No fixed symbolic relationships hold constant meaning across individual cases

Evidence

Study an object in isolation and you will only be able to bring it back to itself; consequently you can never have perfect knowledge of it. But see it in the midst of beings who are connected with each other in many different ways, and which are isolated from each other in different ways, and you will discover for this object a wider scope of relationships. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 373 (#expands, via linked claim)

So as ideology gives meaning, so the modes of operation are concerned with the way in which that same meaning is sustained and perpetuated. … Yet as the symbolic forms can be temporal, transient, protean, disposable and contextually specific to socio-economic, political, geographical and historical settings but not necessarily universal, constant or permanent, so the modes of operation function differently. … So for example as Yemelianova suggests, whilst the symbolic form ‘fundamentalist’ might have a certain meaning and understanding in the British context, so ’ Wahhabi’ as a symbolic form has much the same meaning in the russian context despite both being non-interchangeable to the opposite socio-geographical contexts within which they operate. … Whilst the symbolic form therefore is different but socio-geographically specific to each, irrespective of the specificity or context within which the symbolic form is manifested, the connotative process or mode through which it operates – the mode through which the same meaning is sustained and perpetuated – remains remarkably the same. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 842 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Objects are only knowable within their network of relations — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 373; Context-specific symbolic forms can share identical underlying operative modes — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 842; Loss of commonly held symbolic meaning generates a sense of immediacy — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 98 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Kabyle associations are contextual traces, not symbolic codes #exemplifies (0.90)
• Objects are only knowable within their network of relations #expands (0.85) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 373
• Context-specific symbolic forms can share identical underlying operative modes #expands (0.80) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 842
• Loss of commonly held symbolic meaning generates a sense of immediacy #corroborates (0.72) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 98