Between the fish and the shaman: semiotic processes in intercultural encounter

Abstract

The encounter between cultures produced by immigration can generate different types of reaction from the receiving society. Among the possibilities, this work examines two moments developed at different times. The first, more recent, refers to an indeterminacy of meanings related to translations of a relevant religious figure in Aymara culture. The second is associated with a process of normalization of the presence of an unusual dish in the West: sashimi. Identifying what such different elements have in common is one of the objectives of this work, which will discuss the strangeness and familiarity of senses that the encounter between two cultures can produce. We will resort to discursive semiotics, in its most current developments, as well as to the semiotics of culture and its notion of the semiosphere. Finally, we take this work as an initial proposal to begin to understand how interculturality is a fruitful space to observe the connections and the acceptance of meanings by cultures that are often distinct and distant.