The ‘Jew’ as the ‘Floating Signifier’ |
I am not the first person to point out that a mechanism of antisemitism/antizionism is scapegoating. Soviet writer and journalist Vasily Grossman said, “tell me what you accuse the Jews of and I will tell you what you are guilty of” (1). But how exactly is this behavior repeated century after century for 2,000 years? The simple answer is that the projections morph and mutate every century to the ills of any given society in their respective time and place. I ask again, how?
Perhaps a philosophical/linguistic approach can provide some deeper insight. Julia Kristeva has heavily influenced my work, and she is a bit dense and complicated (2). Overall, Kristeva’s theories regarding her analysis of art and literature can best be understood when a few different concepts are paired and layered, working in tandem with each other.
Ferdinand De Saussure was the linguist and philosopher who founded the study of semiotics. Saussure is most well-known for a compilation of notes titled, Course in General Linguistics (3). In these notes, Saussure describes a system of study that focuses on the structure of meaning in language. What Saussure terms as signs are a grouping of sounds, which we learn to distinguish as words, that are arbitrarily assigned to an image and concept. The........