Commonplace Knowledge and Innovation

THERE IS NOTHING MORE DIFFICULT to eradicate than obvious. Whenever a deep-rooted notion refers to what we consider an Eternal Truth or a natural fact, its cultural relativity is forgotten. Its emergence at a given period, its dependence on a specific intellectual and ideological background and its possible dismissal in future are simply ignored. Such is case with conception of novelty expressed by notion of stereotype, and with modernity of this very notion. We generally feel that stereotyping, insofar as it opposes fruitless repetition to creative originality, has been recognized and condemned by countless generations. Of course, term did not exist in past, but one should not pay too much attention to a mere question of vocabulary. Moreover, stereotypes as frozen patterns, simplified schemas shared by a whole community, seem to be a universal feature of social life. Didn't ancient Greeks already have a stereotyped vision of Barbarians, and 17th-century France a stereotyped image of Turks? Even in societies without writing, anthropologists have been able to single out group stereotypes.* However, there is a difference between our ancestors' collective images of foreign groups, and their ability to think in terms of stereotypes. Societies of past did not see in their common beliefs misleading preconceptions or collective opinions derived from habit. Similarly, repetition of well-known themes and persistence of stable categories like the Miser or the Collector were not interpreted as blind adherence to ddj4-dit, or as lack of originality. The emergence of noun stereotype in its figurative sense at turn of century coincides with a new awareness of alienating power of prevalent cultural models. That inherited views and group categorization should be regarded as misleading a priori, that collective images should be considered an obstacle to intellectual and artistic innovation, was by no means obvious to past centuries. It is a con

Aesthetics · Creativity · Epistemology · Ideology · Linguistics · Modernity · Nothing · Originality · Political science · Politics · Repetition (rhetorical device) · Sociology · Stereotype (UML) · Globalization and Cultural Identity · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life · University-Industry-Government Innovation Models

• Handbook of Social Psychology

  Daniel Todd Gilbert, Gardner Lindzey et al.•Handbook of Social Psychology•2012

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• Theory and problems of social psychology.

  David Krech, Richard S Crutchfield•1948

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• A Comparison of Racial Stereotypes of 1935 and 1942

  Max Meenes•The Journal of Social Psychology•1943

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• Racial stereotypes of one hundred college students

  Daniel Katz, K W Braly et al.•Journal of Abnormal & Social…•1933

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• La notion de stéréotype dans la réflexion contemporaine

  Ruth Amossy•Littérature•1989

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• Autobiographies of Movie Stars

  Ruth Amossy•Poetics Today•1986

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