Contested signs retain force while settled ones decay into allegory
Evidence
After all, “a sign which has been withdrawn from the pressures of the social struggle inevitably loses force, degenerating into allegory and becoming the object … of [mere] philological comprehension” (Volosinov and Bakhtin 1973). For good or ill, we are inevitably implicated in its practices, which characterize and define “late-modern societies.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 310
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- XREF: The Volosinov/Bakhtin point that a sign withdrawn from social struggle loses force is the same theory of language Hall draws on elsewhere (encoding/decoding), relevant to how Islamophobia discourse keeps contested terms alive.