain of meaning of private property Examples: “there is only freedom in private space, there is only freedom where there is private property or its reverse: there is no freedom in public space ”. One of the greatest successes of neoliberal ideology is, for example, convincing us that there are no ideologies. A neoliberal will most likely tell us that we are small marginalist calculating machines that are guided by selfish and individual interests and that maximize their utility. The curious thing about this phenomenon is that We are never only utilitarians, but we must appear to be utilitarians In this way, I will make myself a planning of the day, a well-marked schedule or I will organize the space in my house in order to get the most out of everything. That is, I am at a meta-utilitarian level in which I must not be utilitarian, but rather impose a utilitarian vision of my life and tell myself: “how productive and practical I am by ordering this in such and such a way.”
Ideology is not a veil that prevents us from seeing behind things, ideology is the very support of our daily realities And this goes hand in hand with the fact that an ideology triumphs when even the facts that at first glance contradict it begin to function as arguments in its favor. If I am a neoliberal who has defended to the death austerity as the best way to confront the economic crisis and, currently, given the catastrophic consequences that it has entailed both at the macro-economic level and at the level of people’s living standards, I continue insisting that the problem is public spending is when ideology has triumphed.
We very often find ourselves saying that “the deficit has not been adjusted sufficiently” or “the resistance of the Welfare State is still too important to be able to normally apply the wonderful adjustment program that will solve everything.” This is the materialization of the success of a certain ideology. Everything remains under suspicion and every element that contradicts my first premise is positively picked up to reinforce it
Podemos is the rearticulation and construction of a new nodal point to quilt floating signifiers that could have been quilted under a different nodal point. In most European countries, elements such as “corruption”, “loss of national sovereignty”, “unemployment”, “poverty” have been collected and padded under the nodal point of the national struggle against globalization as well as under the point of the liberal-bourgeois decadence of contemporary capitalism. That is to say, the chain has been carried out under neo-fascism (the National Front is a terrible example of this)
Podemos has padded these unmoored elements under the chain of “democracy” and “people against caste.” And it has worked extremely well because it has generated a new hegemony.
Don’t miss the interview to the author of this article: Alejandro Pérez Polo
