However, visual messages are currently affected by three cultural changes and therefore they have to meet new challenges and demands, especially those messages connected to identities, like brands.

The first of these changes is related with the saturation of images that new media are producing, receiving spectators an overloading of visual information. The second one is akin to the lack of personal contact with the object, cases in where clients have no tactile or material relationship with the product, because it is seen on a screen first.

The last one is the competition between brand and movement: brands are now competing with messages in motion: videos and animation that are invading all life spaces, and we all know that attention is catches by movement.

One consequence of that is the alteration of the traditional duties of brands and advertising, as a corollary of the transformation that is undergoing on traditional advertising.

About that, and even though there were many exceptions, we can remember that most entities were represented by neutral and inexpressive signs. Those brands had the main mission of naming the sender, instead of telling something proper about the essence of the entity. In this scheme, advertising was then the responsible of defining its identities, dropping attributes, emotions and feelings to this empty container that those brands were. Let think about what would have been of the Marlboro’s brand without cowboys nor car-racers.

But advertising changed: publicity is fighting now in an alternative scenario. It is working on broadcasting messages into segmented media, producing ephemeral, viral and dynamic images, rather of dominating the mass audience agenda. Advertising is now playing in confined spaces, obsessed by the pursuit of the short term profitability. In these circumstances, just perfumes and luxury car’s campaigns seem to be safe.

One results of this phenomenon is that today’s brands have to occupy part of the former spaces of advertising. That is because brands have nowadays to be the guardians of the differential values of companies and organizations, and they have to do it explicitly. For that reason, visual brands have to narrate stories, dramatises features and portraying the DNA of such entities. Therefore, and despite its limitations, visual brands have to inform, to explain and to seduce. Thus, this new responsibility affects the structure of visual identities because they have also to persuade and talk as the leading figure to the big audience. Not only being a seal of guarantee of the company, but also a protagonist of its meaning. In addition, and in many situations, the visual identity has to be able to talk and to be decoded by people from different cultures, by people who speak different languages, and doing so by telling silent stories and ideas. That is, by explaining their arguments beyond spoken languages, just by using images. In other words, brands must now revolve around iconic forms and colours to express characters, circumstances, atmospheres, locations and situations onto the story of the entity. As a balance, brands now have to be clever ideograms that trigger in its audience the accurate representation of the company or organization strategy.

On the other hand, and about the dispute for the beholder’s attention, animations and videos are forcing visual identities to be converted in something new than a static mark, something flexible in order to distinguished and survive in this world in motion.

Hence, a visual brand has to do what it can: it has to achieve the power of mutating, of transforming itself without loosing what it is: it has to be always different but always the same. That is the second challenges of brands: to be alive.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011

Both on the identity of a person as in the one of a company, organization or institution, the identity can be considered as the relationship that each entity maintains only with itself. If we follow this scheme, we can think that all of these identities are not products of nature but an act of self-assertion. That means they come from a natural phenomenon rather than from a mental one.

Under this framework, we can find a parallelism and a difference in the action of two disciplines that work with identities, such as psychoanalysis and brand design, the design of visual identities.

This parallelism is related to the act that both of them are reading underneath discourses and then, at the right time, they apply a surgical technique called punctuation. Nevertheless, their difference lies on the objective of this punctuation.

The psychoanalyst

The Psychoanalysis (analysis of the soul or mind), is among other things a method that reveals the way in which a person gives meaning to his or her world and the way such person imagines the reality.

In that way and for Lacan, the identity of a person is something evanescent that can not be located in one tangible and stony element. That is because for him, the identity is based on both absences and presences, in differences and similarities, the positive together with the negative of the person.

This relativity that Lacan asserts, explains why for instance a man seeks to hang on to something solid to close the sense of what he believes he is, of what he wants to be and of what he thinks others want him to be. So, to achieve such security is why each person constructs and clings to a story, his or her story. A story that decides what part of reality is the own one.

Therefore, and if that story does not give happiness enough, the analyst acts over the discourse the patient’s has taken as proper. The specialist then searches for the hidden essence of the identity, which is the way the patient see and be seen, the way that subjectivity has been structured.

However, subjectivity can be found when the person talks about his history and only for a while. It’s those unexpected moments when the repressions produced by conventions or social inhibitions fail to control the spontaneous expressions of the speaker.

Such attempts are lapses, jokes or the pretention to hide something. But these moments are comparables with a shell when is opened, where the soft flesh inside the subject is helpless, leaving feelings and imaginations of the person visible.

What does the analyst do then? He interrupts or repeats what was said, by cutting the patient’s speech, making a punctuation that stops the accelerated motion, linear, scattered or repeated line of the story, pausing thus the continuum of the person’s narration and creating an instant.

Why? Because the opening is the moment where the patient can recognise and visualize its inner tissue. That is because the compulsive usual address of the patient discourse was successfully cut, returning to him its message and allowing the subject to start seeing other things around, as its context or its way of thinking, as well as detecting the things of that story.

In other words, the punctuation makes a slit in the belly of what is said, allowing to free the new interpretations of the consciousness. Thus, the happy punctuation is the one which gives sense to the discourse of the subject and authorizes the person to reach new conclusions. These are conclusions that can help to process images that disturbed him and from there to start building a better image of himself, so as to anticipate a better future.

The Brand Designer

The branding (brand design) is among other things the visual representation of an entity, such as an institution, organization or company.

The identity of an entity is as evanescent as the one of an individual and accordingly there are no fixed points that can define it.

Such identity is based on three overlapping dimensions that can distance and get closer arbitrarily. These dimensions are: what the entity in question is, within quantifiable and measurable terms. What the entity wants to be: their hopes, dreams and expectations. Finally, aspects required by others: people as buyers, members or significant people for it.

This arbitrariness requires to the entity to have an anchor point for materialize and articulate its better moment. That is a point that set and structures strategically these dimensions, offering finally a solid identity and sense to the entity.

Otherwise, the body can be lost in the compulsive search for any particular dimension of its existence. For example, if the being just wants what people supposedly expected from, it may lose support and balance, exposing the entity in danger of collapse.

But that moment of strategic anchoring can only be displayed to each and every viewer if it can embody and attach  meaning to something recognizable. Something that can stop open interpretations about the identity of the entity, something as a mark or symbol. This happens because the brand cuts an image, one that makes us to see a key moment in the continuum of time. That is a moment running in a certain place and situation, where characters and objects dramatize an abstract or realistic scene. An scene that identify now the entity.

In practice and in face of the spectators, the brand image produces a fusion of the symbolic with the real and tangible entity in question. Mixing as in a melting pot what it is interpreted about both parties: the material value with the metaphorical one, the social utility of an organization with the social fantasies and desires awakened by the image. The happy result of this mixture is when the desired positioning of the entity is visible.

The similarity

As we have seen, a moment in the life of an identity is crystallized by the punctuation. Thus, on the one hand we may think that such moment can make a person or entity to rethink about their identity.

