ABSTRACT:
Stereotypes (about race, religion etc.) concern the Other. They are cultural signs. But although they refer supposedly to the culture of the Other, they are, in great part, self-referential. The analysis of the stereotype has thus to deal not so much with the sign-object produced, as such, as with the conditions of its production: one Representamen, itself the product of a previous semiosis or semioses, will produce widely-differing Objects, according to the various Interpretants at work in the course of the process of semiosis. The Object or Objects thus produced will in turn produce other Representamens and Interpretants resulting in the creation of Objects which will, in fact be new, although they may be linguistically similar or identical. - This Peircean formulation of the matter, is, in the view of the present writer, not so far removed from the Rossi-Landian, at least in what concerns the effective functioning of semiosis. - This paper will take as paradigmatic the history of a few stereotypes current in what is called "the West", and which refer to the populations of that equally ill-defined region, "the East".
