ABSTRACT
Rationality-or, at least, most of what we often try, overambitiously, to subsume under that generalization-is a product of the sign-making that supports it. That is what makes it possible for societies in which different modes of sign predominate to have different concepts of rationality. These are the differences which have long puzzled modern anthropologists. In fact, it would be altogether less misleading to abandon the singular rationality in favour of the plural rationalities. What stands in the way of doing this is the prejudice prevalent in literate societies that only literate forms of rationality are ‘really’ rational.
