Hollie Hagymasi For sake of clarity, no Fascist group has ever added the fist to their symbolic coterie. Au contraire. The “clenched fist” has been claimed by countless movements, but predominantly left-wing movements. Occasionally, it’s even been employed in rebellious acts against fascism. That’s not the point. There’s a dangerous stigma attached to the fist (it starts with an “s” and ends in “ocialism”), especially since it figured auspiciously in Russia’s Bolshevik or October Revolution (1917). So the fist, in one facet, is associated with the brutally authoritative tendencies of Lenin and Stalin…and Soviet legacies in turn skewed our understanding of Marx. So it goes. In Literary Criticism, we come to understand exhaustively how symbols, words, and ideologies interact in this way – always re-interpreted, misinterpreted, and shaped over time. It is to the advantage of one ideology that another is mis-interpreted or “dirtied”, carrying with it a particular set of meanings (however “true” or “untrue”) that undermine its credibility among the public. Ideology reaches out to grasp and claim certain popular images, symbols, and words as a means to broaden its support base. Watch how, in the upcoming presidential election debates, candidates from their respective parties will dispute and lay claim to “democracy” or to “freedom”. But do we look at the symbol of a fist, raised with whitened knuckles clenched, and think of “socialism”? I don’t think so. Not anymore. To understand the history of the clenched fist as a powerful symbol invoked across dozens of social movements is to witness the function of metaphor and of language. We developed the use of metaphor as a way to characterize and describe our experiences. Metaphor allows us to categorize “things” in our world, ascribe qualities or value to them, and simultaneously draw similarities between things while making important distinctions. This was Ferdinand de Saussere’s crucial insight in determining how languages work – we understand the meaning of words in relation to other words, a system of differences. Distinction becomes fundamental – to say something is one thing is to also infer what it is not. The clenched fist is not compliance. It isn’t passive, it does not seek the status quo, it is not complacency. But in the technical sense, the clenched fist isn’t a metaphor in the sense that we would write, “my fist is resistance.” But like metaphors, the “clenched fist” is representational and has had the effect of integrating “meanings” into itself. And when the symbol is revived and recycled, as it has been in our time, it becomes (yet again) bloated with new and old meaning. Positive and negative associations abound. When we see the raised fist, as we did in Otpor, the April 6 Movement, other Arab Spring movements, and yes even briefly in the Occupy Movement, certainly a set of meanings (words) immediately comes to mind. Among these are: “unity”, “resistance”, “defiance”, “solidarity”, ”revolution”, and perhaps even “democracy”. How ironic! That our transcendental clenched fist was at once a symbol popularly depicted in ancient Assyria to resist violence, but also claimed by groups violently resisting oppression, by white and black nationalists, and by other groups that have extraordinarily conflicting notions of “freedom” and very different visions for what society and government should look like (e.g. anarchists and socialists). And yet, in the midst of these contradictions that surround one symbol, we nevertheless have a common understanding of what it means and what is intended. Even when its meaning is (especially this past year) shifting and expanding, a global understanding is forged.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 03:14:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015