„The Art of Stereotyping“ –How to construct your neighbours?

Prof. Dr. Werner NellComparative LiteratureMLU Halle 2011-12-8

Stereotypes are …

… jokes … weapons … instruments … media … signs … mirrors … products of art … objects of shame … sensors of emotions and attitudes (caring – hating)

Topics of Today

1. Concepts and analytical dimensions2. A (small) historical review3. Fields of construction and reflecting:

Limitations and chances of literature, art, and criticsm

4. Some consequences for construction proper identities: The individual and „the rest“:

Purity as a threat

Research contributions

Manfred Beller, Joep Leerssen (Ed.) Imagology, 2007

Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion, 1922 Gordon W. Allport: The Nature of Prejudice,

1954 A.V. Zijderveld: On Clichés, 1979 Hans Henning Hahn (Ed.): Stereotyp,

Identität und Geschichte, 2002 (poln. 2011) Ruth Florack: Bekannte Fremde, 2007

1. Concepts

Cliché (Zijderveld) Stereotype (Lippmann) Prejudice (Allport) Stigma (Goffman) Hate speech (Butler) Image/mirage (Guyard) Imagology (Leerssen 2007)

Cliché

„in printing trade an engraved block for repeated printing“

Stereotype

„fixed pictures in our heads“ (Lippmann)

„Throughout history there has been a tendency to fixate one‘s own estimate of oneself and the others … in terms of a limited number of foreground attributes – for the others and symmetrically or asymmetrically reflected to us too:

heterostereotypes - autostereotypes

Prejudice

Any preconceived and unsupported opinion and attitude which influences our perception, description and judgement of others

Prejudices appear on the individual level as well as on a group level

Prejudices are enforced by ideological powers like religion, nationalism, regionalism, racism (inclusion by means of exclusion programs)

Stigma

The fixation of an attribute to a sign which can be used as a marker of extinction, discrimination, exclusion etc.

The „nature“ of the sign is arbitrary on the one hand, conventional – by historical tradition, ideological obsession – on the other

Hate Speech

A disourse and its performances which are used, sometimes produced, mostly communicated, to hurt or destroy the others

Racist remarks, sexist and four letter words are instruments to hurt a body and to destroy a mind, the self-concept and the self-respect of a person

Image/mirage

The picture(s) of a group, a people, another country in literary texts or other artificial media

Of course, by describing the others we describe ourselves

„the sixth difficulty in writing the truth: the national or group founded bias in looking at the others“ (Egon Schwarz, 1976)

Imagology

The literary, critical study of media transportated images

2. Historical Review

A people‘s panel from Styria (Austria)

(Eine steierische Völkertafel, 1730)

Constructing and Deconstructing images/stereotypes by literary and other cultural patterns Simple constructions (I)

Diverging constructions (II) Paradox constructions Complementary constructions Competing constructions Pluralistic constructions Contested constructions

Reflecting/reflexive Constructions (III)

Contradictory constructions Ambivalent constructions Deconstructing constructions Ironical constructions (Geoffrey Hartman,

1997) Self-reflecting and self-denying

constructions Nonsense and no-nonsense constructions

4. Some consequences for constructing and handling with „proper“ identities: purity as a threat The individual and „ the rest“: Personal Cultural Regional National Global

„national history means getting one‘s history wrong“ (Ernest Gellner)

Prezentacja powstała w ramach projektu dofinansowanego przez

Fundację Współpracy Polsko-Niemieckiej

Thank you very much!