FEM 1100 Lecture 5: Thinking about Differences and Identity

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: FEM 1100
• Professor: Mythili Rajiva

Document Summary

Need to reflect on how a racialized regime of representation actually works. Stereotyping is comprised of a set of representational practices. Stereotyping reduces people to essential characteristics that are seen to be fixed by nature 4 aspects of stereotyping: Important to distinguish between typing and stereotyping (richard dyer) Typing: any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped & widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded & change or. Typing is an absolutely necessary way of making sense of the world. Stereotyping: get hold of a few simple, vivid, easily grasped, widely recognized characteristics about a person, reduce everything about the person to those traits, exaggerate & simplify them, & fix them without change or development into eternity. Stereotyping tends to occur where there are gross inequalities of power. Jacques derrida: between binary oppositions like us/them we are not dealing with peaceful coexistence but rather with a violent hierarchy.