Designing Nationality: The production of image and identity by the Argentinean State
Guerrini, Sebastian
Synopsis "Designing Nationality: The production of image and identity by the Argentinean State"
This research shows how images created and spread by the Argentine State from 1810 to 2008 have contributed to the definition of national identity. Besides, it explains how this definition is currently running out in the political scenery and circumstances of the country.As a consequence, issues such as Peron, Evita, the militaries and democracy in Argentina have a clear "why" explanation.This work considers that the Ideological State Apparatus creates dominant hegemonic ideologies as well as fixing certain sentiments in a given nation, producing thus its nationality. For that reason, the state uses the apparatus of cultural fictions which spreads designed symbolic fictions and images. This happens due to the social importance of images and the social importance of the act of seeing, representing, interpreting, imagining and desiring as the sources that give power to images. But in order to do so, the state has to embody certain common content and it has to have the power to institutionalize that content. In addition, it needs a support, channels to spread nationality discourses through material culture such as public architecture, monuments, statues, the rosette, uniforms, banknotes, the flag, the coat of arms and mass media. In this case, the focus of the analysis has been the flag, the coat of arms and the banknotes.In Argentina, the State Apparatuses expressed by their images and objects, different national sentiments. The organizational dimension and the sentiments of sharing are the most common sentiments. Moreover, the proprietary and religious sentiments are more attached to the coat of arms, while the sentiment of organization is more related to the flag.As a general conclusion, it is possible to find four identities created by the Argentine state which are the European identity, the Republican identity, the Nationalist identity and the worker's identity. Furthermore, those identities projected four models of exclusive identities, something that explains the inability of the local political class to build an inclusive and sustainable model of nation.This 296 page work is based on the Ph.D. Thesis on Communication and Image Studied, issued at the Kent University at Canterbury (U.K.). It includes comparative tables and a deep investigation of all form of representation of the state. With 479 comparative pictures from two hundreds years of history of the nation, all strategies projected by the different states are visible. In addition, a code will give access to the Annex, in which a complementary 500 photos and detailed interviews, will contribute to verify the submitted hypothesis.
