Abstract

This article questions the stereotypical representation of the indigenous Algerian culture in the travelogue of the French writer and painter Eugène Fromentin entitled Un été dans le Sahara (1857). It studies how the preconceived images, cultural and ethnic stereotypes of Europeans on colonized indigenous subjects shape the 19^th century intercultural perceptions. It examines the relationship between the French writers’ stereotypical representations of the non-Europeans and the process of colonization, and argues that stereotypes are hidden instruments of the colonial power and a source of alienation for the natives. This article also claims that they constitute “myths” and form a doxic discourse that hinders individual thought and prevents access to the ‘episteme’, that is, true knowledge. We will proceed by an analysis of discourse in Fromentin’s Un été dans le Sahara to demonstrate the derogatory and pejorative characteristics of stereotypes and their ideological dimension. We rely on Roland Barthes' ideological critique, which is an approach to discourse analysis that questions the meaning of shared words and images and considers them as signs expressing connotative meanings. In other words, our objective is to show how imperial ideology underpins Fromentin's text and relies on the authority of shared opinions and received ideas to circulate its colonial discourse. Barthes explores doxa as language and presents it as a social discourse, which implies that the beliefs and images circulating in a given community, the mental representations shared by the group, cannot be understood outside of their verbal formulations. Thus, ideology is inscribed at the level of language, and the text reproduces the dominant ideology and insidiously consolidates power.