Resignifying a term forces opponents to reject what the term originally meant
Evidence
Specifically, if we must accept these resignified words, then we must also necessarily be against what they stand for. So, every exchange must begin with defining terms and trying to persuade the other side of what the terms meant originally. Obviously, this underscores the political motivation behind the panics, as noted above. The language and strategies of racecraft not only have the purpose of disseminating these ideas into the bloodstream of society to circulate throughout the system but also to facilitate the active maintenance of the racial hierarchy and the governance of racially suspect and subordinated groups. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 454
Categorization
- XREF: The resignification mechanism matches the Fields sisters’ account of racecraft as word-magic and Aziz’s account of how ‘Muslim’ was converted into a racial category in law. — connects to: Refusal can mean altering participation’s terms rather than withdrawing from it — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 255; Political discourse redefines contested terms so opposition becomes definitionally impossible; Political reclamation rearticulates a stigmatized term rather than replacing it — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 233 (+16 more)
Broader Connections
- Political discourse redefines contested terms so opposition becomes definitionally impossible
#corroborates(1.00) - Refusal can mean altering participation’s terms rather than withdrawing from it
#expands(0.95) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 255 - Political reclamation rearticulates a stigmatized term rather than replacing it
#corroborates(0.95) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 233 - Authentic refusal rejects the terms of the question itself.
#expands(0.95) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 332 - Resignifying racial terms can generate political rupture and social change.
#corroborates(0.90) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 66 - Contested concepts get defined mainly by what they negate, not what they affirm
#complicates(0.90) — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 1158 - Rejecting final meaning need not mean rejecting meaning altogether.
#complicates(0.90) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 724 - Scholarship on populism splits between resigned retention and outright ban of the word
#qualifies(0.85) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 43 - Counter-hegemony works by reattaching emptied signifiers to their original meanings.
#complicates(0.85) — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 367 - Rejecting a term for its past content can block absorbing a useful instrumental value
#expands(0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1611 - Reclaimed slurs retain traces of the struggle that resignified them
#expands(0.85) - Evaporating race shifts the offense from the harm to the utterance of the term
#complicates(0.80) - Political backlash can be understood as rejection of integrating historical truths
#complicates(0.80) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 866 - Sloppy public usage of the term widens the advocate-detractor divide
#complicates(0.75) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 674 - Giving up the right to offend forfeits the power to challenge injustice.
#complicates(0.75) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 661