on meaning

There are several ways in which we create meaning. For instance, we do so by making distinctions. As Nicole Kidman's character tells Sean Penn's in The Interpreter, "if 'dead' and 'gone' meant the same thing I would be out of a job." The job of a political theorist is also to create (or identify) meanings, to accurately represent the complexity of the human world. For those who don't care for fine layers of meaning, the job of a theorist might often seem to be mere hair-splitting. There's no doubt that danger is always lurking round the corner for a theorist. But I'm excited by the challenge of walking the fine line between producing reams and reams of linguistic masturbation, and generating truly meaningful insights.