Stereotypes, I want to say, have to be thought of not just as these invidious, bad things that we could get rid of, but as images that we cannot get rid of, that we have to live with.

Writing, in its physical, graphic form, is an inseparable suturing of the visual and the verbal, the “imagetext” incarnate

I know stereotypes have a bad reputation, people say, "Oh, you shouldn't stereotype people," but I think it's important to recognize that we couldn't function in the world without stereotypes.

I see stereotypes as fundamental and inescapable and not as something that is... The kind of common view is "Oh, we shouldn't think in stereotypes," and I think the reality is we can't help but think in stereotypes.

I think its a fundamental feature of images that they move from one medium to another. And this has become hyper-evident in our time with the computer, which is a kind of master-medium also and allows us to transfer data of all kinds from one platform to another, turning sounds into sights or language into image. The computer has made something that is very old evident in a new way.

Imperialism, or the conquest and colonization of other populations, other peoples, has had as one of its side effects the growth of a discourse of objectivity. That is, when you encounter something new, something strange, something different, you have to find categories for it, you have to come to terms with new objects.

Distinction between species and specimen is very much like the distinction between images and actual pictures, or, you know, objects that have a definite material identity. The classifications, the categories, the stereotypes, and the images are on one side, and the material pictures, statues, texts, and so forth are on the other.