Memetic drift, floating signifiers, and the jetsam of politics

Salvatore Attardo

doi:10.5817/BSE2024-1-2

Memetic drift, floating signifiers, and the jetsam of politics

Vol.50,No.1(2024)

Salvatore Attardo

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2024-1-2

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.81073

PDF

Abstract

Memes occupy a central position in the culture of the internet, which is at the center of contemporary culture. Therefore it is crucial to understand how memes can be used for political purposes. A basic issue is that, in the process of production of the variants of a meme, the contents of the meme change. I refer to these changes as memetic drift. In this paper, I show that memetic drift tends to go from specific to generic meanings, but beyond that it is random and unpredictable. This has profound implications for the use of memes for political discourse as the producers of the memes cannot control how the memes will be adapted, remixed, and changed. This process is investigated in some detail in a case study of the Dark Brandon meme, a pro-Biden meme that originates in anti-Biden memes. This shows that memes are floating signifiers, i.e., signs that do not connect fixed signifiers and signifieds (meanings). Because of the random nature of the drift of these floating signifiers I propose the metaphor of memes as "jetsam," cultural debris that belong to no one in particular, but can be seized by any community for their purposes.

Keywords:
meme; memetic drift; floating signifiers; political memes; Dark Brandon

Pages:
13–31

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