Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

graph 2.6
saussure, signs, and semiotics 49
An essentialist reading insists that nature stamps meaning onto skin
color. Darker or lighter skin means something, and it is the job of human
observers to discover that objective reality. Once we discover that meaning,
we should apply it to our social world. A semiotic approach contends that
skin color contains no objective meaning but takes on meaning only within
the context of the discursive lens used to view it (see Graph 2.7). We have
removed the discourse box between nature and skin in Graph 2.7 for the
same reason that we removed it from the interval between nature and the
world in Graph 2.5.
In American history, for example, we have seen this lens alter meaning,
as darker skin was used to justify enslavement, to prove three-fi fths human
status, to validate the notion of separate but equal, and in some regions, to
prove superiority. Across cultures and time periods, the meaning of darker
skin has changed from the scathing to the complimentary, from the inferior,
strange, evil, or primitive to the pure, innocent, simple, or noble, and so
forth. Essentialists are necessarily disturbed by these seemingly vast discrepancies,
but ultimately they see them as evidence of an ongoing process
of refi nement. They believe that, with the proper scientifi c tools, the more
accurate interpretations (i.e., those that accord more closely with objective
truth) will trump inferior interpretations. The challenge for essentialists is
to fi gure out which of these are indeed accurate.
In contrast, semioticians see this variation as evidence of the arbitrary
nature of signs. They stress the importance of studying history to witness
this process of change so we can understand that discourses come and go and
that what remains when they disappear is only the skeleton of construct.
We could insert any identity category into the rectangles labeled skin in
Graphs 2.6 and 2.7 to construct models of essentialisms. For instance, does
their possession of female sex organs and hormones mean that women are
intrinsically more volatile than men? Are poor people naturally lazy? Since
the United States is the most powerful nation in the world, might it have
superior physical traits compared with people in all the other countries?
Semiotics allows us to see that the associations between signifi ers and signifi
eds are discursively, not inherently, determined. When put into practice,