The difference

On the other hand, it can also be seen that the purpose, objective and underlying ideology between the two disciplines differ: the punctuation of the psychoanalyst seeks to not leave any mark, while the one of the designer, yes.

By using the punctuation, the analyst is trying therapeutically to release the identity, looking for helping the patient to find its way, even though freedom is not always a guarantee of happiness.

Conversely, the designer’s cut seeks to close the identity of the entity, in order to help to define, differentiate and hold it on to something tangible, visible and unique, according to a supposed interest. In this way, this cut is intentional: pretends that the identity is what it represents. At the same time, the designer is trying to dramatize scenes and stories by projecting a desired future for the beholders, in which the plot is based on the entity interest.

Is it wrong what designers do?

In defence of designers, we can find the need of society to cling to certainties. As an example we can see how parents are “designing” their newborn baby by means of choosing a certain name, or the need of every person to belong to a collective identity to define his or her identity.

Conclusion

We have seen that some of the working methods of both disciplines and resources are similar. However, we have also found that the ultimate goal of both is different, since one intends to open and the other to close the representation of the identity. However, we can conclude that both are necessary for the social life of identities.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011

The aim of chapter is to understand how the Argentine State designed nationality through the use of the flag. In order to do that, the chapter is structured as follows:  In the first section, a brief history of the social importance and role of the flag in history is developed in order to understand how flags became an important symbol of recognition of a national state. Then, in section two the role flags play in promoting certain national sentiment on behalf of the Ideological State Apparatus will be analysed.

In the third section, the semiotic analysis of the Argentine flag will be developed following the same methodology used to analyse the Argentine shield and the one described in chapter two of methodology.  First, a textual transcription of the constitutional character of the flag was put in a matrix and used as guide, as well as the initial reproduction of the flag which is the one that further samples will be compared with (see Flags-Tables 1-97). Then, all collected images of flags issued by the state were ordered according to the historical classification used in the chapter of the history of the Argentine Ideological State Apparatus and the historical components of the Argentine flag such as its colour,  the sun, the sun expression, the rays, if it has incorporated objects and legends and the use of the flag were deeply analysed.

After that, in section four, a history of the changes of used colours and the sun in the Argentine flag and its meaning made in different Argentine historical periods is developed. They become the evidence of the state’s intentions to design specific nationalities that respond to the hegemonic dominant ideology.

Finally, some conclusions will be given and then a list of illustrations and tables are shown.

Section 1. The historic importance and role of flags

The most ancient record related to the use of flags for social representation comes from Egypt. It states that “every territorial district [in Egypt] had its standard which was used both as point of muster for its military forces and as a device by which its authority was recognized” (Friar, 1997: 1). Other records describe metal flags in Iran in 3000 BC. For instance, “Persians portrayed golden eagles on their banners” (Cirlot, 1992: 92) and there were silken flags about that time in China (Smith, 1975). Besides, in the bible, flags are widely mentioned immediately after the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, where each tribe had a different flag of a particular colour (Kashani, 1998: 107). However, the Romans adapted the meaning of the flag to the contemporary one. As defined by Whitney Smith, this kind of flag was called “vexilloid”[1] and was used by Roman legions during the classical era, made of a post or pole bearing a solid symbol or symbols. In fact, this word comes from a Latin word which means “guide” (Smith, 1975: 276).

During the Middle Ages, flags were used in battles in Europe, China and Japan by knights and warriors and in the Crusades, the group organization was maintained “by the use of mustering flags bearing the personal devices of commanders, and it is clear that these were sufficiently distinctive to be recognized, even in the heat of the battle” (Friar, 1997: 28).  In the 17th Century, knights were replaced by the army (Perrin, 1922), and those armies also used flags for their own identification and that of the units to which they belonged. By World War I flags were withdrawn from the battlefields because of the implied risk of carrying them.

Since the first flag to the present one, colours, figures and meaning have been added and several symbols have appeared on flags. For example, a white flag meant a negotiation request or surrender; a red flag signalled a general warning; a black flag signalled sinking or flood alert and a red cross (or half moon) meant a site of neutral immunity (Polanyi and Prosch, 1977: 74, 1998). Now each nation has its own flag symbolizing their national identity.

According to Connell, the flag of Denmark is the oldest national flag of the present day state. He points out that “tradition holds that the flag was adopted in 1219″ (Connell, 2004: 131). However, the flag that can be said to have greater influence is the three coloured French flag, given that the French Revolution ruled history, language and the western political symbolism, until the period after the First World War. Therefore, according to Hobsbawn, “the three-coloured French flag was used as a model for most of the states that achieved independence or unification after a long century and a half” (Hobsbawm, 2002: 57-58). Within this context, most national flags were formally adopted in the 20th Century. Nowadays when a new nation is born, it must be publicly defined through the symbolic resource as it is the flag which contributes to distinguishing one nation from the other nations of the world.

According to Perrin, the word “flag” is derived from the old Saxon word “flakken” which means “to fly or to float in the air” (Perrin, 1922: 18). The Spanish term bandera derives from the Germanic voice band (or banda) and the Latin bandum or bandus (Wedgwood and Atkinson, 1872: 44), being the word linked to the sense of “partiality” or a group of people that follows a political party. Likewise, the very same sense of the word can be thought to derive from the words “band” or “bandit” original from the European feudalism to refer to those who used to invade and rob under their own flag (Curtis, 1839: 456).

Besides, a flag can be defined as an insignia made of a rectangular piece of cloth, usually taffeta or silk, fastened to a stick called a flagpole. Likewise, a flag is an intentional combination of colours and shapes in a fixed and ordered pattern governed by design rules based on Heraldic principles. The distribution of colours, disposition of stripes, ornaments and other messages indicate the nature of the entity to which the flag belongs, being a political or social communication media between its users (Smith, 1975: 124). In that way and as Hoffman noted, “the flag continued to be a vehicle of non verbal communication (Hoffman, 1996: 30).

As we have seen before, modernity requests nations to have emblems to identify and differentiate one from each other and to articulate and integrate all its inhabitants. This demand calls for flags to be such an  emblem, because of its simplicity, its capacity to speak for everyone and for allowing the immediate recognition of its users. But beyond that, flags also became emblems of the meaning people placed on them, such as love, hatred, veneration and passion. As a consequence of that, flags became an object of reverence, reaching the status of being an emblem which people fought and died for and an object to be conquested as if it were endowed with greater value. Thus as Durkheim pointed out, “the soldier who dies for his flag, dies for his country; but as a matter of fact, in his own consciousness, it is the flag that has the first place…the soldier loses sight of the fact that the flag is only a sign, and that it has no value in itself, but only brings to mind the reality that it represents; it is treated as if it were this reality itself” (Durkheim, 1975a: 183).

