Semiotic Warfare

Semiotic warfare is an analytical term used by academics to describe the process by which subcultures and activist groups attempt to question the meaning of cultural signs and symbols. As its name suggests, semiotic warfare is founded on the linguistic principles first set forth by Ferdinand de Saussure and later amended by Roland Barthes in works such as Elements of Semiology and Mythologies. In these books and others, Barthes formulates a comprehensive theory of cultural signification that accounts for the process by which elements of popular culture produce meanings beyond the apparent. Barthes terms this process connotation and sees it as inextricably linked to culture, history, and institutions. Thus, while the apparent or denotative meaning of a cultural element—a brand name, a movie star, a technology—remains static over time, its connotative aspect is dependent on the history within which it is deployed. For example, the Converse All Star worn by Chuck Taylor in the 1920s is a very different sneaker than that worn by Joey Ramone some 50 years later. The former connotes success and athleticism, while punk rock's appropriation of this meaning turns it precisely on its head.

Although Barthes laid the groundwork that made possible the analysis of cultural signs, he did not account for the role signs play in the hegemony of institutions and economic systems. Similarly, Barthes did not foresee a situation in which an insurgent group or subculture might consciously or unconsciously use the signifiers of dominant culture in ways that question power relations and cultural norms. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe revise aspects of Barthesian semiology to account for the workings of hegemonic culture and counterhegemonic processes. Central to their model is the term articulation. An articulatory practice is one that uses elements from dominant culture in a way that changes their meaning, or what Laclau and Mouffe call their identity. Such articulation may be antagonistic if the meaning shifts in a way that elicits a response from dominant culture.

Activist groups attempt semiotic warfare through the strategic and often creative deployment of propaganda. For example, various groups have engaged the ubiquity of the stop sign to their advantage through the use of stickers such as “eating meat” or “making war” that transform the unquestioned safety imperative into a critical moral one. Similarly, groups such as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Adbusters use the semiotics of consumer culture—fur/leather clothing and barcodes, respectively—in ways that call attention to the cultural and economic contradictions of capitalism. Although such practices are important and work to raise the public's awareness, they rarely result in antagonism, which is to say semiotic warfare.

Far more successful and interesting from an analytical point of view are the more organic semiotic appropriations by various subcultures and youth movements, a partial list of which might include the skinhead's version of working-class fashion, hippy androgyny, punk's appropriation of bondage and Nazi semiotics, hip-hop's baggy pants allusion to prison culture, and the Acid House smiley face. Each of these in their way not only threatened the hegemony of dominant culture but also prompted a shift in the very meaning of language.

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