Bariki, Salah-Eddine
Popular imageries and stereotypes: The case of Arab stories
- 2001.
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The interest for popular imageries of the other can be placed in the inclusive reflection on the comparison of different colonial discussions in which stereotypes are constructed and formulated. The « arab stories », which are going around in France, are an important part of our system of representation of the people living in the South or coming from that area. These stories are not simply mirroring, in a impoverished and vulgar way, the public discussion about the other. The textual comparisons between those two types of discussion, one rather covert, the other with a publicly acknowledged status, are not only related to the way of contamination, because there are also comparisons which bring oppositions and complements to the fore. Hence, the public antiracist discussion reacts less to the explicit racist discussions than to the discussions that escape from censorship, like the Arab stories. And reciprocally.