For Hoffman, the flag functions as a sign, a sign from where to organize and visualize totemic forms of belonging to the part of a reference group. That means that the flag, through the mere combination of its colours and shapes, can achieve the immediate identification of a person or something’s origin with its sole presence. As he said, “flags are like bits cut from clouds, nearer and more varied in colour, tethered and given permanent shape. In their movement they are truly striking. Nations use them to mark the air above them as their own, as though the wind could be partitioned” (in Hoffman, 1996: 5). For instance the instantaneous recognition of friends and enemies, as Hoffman noted “to identify themselves in the total confusion of a battle (Hoffman, 1996: 36) while the flags are flying when nations are disputing something.”

Likewise, for Durkheim the flag is also a totem of each clan (Durkheim, 1975a: 183). As he highlights “it is its flag. It is the sign by which each clan distinguishes itself from other clans, the visible mark of its personality, the sign which is borne by everything that is in some way a part of the clan” (Durkheim, 1975b: 124-125).

Apart from that, it is important to consider the practical and economical aspects of this communicational resource, which can express many things from just a piece of coloured cloth and carried by anyone anywhere. Besides, it can be located in the most relevant areas of the State. For instance, in Argentina it can be in the presidential sash (figure 1 to 12), in the house of government (figure 13 and 14) or it can be flying in the most relegated places of the country (figure 15 to 21). Likewise, it can be held by the high bourgeoisie, the state representant, an anonymous mass or by each individual of the nation. It can wave alone or be waved by millions. It can reach great heights or be pinned close to a heart. Hence, the simplicity for both its production and distribution has caused the flag to be socially accepted as the most efficient emblem, generating thus its “metaphorical omnipresence” (Hoffman, 1996: 23).

In this sense, flags become expressive mechanisms that characterize a national group. Then, a flag is above all a symbol, a material expression of other things. Among them, the most important of these things is that the flag symbolizes and is seen as the nation in itself, because, as Wuthbow noted “the national flag is an image which the nation-state projects of itself” (Wuthnow, 1992: 112). Accordingly, when a new nation is born, its flag starts to embody complex ideas, feelings, attributes and experiences from the society it represents. In that manner, a flag can then suggest symbolic characteristics of the group of reference. Thus, some people believe that “symbols have the mythical prestige of relics. They are born to be eternal and to represent their homelands. Nations condense into visible signs the idea of unity, love and civic duty, as well as the collective idea of nation, a principle that becomes the sign that we take to battles and that acquires an ideal existence in the popular belief” (Corvalan Mendilarasu, 1942: 241).   In that way, and as result of its signal, symbolic and practical value, the flag achieves the role of being the emblem per excellence belonging to a clan and to a nation.

As Donnan and Wilson pointed out, “each of the symbols of a ritual may serve to condense many meanings into one object, such as a nation’s flag” (Donnan and Wilson, 1999: 66). Thus, a single flag can condense many meanings, allowing people to project on it what they consider relevant about their relationship with the nation. In that manner “the national flag today performs a symbolic function, being a ‘condensation symbol’ and a focus for sentiment about society” (Spenser and Wollman, 2005).

This act of signifying condensation of the nation into the figure of the flag, can be observed quite openly as a metaphor (Lacan, 1988 :247 and Lacan, 1997: 61). This metaphor condenses not only people’s feelings and personal experiences about their nation, such as the incorporation of national sentiments into the citizen´s symbolic structure.

Section 2 The role flags play in promoting national sentiment

The role flags play in promoting certain national sentiment on behalf of the Ideological State Apparatus is based on the flag being a symbol of attachment for different dimensions of nationality. Among these dimensions it is possible to highlight religiousity, social organization, membership and differentiation dimensions.

First, it can be said that the flag is the best resource that a nation has for incarnating the religious dimension. As Baumann said, “religions are, after all, concerned with the seemingly absolute matters of life and death, good and evil, merit and failure-in other words, the meaning and morality of life” Baumann, 1999: 21), and is in all aspects connected with the national performance of the flag. The religious dimension of the flag can be easily found. For instance as Marvin and Ingle point out, “in its male aspects the flag on its pole sits at the outermost point of its staff. This is a border, the point of crossover from human to divine, from profane to sacred, from centre to periphery. The flag soldiers carry into battle signifies their willingness to go to the border between life and death and also signifies sacrificial  willingness, and recalls the origins of European nation-states within the sacrificial system of Christianity. The myth of the sacrificed Christ who dies for all men makes every sacrificed soldier a re-modelled Christ dying to redeem his countrymen” (Marvin and Ingle, 1999: 69).

The idea of offering life for the flag’s sake can be interpreted as believing that flags mean more than death (Hoffman, 1996: 24). The flag questions and involves people into the national doctrine and into the practice of sacrifice and death. Thus, as Hoffman noted of a flag “on days of national mourning it stands at half mast. At state funerals it is draped over the coffin to show that the deceased has been accepted into the immortal community of the nation. It is a symbol that is understood throughout the world like no other” (Hoffman, 1996: 4).

Furthermore, the flag is just a piece of something, just “something flapping in the air” (Perrin, 1922: 18) and one of the central attractions of the flag may consist of the apparent visibility of the invisible, produced by the wind. As Canetti expressed, “flags are wind made visible (Canetti, 1984: 2). The wind thus is the counterpart of the flag, it is what gives its life, and produces the sensation that the flag is alive to spectators as if it were saying something to them. After the flag is taken by the wind, it is expressing its voice and gesture and generating a kind of song and dance. Thus the wind’s possession of the flag seems to incarnate life and death or even the nation’s soul awakening, a national soul that catches people’s attention by the absorption and theatricality[2] of the dance the flag produces. As Hoffmanm noted, “the flag blowing in the wind, as a sign of movement: the optical opium of the people, forests of flags as a psychological field of force” (Hoffmann, 1996: 13).

However, as Durkheim noted, “everything depends upon the circumstances which lead the sentiment creating religious ideas to establish itself here or there … therefore, the sacred character assumed by an object is not implied in the intrinsic properties of the latter: it is added to them. The world of religious things is not one particular aspect of empirical nature; it is superimposed upon it” (Durkheim, 2004: 116). Therefore, the supposed mute discourse of that soul of the nation is a consequence of each participant’s desires and beliefs, as Theweleit pointed out, “a flag can be seen as containing and displaying the tamed instinctual life of the men who are its followers; its colours are those of their desires” (Theweleit, 1987: 261).

The second dimension transmitted by the flag is a symbolic structural mandate as if the nation were part of the structural signified of the personal identity. That mandate is closer to “the Law of the Father” (Lacan, 2001: 166) than can be represented by the flags´s metaphor and whether the figure of the nation acts as a father as the signifier. As Lacan highlights, “a father who makes the laws or whether he poses as the pillar of the faith, as a paragon of integrity and devotion, as virtuous or as a virtuoso, by serving a work of salvation, of  whatever object or lack of object, of nation or of birth” (Lacan, 2001: 166).

