September 16, 2006: Chomsky and meaning
Chomsky believes that ideological narratives such as "Support our troops!" are meaningless. Which begs the question of how they can be effective.
"Narratives", in the way TT uses the word, are effective specifically because they have so many different meanings. They're complex, overdetermined, and far more interesting than Chomsky seems to believe.
What does "Support our troops!" mean to the driver of that pickup truck in front of you on the freeway? The guy with ladders and paint cans in the bed, and paint under his fingernails?
Chomsky says it means "nothing" -- it's as vacuous as, say, "Support the people of Iowa!" One suspects he thinks this because he's never actually asked anybody with a "Support our troops!" sticker on their truck.
I have, and among the meanings I discovered were many which are very emphatically worth noting. For instance, some people emphasize that word "our" literally. They have family members in uniform and when they ask you to "Support our troops!", they literally mean don't let their loved ones down. They're really not that focused on the policy which put their family members in danger, and when you talk to them about it, they're perfectly clear re the difference between the troops and the policy. In many cases their views on the policy are ambivalent: there's a spontaneous democratic desire to support elected leaders, especially those who promise to keep us all safe; yet there's deep concern that their loved ones should only ever be put in danger for very, very good reasons.
This ambivalence is what I want to stress here. The overdetermined complexity of ideologies and ideological narratives.
The point is that the social meanings of overdetermined narratives are open to struggle. On individual and societal scales they can go in any number of ways. Where will they go? That depends in large measure on who wins the struggle over their meaning. Why do so many common ideological narratives tip to the Right nowadays? Because for forty years the Right's been doing all the struggling.
