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Conflicting Narratives about the Argentinean ‘Conquest of the Desert’: Social Representations, Cognitive Polyphasia, and Nothingness

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Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education

Abstract

To understand how individuals acquire knowledge about their group’s past, this chapter discusses contributions by Social Representations Theory. The authors argue that appropriating Social Representations about history constitutes common sense history learning and that remembering follows a particular group’s perspective to sustain a positive identity. They analyze how power conflicts between social groups intervene in configuring versions of the past that can legitimize or question positions of the social group in the present. The remembering of the controversial Argentine ‘Conquest of the Desert’ illustrates this. The coexistence of and the struggle between different representations of a same historical process is argued to constitute ‘cognitive polyphasia,’ but given social asymmetries some might prevail while other possible representations become ‘nothingness.’ Possibilities to educationally intervene and raise awareness about hegemonic narratives of the past are discussed.

This work has been supported by funding from the research projects PICT-2012-1594 (FONCyT-Argentina), PICT-2014-1003 (FONCyT-Argentina), and UBACYT (2014–2017) 20020130100256BA (University of Buenos Aires).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Council of Scientific and Technical Research - Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Alicia Barreiro & Floor van Alphen

  2. National Council of Scientific and Technical Research - Universidad de Buenos Aires y UNIPE, Buenso Aires, Argentina

    José Antonio Castorina

Authors
  1. Alicia Barreiro
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  2. José Antonio Castorina
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  3. Floor van Alphen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Campus de Cantoblanco, Autónoma University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Mario Carretero

  2. Ruhr Universitat Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Stefan Berger

  3. Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Maria Grever

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Barreiro, A., Castorina, J.A., van Alphen, F. (2017). Conflicting Narratives about the Argentinean ‘Conquest of the Desert’: Social Representations, Cognitive Polyphasia, and Nothingness. In: Carretero, M., Berger, S., Grever, M. (eds) Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52908-4_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52908-4_20

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