Besides, this mandate helps project the idea of a common national identity. Laclau, referring to the flag, pointed out that “if the main goal to be achieved is the welding of the nation into a unified whole, the creation of a nation, then it is tempting to conclude that a single dramatic symbol can achieve this more effectively than a whole legislature of representatives” (Laclau, 2005: 160). Hence, the flag does in effect do so in helping to structuralize the social and political experience of their users, by offering them the experience of participating in the political event and being part of the nation just by holding the nation flag. In that way, for Hoffman  “as in every other area of political life, signs, symbols, and rituals play an important part in structuring political experience, especially in establishing collective identities” (Hoffman, 1996: 28).

In that way, Laclau points out that a representation, in terms of visibility, gives the sense of unity to a discoursive totality (the people/the nation), in a process where social experiences are always mediated by such symbolization. For Laclau, “representation becomes the means of homogenizing of what I called a Heterogeneous mass into a single representation that contains a wide range of diversity” (Laclau, 2004: 159). Then, politically speaking, the flag becomes a tool for social integration and unification.

Last, as Hoffman pointed out, a flag is an imperative, an object which heightens the sense of fellowship. As he refers, “psychologists teach us how easy it is to fill an emotional vacuum by forming a powerful affective bond with a leadership figure or a flag” (Hoffmann, 1996: 13). Thus, this piece of cloth that represents so much for the state and for its people, is understood as a symbol that may stimulate the membership to the national group, bringing cohesion and the emotion of being part of something, even on dissidence. Thus, from its positive aspects and the tacit agreement to see the symbol as representative of the group, it is possible to find that potentially the flag has or is an element that allows the articulation of vast amount of areas and activities related to the nation, as Zizek suggested, “the enjoyments” of the citizens (Zizek, 2006: 246).

In the Argentine case, the flag is an object with an intense political use along the history. Historically speaking, the abusive use of the flag in extreme life and death situations (figure 58 to 61), the recurrent presence of the flag as background of any dictatorship´s discourse, the appropriation by the Army or the military government of this symbol, as well as the subsequent attempts to associate it to different sectors (figure 62 to 73) led the flag to be a resourse from where different representations of Argentina have been struggling for control. As a result of that, this flag has abandoned its immaculate and idealized character of the past to be spoiled and bastardized. So, as Belgrano wrote “when words become empty and meaningless they prostitute themselves, and the same happens to symbols” (in Eloy Martines, 2001: 25).

However, even though such association of the flag endures in people’s mind[3], it is possible to find still the flag inside almost any social expression of the Argentine people. Nowadays the flag is found in schools (figure 74 to 81), where standard-bearers carry it proudly, where it is hoisted at the beginning of the day and folded and put away at the end of the day, while everyone sings in its honour. Otherwise, we also see flags in football stadiums and it is on the streets after each victory. We can see flags in political and even religious meetings, in product packaging that resort to the “Made in Argentina”, in taxicabs, in homes of high and low socio-economic levels (figure 82 to 89).

Apart from that, in Argentina the flag is not only the incarnation of the nation, but also of a nation that gives solutions to the problems Argentine people face. Thus, people resort to the flag as a coat to protect them. As Eloy Martinez pointed out, “in the middle of the crisis, the flag appeared as a protective shield for the neglected, a lifejacket for that sinking boat that Argentina was” (Eloy Martinez, 2001: 25). As a consequence of that, it is possible to see flags and pennants flying along the country in the middle of any crisis (data collected during fieldwork). Therefore, the flag can be seen in the front line of almost all social claims. Claims for something that should be but is not, claims against the power’s insensitivity, claims for inclusion, or for being part of the nation (figure 90 to 96).

As Oscar Landi said, “people establish dialogues with symbols” (Landi, 2000), thus the dialogue with the flag is talking about the idea of belonging to a given community; where people believe and await their own answers, but use the flag as a mediator of their collective identity.

In summary, it can be said that in Argentina, the use of the flag was mainly associated as a military device, especially from 1810 to 1862 while the flag started to be incorporated in government use and during the last military dictatorship. From 1880, it was more common to find flags used by governmental actions and also by civic activities, especially during the time of Peronism. From 1955, the use of the flag for posters and advertising in general was increased by democratic and military governments. For instance, during the 1976 – 1983 dictatorship, the Alianza in 1999 and Kirchner period of 2003 to 2008, the flag was used frequently as graphic resource to deliver their message in different propagandas.

Section 2. Semiotic analysis of the Argentine Flag

The Argentine two-coloured flag is light blue and white. It is divided in two equal light blue horizontal stripes with a white stripe in the middle. In the centre, there is a figurative sun with a human face in golden yellow with thirty two rays: 16 blazing rays that “rotate” in clockwise direction and 16 straight rays alternatively placed, according to an already existing design in the first Argentine minted coin prior to the flag.

School curriculum considers that the Argentine flag’s origin is traced back to the creation of the light blue and white cockade of May 1810. Around that time, the patriots, led by Domingo French and Antonio Luis Beruti, gave away a number of ribbons to revolutionary supporters (De Gandia, 1960: 157). It is believed that those ribbons were red, white and light blue, inspired by the French Revolution’s colours. However, a number of historians reject this official version on the colours’ origin, claiming that the ribbons were only red and white. Anyway, what is widely accepted by all Argentine historiography is “even when no contemporary mentions Belgrano as the flag’s creator, history owes him that merit” (Scanna, 1968: 89).

In that sense, on the 13th of February, 1812 Manuel Belgrano proposed to the Government the initial creation of a national cockade, since the military forces used varied badges during their fight against Spain. Thus, five days later, The Triumvirate approved the use of the white and light blue cockade that Belgrano had proposed, declaring that this would be the national cockade of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (Scanna, 1968). Enthusiastic about this approval, Belgrano designed a flag using the same colours, raising it for the first time in Rosario, on the coast of the Paraná River, where now the National Monument to the Flag is placed. On the 13th of February, 1813 Belgrano made the troops swear allegiance to the government of the 1813 Assembly using the light blue and white flag.

After the oath, Belgrano sent a letter to the central government to inform them of this act but they ordered him to put the flag away and reproached him for his presumptuous actions, since it was not believed to be diplomatically appropriate. As researcher Prof. Ruffo (National History Museum) and the President of the Argentine History Academy, Prof. Cresto pointed out in field work interviews[4], both considered than the flag found in Macha (Bolivia) was the original one hidden by Belgrano there (figure 22).

Finally, in 1816, the Congress accepted the light blue and white flag as the country’s official flag. Around the same time, in 1815, the Province of Santa Fe adopted its own flag using the same colours crossed by a red stripe and with no sun on it. It was called the Artigas’s flag, “the flag of freedom or the flag of the Federation” (Ferro, 1991: 62 and Canepa, 1953: 73) and remained as one of the permanent symbols of federalism.

In 1818, the Congress of Tucumán (transferred to Buenos Aires) added the sun emblem “as central hieroglyph” (Ferro, 1991: 86). This sun is called the “Sun of May” in reference to the May Revolution of 1810, which marked the beginning of the independence from Spain.

The colour of the Argentine Flag

In the Argentine flag there are both religious and military aspects. According to traditional Heraldic rules, the white colour on the flag would represent peace and honesty; the light blue colour attributes such things as vigilance, truth, loyalty, perseverance or justice (Woodcock and Robinson, 1988 and Smith, 1975). However, the election of the colours could be considered to be a consequence not only of such traditional rules, but even more so of colonial and religious issues, since as  Jacob suggests “the flag was not conceived under pure Heraldic criteria” (Jacob, 2002: 34).

Nevertheless, as Zakia points out, that even seeing colour is a subjective experience (Zakia, 2002: 138), the attention to colour “becomes an additional way to achieve an identity” (Zakia, 2002: 136).  More precisely, there are different criterias for evaluating colour´s social use. Authors such as Arnheim consider that particular colours have fixed meanings in every culture (Arnheim, 2004: 331). In this regard, those authors consider it possible to analyse the Argentina colour combination in such a way. As Zakia points out, “blue stands for everything that is proper. Indigo blue represented the desire for colour without the presence of it…white is the colour of the absolute. Committed and uncommitted, ambivalant in its richness and simplicity…white is the color of objectivity, beyond subjectivity” (Zakia, 2002: 137). Besides, for Mazower, “light blue, representing the sea and sky, and white, symbolizing the purity of the nation. Their blending in the form of a dual symbolism, entwining national sentiments with religious convictions” (Mazower, 2000: 226).

However, for other authors such as Baumann, “colour identities, like all other identities, are a matter of situation and context” (Baumann, 1999: 58). Based on this position, it is neccesary to go deeper into the Argentine context for analysing the initial sense of the colour of the nation. Concerning that choice of colours, there are a number of historians whose opinions hold the following hypotheses.

First, the origin of the colors of the flag would be associated with Catholicism, since the light blue and white colours are present in Virgin Mary’s robe (figure 33 to 35), “according to what has been consecrated by the Catholic liturgy, as representative of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary’s mystery, after approving the order established by Beatriz de Silva and recognising as habit those colours. She used to offer herself during the ecstasy of the revelation: blue – light blue and white” (Corvalán Mendilharasu, 1943: 243). Among the reasons that justify this possible reading, there is the fact that Belgrano worshiped the Luján Virgin, the reason why according to Jacob, Argentina owes its colours to “Belgrano’s religious conviction and his devotion to the Virgin” (Jacon, 2002: 8).

Second, the light blue and white colours are attributed to the Band of the Order of King Charles III from Spain (figure 36 to 37), as it is portrayed in Goya’s paintings, which is perfectly acceptable and complementary to the fact that he can also have been inspired by the Virgin’s robe, since Borbon´s order were devotees of the Virgin Mary. This hypothesis could be consistent with the independentist’s political strategy of avoiding the total breakdown of all bonds from Spain.

Third, there is an association between the colours’ origin to Buenos Aires’ representation as a synonym of the country. The colours are attributed here to those already existing in the shield of Buenos Aires city, set in 1649 (figure 38), which has the colours of the sky and silver (figure 39), that is to say, the light blue and white that appear as the port’s emblem. As Ferro suggests, “the silver colour is represented in white, which resembles the river stream foam from where an anchor looms, and the blue represents the sky with a flying pigeon” (Ferro, 1991: 3). It is also possible to mention that the Consulate of Buenos Aires was created in 1794, and its shield was adopted in accordance with the old tradition of using the blue and white colours. Within this possibility, we must also include the Consulate’s flag, since according to Carlos Roberts the flag hoisted at the front of the building in1794 had the same light blue and white colours as the Virgin’s robe, patron of the Corporation (in Scanna, 1968). Besides, the first secretary of that Consulate was the lawyer Mr. Manuel Belgrano, future creator of the national flag. Likewise, the light blue and white were the distinctive colours used by the patriots and the regiments of Buenos Aires during the British invasions of Buenos Aires in 1806. According to Ferro, those patrician regiments had already worn a light blue and white crest on their hats by 1810 (Ferro, 1991)[5].

As well as that, the initial independent groups that portrayed these colours were also from Buenos Aires. Thus, such emblems also belonged to the Patriotic Society and the Morenists, a group of pro-independent porteños later called “Unitarians”, which in 1811, even before the first hoisting of the flag, wore a light blue and white ribbon rosette for their better identification (Ferro, 1991). These ribbons were visible during “the complot that overthrew the Government Junta of 1810” (Ferro, 1991: 14).

Fourth, according to my own findings as a result of my fieldwork, the flag’s combination of colours represents the image of the seaboard, where the sky is the upper band, the horizon is the white one and the sea or river the lower one. This is also mentioned in the flag’s national song Aurora, “blue, a wing of the colour of the sky, blue, a wing of the colour of the sea” (Rojas, 1907: 160). Besides, it is also considered here as a poetic dimension of the presence of those colours in the national landscape, where the light blue and white seem to have been inspired by the sky and the clouds. According to tradition, the flag was created by General Belgrano when he looked at the sky just before the river Paraná. Thus, José María Gutierrez’s poem says “from the sky our giant parents took the white and light blue of our flag” (Ferro, 1991: 13), some of the odes to the flag that children used to recite at school. This possibility would imply a discrimination against the inhabitants of the inland of the country for most of them live in the “pampas” or in the Patagonia (figure 40 and 41) where the only colours found is in their skies.

Last, it is possible to justify the use of these colours by weaker arguments that relate the colours to ideological concepts, such as the fact that the blue was the preferred colour in court ornaments by the Incas of Peru, or that blue symbolizes the ideals of justice, truth and brotherhood, arguments with no strong testimony in the Argentine history.

The Sun of the Argentine Flag

The sun of the flag is the same sun used in the national shield but in this case it appears in the centre of the flag not just looming but in its entirety. The sun of the flag comes from the sun of the first minted Argentine coin. Thus, the coin’s and flag’s sun is a referent made of a circle and 32 rays that alternate straight triangular shapes, which make reference to the traditional idea of energy, and waving shapes, which stand for the expression of heat (Cirlot, 1992: 417). The rays’ shape can also be interpreted as the convergence of both male and female aspects, the straight and the wavy.

The number and distribution of rays can be thought as derived from the wind rose (figure 42) which indicates the fundamental geographic points essential to its direction as they appear in typical compasses of the time.  Two aspects can be considered in the sun rays shape. First, the energy or light that is projecting. According to heraldic rules thick and wavy rays transmitted energy, action while thin and large rays represent light, illuminations and ideas.  Second, the extension of the rays can be considered as arms of an humanized sun.

The motive for the selection of the sun as the central protagonist of the flag is unclear. Some authors sustain the official version that was an attempt to seduce natives which they considered as “sons of the sun” (Scanna, 1969: 82) (figure 43 to 45). In this position Mitre, who was one of the most influential personalities in the process of construction of the Argentine nationality, pointed out that “the heraldic sun in the national coat of arms was, undoubtedly, a form of attraction and reverence for the native “Quichua” and “Aymará” people, worshippers of the star” (Mitre, 1960: 10); This was something that, according to Levenne (Levenne, 1991) was thought of as a strategy to win their wills against the Spanish army.

For other authors, the sun represents a discourse of the Masonry (figure 46 to 48), functioning as a symbol of clarity against darkness: “the Masonic sun of regenerative truth” (Boime, 1990: 496) and “the signature of the soul” (see Maier, 1996: 83). This interpretation may have some resonance considering that some members of the ruling class belonged to the Masonic lodges, such as Alvear, Rivadavia and San Martín (Mitre, 1960: 422).

The sun’s historical presence in the flag is also associated with the war flag and to the symbolism that the star generates which is considered in Argentina as the incarnation of state power as history shows it. To understand its power, the absence of the sun would mean the end of life. An example of this could be found in the Army’s shield, which results in a grave man’s face scrutinizing the spectator (Shield, figure 99). In this way, it can be said that the sun entertained a greater public presence during military governments where the gap between those governments and the civil society was widened by its sole presence

Section 4. An history of the changes in the Argentine flag and its meaning

In Argentina, political sectors have been modifying the national flag as a means of expression. Those expressions can be detected according to some main axes. First and foremost, the selection of the light blue or blue colour as pertaining to the flag. Second, the use of the sun and the incoporoation of other objects. Third, the sun’s expression and how the the rays of the sun are.

In the first place, the words light blue, blue and blue-light blue were used to define the colour´s flag with almost no distinction throughout the years from the creation of the cockade in 1812 until 1944 (Tables 1- Flag 1 to 31), when a decree tried to end the controversy by setting the national hue. The ideals that have been determined as a result of this debate could be understood in evaluating from the vagueness of the word chosen to determine the hue, to ignoring which was exactly the hue chosen by its creator or from questions related to heraldry, aesthetics, visibility, durability and destruction or loss of the original flag.

However, real controversy is not a consequence of aesthetic criteria. The fact is that the political dispute was among Unitarians and Federalists. The core motive of this debate was among Buenos Aires and the country’s inland, and was based on the fact that to be identified by a special hue colour involved the membership to one or another political group[6].  Thus, for the Federals first and for Rosas later, “the national colour has changed from light blue to blue (Tables 1- Flag 8 to 15) because the Unitarians adopted the former as the party’s colour” (Canepa, 1953: 62). After Rosas’s fall “blue was identified as the colour of the confederation and light blue as the colour of the State of Buenos Aires” (Dumrauf, 2003: 16).

Moreover, the next president, the Porteño[7] President Mitre’s interest of national validity of the light blue colour can be understood. He asked “Why is the blue colour mentioned not even once in official records, and light blue is always and constantly repeated? The fact is that the blue colour, understood as a dark blue, does not have either a historical antecedent or a military meaning. The only occasion when blue was mentioned was as a synonym of blue-light blue”[8].

Still, at present there are sectors which are trying to modyfing the colour of the flag, seeking to impose their political vision. For instance, the National Deputies Chamber´s draft 143/01 from the year 2003, submitted by the Peronist representative Lorenzo Pepe to restore the blue and white flag, as a clear vindication of Rosas.

In second place, the use of the flag with sun was regulated by the state. From 1818 until 1983 most of the time the sun was a property of the government and especially of the military (see civic exceptions in Tables 1- Flag 3, 8 to 11, 37 to 44, 49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 57, 70, 75, 89). Then, from 1983 till 2008, the public and civic use of the sun on the flag was popularized and the sun could be represented in a free way.  As it has already been said about the flag’s history, the everlasting debates regarding the fact of having one or two flags, that is to say, first and second class Argentines, turned the sun’s inclusion or exclusion into a mere consequence of a society in conflict between representatives and the represented; in fact a debate about who is the owner of Argentina representing a historical political confrontation between the military and civil society.

Apart from that, the incorporation of objects in the flag was especially done by the replacement of the sun by shields, especially from 1817 to 1852 (see Tables 1- Flag 3, 4, 6, 11, 18 and 17). It can be the result of the interest of the State to own the Nation by marking the flag with a state symbol. In opposition, the absence of shields in national flags since 1955 can be interpreted as a State that is hiding behind the nation. Therefore, in general, the replacement of the sun by a shield shows the visibility of the state as the creator of the nation.

Another annexation to the flag is the incorporation of legends, something that can be found especially from 1829 to 1861, from 1955 to 1976 and from 2003 to 2008. That action shows the attempt to focus the meaning of the nation to a particular topic, the one that is written on the flag (Tables 1- Flag 11, 14, 16, 34, 51, 57, 88, 94, 95 and 97).

Political expressions can be found in the sun’s face and expression as well as the characteristics of the rays. Since official decrees do not regulate it, the sun’s face shows how power is exercised by such administrations, according to what its face is expressing. Therefore, the flag has had an androgenic face, a child’s face, a woman and a man’s face, and even, as it is shown by the examples, aggresive, depressed, upset and even a monstrous face. Even the current President of the Nation designed and used the sun during her political campaign and in several occasions in her term; a reproduction of the sun was designed with a similar facial expression as hers (figure 49 to 57). The different faces of the sun could show a question of genre. As a general conclusion, it can be said that in XIX century the flag showed a male face which is in accordance with the lack of female political participation (excepted Tables 1- Flag 11 and 14). Then, in XX and XXI centuries the female participation started and the sun was represented with both a male or a female face, but there is not a clear pattern of use of them in each case (female faces can be found in Tables 1- Flag 29, 31, 33 and 46). Since 2003 the presence of a sun with the face of a woman has increased (Tables 1- Flag 82, 91 to 93), a fact that allows it to be seen as a pacifist country.

Following the changes of the rays, it can be said that in XIX century, energy was more important than light (see rays in Tables 1- Flag 4 to 6, 10 to 14 and 16), something that can be interpreted as showing the active pulse of the time to create a new Nation, attract immigrants, build the infrastructure among others. On the contrary, in the XX century, light was more important than energy, showing the importance of ideas, values and credo more than actions independently of the content of them. Since 1983, the extension of the rays grew as if they were human arms, something that could be interpreted as the intention of democracy to have arms to hold on to people (Tables 1- Flag 61 to 93).

From an historical point of view, the first important historical change made to the original national flag was during Rosas’ government. As Scanna points out “Rosas had replaced the original Argentine flag by one composed of two dark blue bands and a white one with four red corners” (Scanna, 1969: 85). Rosas also replaced the golden sun for a red one, especially in his fleet. Hence, “during Rosas’ times, the blue colour became darker to be distinguished from the light blue considered as the Unitarian colour” (Jacob, 2002: 32), their internal enemies. Since then and for a century, this light blue colour has continued to divide the country and to be known as a synonym of the port of Buenos Aires.

When Rosas was overthrown, the blue and light blue flag used by the Argentine Confederation was kept as the country’s flag. However, when this government fell, the initial light blue and white flag first carried by the Unitarians and then by Mitre became again the nation state’s flag (Tables 1- Flag 16 to 97).

Afterwards, in 1869 President Sarmiento’s decree claimed “one flag, one nation” (Ferro, 1991: 96), while he authorized the use of the same flag, without the sun, by the whole citizenship and public organizations with no distinction.  In 1884, President Roca decreed the use of the flag with the sun to represent the State abolishing what Sarmiento had done. In 1885, President Pellegrini decreed that the flag was blue and white and established a reduction of its size to 140 x 90 centimetres.  In 1907, the flag was defined as white and light blue and not blue. During the 1930s, the light blue colour represented the sky’s colour at sunrise.

In 1933 the compulsory use of the Argentine flag in schools was systematized and the use of the red flag with the hammer and sickle was forbidden because it connoted Communism. The state also restricted citizen use of the Argentine flag. In 1938, the President Roberto M. Ortiz enacted the law 12.361 that declared the 20th of June as Flag Day and a national bank holiday as a way of paying tribute to Manuel Belgrano.

In 1944, the military government established the flag with the sun as the national flag, something that pertains to a nationalist ideology and identity. It could not be used by private individuals, who were left without a flag, even when they were granted the right of wearing the national colours as long as they did not use the sun. The Official Flag of the Nation is formally described in the National Decree 10302/1944 as “the flag with a sun approved by the Congress of Tucumán, gathered in Buenos Aires the 25th of February 1818″ (Fernandez and Castagnino, 1962: 90-91).

It is interesting to highlight that the government was very strict regarding the use of light blue and white in founding the decree of citizen usage, as a consequence that “these are colours associated with the best Spanish tradition” (in Ferro, 1991: 246).

Then, in 1978, the decree 1666/78 specified the sun’s colour and dimensions to be golden yellow, the inner diameter of the sun of 10 cm, and an outer diameter of 25 cm, with 32 rays, 16 undulated and 16 straight.

In 1983 the return of a democratic government came. As it was narrated by David Ratto during a field work interview[9], he encouraged President Alfonsin to modify the flag use, drafted a proposal and then, by a Congressional law, it was established that citizens and public organizations had the right to use the flag, which is the reason why the flag without the sun formally disappeared. From that time on, there is only one flag for all, something that belongs to a Republican ideology and identity.

In 1999, the then President Carlos Menem by decree number 858/99 established some changes in the flag, and demanded that it should be made from one special type of cloth manufactured by one single company in the country[10]. However, this decree was never enforced.

Beyond its local use, the Argentine flag influenced other flags of the continent with its novel design. The 1820 Uruguayan flag, as well as the flag of the Federal Republic of Central America of 1828 are examples of such influence. That is the result of the actions of a French corsair dependent on the Argentine government, who during his adventures against the Spanish, attacked Caribbean and Pacific Ocean ports and even hoisted the Argentine flag in California, an image worthy of being portrayed in a novel. As corollary and influence of his actions, the current flags of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala bear similarities with the Argentine one (Helman, 1989).

Conclusion

Since the first flag found before 3000 BC, flags were stated as a device by which its authority was recognized. From the first national flag to nowadays, as soon as a new nation is born, it must publicly define its flag which contributes to distinguishing one nation from the other nations of the world.

A flag can be defined as an insignia made of a rectangular piece of cloth, insignea from where visual referents indicate the nature of the entity to which the flag belongs, being a political or social non-verbal communication media between its users. In this way, the flag works as a sign, allowing the instantaneous recognition of friends and enemies and as being a totem of each community.

Besides, flags are also symbols, emblems of the meaning people placed on them and from where to fight and die for and an object to be conquested as if it were endowed with greater value. Therefore, a flag symbolizes, and is seen as, the nation in itself, by condensing all sentiments with the nation. Therefore, flags promote certain national sentiment on behalf of the Ideological State Apparatus. First, a religious dimension or sentiment can be found as if the flag means more than death, where flag questions and involves people in practice of sacrifice and death. Besides, the central attraction of a flag floating in the air may consist of the apparent visibility of the invisible, produced by the wind, expressing the nation’s soul awakening. Second, a representation of a social organization is portrayed by the flag, where the flags´s metaphor is a symbolic structural mandate of the nation which structures political experience, especially in establishing collective identities. For that reason, a flag gives the sense of unity to a nation as a discursive totality, in a process where social experiences are always mediated by such symbolization. Besides, a flag is understood as a symbol that may stimulate the membership to the national group, bringing cohesion and the emotion of being part of something, even in dissidence.

In Argentina, the flag has been used in extreme life and death situations, as a background of any dictatorship’s discourse, by the Army or the military governments that appropiated this symbol and as well as subsequent attempts to associate it to different sectors. However, even though such association of the flag endures in people’s mind,  it is possible to find the flag inside almost any social expression of Argentine, in schools, in sport, in political and religious meetings, in commercial and in high and low socio-economic levels everyday life, as if Argentine flag were also the incarnation of the best of the nation.

Furthermore, the main components of the Argentine flag are the colours (white and light blue) and the presence or absence of a sun, two attributes that have been changed in different moments of the Argentine history since its creation in 1810 by Belgrano as a means of political expression.

The origin of the colors of the flag could be associated with Catholicism since the light blue and white colours are present in the Virgin Mary’s robe, could be attributed to the Band of the Order of King Charles III from Spain or could be a copy of the colours used in the shield of Buenos Aires city. Besides, it could represent the image of the seaboard where the sky is the upper band, the horizon is the white one and the sea or river the lower one. In this case, the colour and the space they occupy would represent Buenos Aires and it would be discrimination against the inhabitants of the inland of the country where the only colours found are in their skies.

In the case of the sun, it could represent an attempt to seduce native people as they considered them as “sons of the sun”, a discourse of the Masonry functioning as a symbol of clarity against darkness, a traditional idea of energy and state power

The mentioned changes made to the flag were around some main axes which were the selection of the light blue or blue colour pertaining to the flag, the marginalization of the civil society from the official flag with the sun and last the sun’s expression, the shape of the rays. Besides, a shield has been introduced in the place of the sun as well as legends.

In the first place, the words light blue, blue and blue-light blue show a dispute among Unitarians and the colour of the State of Buenos Aires while the Rosas´ dark blue flags represent a Federal government.

In second place, the flag portrayed everlasting debates regarding the fact of having in Argentina one or two flags, that is to say, first and second class Argentines, from where the sun’s inclusion or exclusion differentiate Argentine’s activity. The free use of the flag for everybody is typical of the Republican identity while a restrictive use of the flag with a sun pertains to a Nationalist identity. Third, political expressions and how power is exercised can be found in the sun’s face but there is no a clear pattern of their uses.

Table 1

Main characteristics of the Argentine Flag according to different historical periods and Ideological State apparatus.

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 the social importance of images and the social importance of the act of seeing, of representing, of interpreting, of imagining and of desiring as the sources that give power to images. But in order to do so, the state has to embody certain common content and 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, flag, shield and mass media.

Introduction to the research.

