Why Strategic Ambiguity Is So Ambiguous

Abstract

Ambiguity sits at the heart of politics whether we like it or not. In a sense, it goes further still. Ambiguity finds itself innate in human nature. We appear to seek clarity and specificity in trying to understand what we see. Yet we are equally happy to blur the edges of that understanding as we yearn for something greater than is offered us. You might call this aspect wishful thinking. Perhaps it is even woven into the very fabric of belief systems and religions too. In politics the promise of the political manifesto in its appeal to the largest audience must inevitably intimate and tease beyond the point where precision might otherwise undermine the politician’s appeal. Such cognitive dissonance—holding two conflicting ideas in our minds simultaneously—only becomes an actual dilemma if we choose to see the world divided into dichotomous readings or black-and-white opposites rather than shades of grey. Ambiguity is a rich concept. It invites curiosity and engagement where ambivalence meets only with a shrug of the shoulders. It resonates in conversation with uncertainty, metaphor, simile, allegory, perspective, and other ways of seeing that undermine certitude. Simile suggests only likeness, similarity; metaphor offers a one-for-one substitution, a surprising way of translating something complex into an unexpected way of presenting a new simplicity. Yet over time the surprise wears off and yesterday’s live metaphors become tomorrow’s dead metaphors. Some might go further to say that all language inherently lacks certainty of meaning, however clear the intent.