Abstract

SANCHEZ, Fernando M.. The visual construction of the nation and its others. Images and otherness in the Argentine Patagonia. Mem. Soc. [online]. 2017, vol.21, n.43, pp.86-103. ISSN 0122-5197.  https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.mys21-43.cvno.

In the context of the constitution of the Argentine State at the end of the 19th century, the military campaigns of border extension were accompanied by an abundant cartographic elaboration of the new spaces and an ethnographic practice of appropriation of the life of the native populations. This resulted in the formation of collections of photographs, skulls, and skeletons, as well as in the exhibition of groups of living natives in museums. This work approaches the symbolic and effective production processes of the nation and its other internal ones. Based on the analysis of documentary photographic records of the so-called Conquest of the Desert, and of a series of photographs produced by the Mapuche organizations themselves during the last decades in times of cultural reaffirmation, we make an attempt to account for the changes in visual representation policies, as well as in how it is interweaved in broader political-cultural disputes.

Keywords : otherness; visual construction; imaginary; indigenous peoples; Nation state; desert.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )