Rejecting final meaning need not mean rejecting meaning altogether.

Evidence

Let’s take Baudrillard’s argument about representation and the implosion of meaning. This seems to rest upon an assumption of the sheer facticity of things: things are just what is seen on the surface. They don’t mean or signify anything. They cannot be “read.” We are beyond reading, language, meaning. … But there is all difference in the world between the assertion that there is no one, final, absolute meaning—no ultimate signified, only the endlessly sliding chain of signification, and on the other hand, the assertion that meaning does not exist. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 724

Categorization

• DEFINE: A crisp conceptual distinction between ‘no ultimate signified’ (sliding signification, which Hall accepts) and ‘meaning does not exist’ (Baudrillard’s super-realism, which he rejects).
• XREF: connects to: Rejecting a term for its past content can block absorbing a useful instrumental value — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1611