The colonized subject in the colonialist discourse of European travelers

Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand the meaning(s) of the colonized subject. To this end, I analyzed documents such as reports, letters, journals of European travellers and missionaries, as well as treaties of naturalists from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, containing the colonizer's discourse, using the theoretical-methodological apparatus of Pêcheux and Orlandi. The starting point was the designation of the colonized subject by the colonizing subject, which identified four discursive formations of the Other that could be qualified as barbaric, cordial, exotic or equal. Such discoursive formations figure in different discourses on extermination, religion, science, and law and are part of the same ideological formation, i.e., the colonialist, which is marked by Eurocentrism and by the effect of superiority of the European on others. This ideological formation controls the meanings of the non-European, non-white, and non-Christian subject to this day, although in a different way, hiding such effects of meaning.