First approaches to cartographic silences and their importance in the construction of the Argentine State

Abstract

Positioning ourselves from a postmodern cartography perspective, we understand this discipline as a discourse and its productions as tools of internal, external and bureaucratized power that are imposed for the construction of the duty to be of the territories and territorialities. The new nature of maps is interpreted as a deconstructivist method that aspires towards a revision of meanings in maps as expressions of power. In cartographic productions there are power relations that constitute nuanced cartographic silences through semiotics; of which the State takes action to use them in the construction of its territory and the familiarization of the people with the national identity. After the publication of the map of bicontinental Argentina in 2009, incorporating Antarctica along with the Falkland Islands on the same scale as the continental surface; the Argentine State produces a system of symbols that generate national identity parallel to the international dispute over the exercise of sovereignty in the incorporated territories.