National identification design, as something pertaining to political concern, can be understood as the embodiment of images of ideological representation in specific supporting elements in an attempt to create and re-create the identity of the citizens.  To understand the mechanisms of how Nation States design nationality among their populations it is necessary to know how the State works. It works through a hegemonic process called the Ideological State Apparatus. Simultaneously, the State apparatus of cultural fictions spreads symbolic fables to have a monopoly over cultural norms and discourses. This apparatus requires three main resources to work.  These include: an existing common content, the power to institutionalize a chosen interpretation of nationality and a support for the content.  Common content, national sentiment or national identity are created and maintained by a hegemonic ideology that rules the State in a historical period.  This entire process is permitted because of the social importance of images. The act of seeing, representing, interpreting, imagining and desiring are the sources that give power to images. In addition, the channels that spread nationality discourses are the material culture, images and objects that are sense and information carriers such us public architecture, monuments, statues, the rosette, uniforms, the banknotes, the flag, the shield and mass media.

This process described above, the role of the State as an image and identity designer, is not included in the academic formation of a graphic designer even though they could probably be designers in charge of spreading images of a government and a specific dominant ideology.

For this reason, the main motivation to initiate this research has been to fill a gap that exists in the academic formation of a graphic designer, a formation that makes that professional activity much more related to common sense, creativity and art rather than based on theoretical grounds.

For this reason, a case study was developed. It required theoretical assumptions and conceptualizations to guide and support the production of data, information and of the research strategies. Then, to structure and organize this case study the research problem was first established. The research problem was to explore the role of the Argentine State as an identity designer through the use of images and objects from the beginning of the Nation to 2008 with special focus in the analysis of the flag, the banknotes and the shield.

Therefore, the main question asked throughout the research was:

“How does the production of image by the State contribute to the design of a national identity?”

In order to answer this immense question, many key and minor questions were made which became the objectives or purpose of the research. Besides, in each case, key concepts were useful to create a theoretical /conceptual framework which led to finding the answers.

The questions were

1. How does the State act?

2. How are nationality and national identities constructed by the State?

3. What is collective or national identity?

4. What is the relationship between individual identities and collective or national identities like?

5. What is the role of cultural fictions and myths?

6. What is the role of objects that construct nationality and national identities?

7. How does the State have the power to institutionalize and spread national discourses and the interpretation of nationality?

8. What are the most relevant supports used by the State that structure nationality?

9. How much power do images have to construct nationality and national identities?

10. What gives power to images?

Chapter 1. Exploring Designing nationality

Introduction

The origin of the word “design” can be traced back to the root disegni which in Latin means drawing (Baxandal, 1990: 208). This act of drawing covers a metaphor of the previous process of projecting new worlds to live in, or to have as a reference. Otherwise, the anthropologist Juez situates the word design closer to designation, “from the Latin voice designare, which means to mark, to note for a determined purpose, then to designate” (Juez, 2002:13). Nevertheless, a mix between the two concepts can be made synthesizing design as the projection of a certain designation which transforms the way of seeing of the people involved.

Following this line of argument, it is possible to affirm that such image design is, in fact, a political action, conceptualizing politics as the mechanism by which collective action can be undertaken in any entity according to the social influence that someone can get. In this case, as Weber defines it, by politics is understood “only the leadership, or the influencing of the leadership, of a political association, hence today, of a state” (Weber, 2001: 77).  Besides, politics is the transformation of identities. According to Laclau and Mouffe, “politics is a terrain of struggle between agents whose identity, conceived under the form of interests, has set itself up at another level. This essential identity was thus fixed, once and for all, as an unalterable fact relating to the various forms of political and ideological representation” (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 20-21).  Thus, as something political concern, national design can be understood as the embodiment of ideological representation with images, attempting to create and re-create the identity of the citizens.

To understand the mechanisms of how National States design nationality functions among their populations, a theoretical framework is presented in this chapter. To do that, three sections will be developed.

In section I a brief review of what the State is and how it works is presented, with focus on the concepts of Gramci and Althusser. Gramsci’s essential question is how the state can dominate without constraint. According to him, it is done through ideology as a process of leadership and through hegemony which is the principle that enables a tacit consent through popular consensus. Althusser complements Gramsci’s approach because he includes institutions and organizations as part of the apparatus of the state which is producing in fact the hegemony of an ideology, what he calls the Ideological State Apparatus. This also works by ideology which, according to Zizek, structures our social reality, by spreading symbolic fictions to have the monopoly over cultural norms and discourses. This is done by what Bhabha calls the State apparatus of cultural fictions which is fully explained in the next section.

In section II, it is shown that the apparatus of cultural fiction requires three main resources to work which are: an existing common content, the power to institutionalize a chosen interpretation of nationality and a support for the content. In the first case, to understand how a common content, collective or national identity is created and maintained it is discussed what identity is. It is discussed that identity could be conceptualized as something fixed, as an entity identical to itself or as a process of identification. In the last case, the engine of nationalism and a collective identification would be the existence of imagined communities (Anderson) and the existence of inter-subjectivity which makes it possible to have common and articulated discourses among its members. Besides, Laclau considers that collectives’ identifications are made according to “the logic of hegemony” and the crystallization of a collective and unified human will which is a “quilting point” according to Lacan. This quilting point, according to Laclau and Gramci, is expressed by the figure of the State as the one who is tying and closing the structure of national imagination and the one who mediates nationalistic sentiments. In this sense, the State has the power to institutionalize a hegemonic interpretation of nationality. Those sentiments, as identity, change over time and the prevalence of one or of some of them depends on the historical context and the power of the different groups to prevail, to become a hegemonic group and to narrate their version of nationalism. The different kind of sentiments related to a nation are deeply analysed making a division into sentiments of property, belonging, difference, religion and of the organization to follow with the analysis of how they are structured using the figure of the a rope in Wittgenstein terms which would be tied by the State.

Finally, to analyse the support for the content or discourse, the role of objects and artifacts as instruments of the national community are developed. Thus, the channel to spread nationality discourses is the material culture: objects that are sense and information carriers like stamps, banknotes, monuments, statues among others. In this manner, such national objects and images portray information and sense about nationality, are instruments of the imagination of that national community and have an active role in keeping national memory alive. However, to fully understand why this happens, the social role of images is developed in the next section.

In section III, different conceptualizations of what an image is are presented, which include the conceptualization of Lacan as a “a cut of interpretation” and other authors such as Barthes for whom an image is a cut-out that is understood as a whole. However, to put the concept of an image into the aim of this research, an analysis of what gives power to images and the nature of such power is developed. For that reason, the social importance of the act of seeing, of representing, of interpreting, of imagining and of desiring as the sources that give power to images is deeply analysed. In doing so, in each case, the social importance of the design and designers of nationality done by the State is highlighted.

Finally, some conclusions will be developed.

Section I. The Ideological State Apparatus

The National State has been defined as a political association with sovereignty over a Nation, being the entity which exercises the territorial sovereignty, government and even the monopoly of physical violence over the nation (Weber, 1968: 904). The legitimacy of that modern state to have such powers is based on rules and any legitimacy needs to be recognized and would be validated on rational, traditional and charismatic grounds (Weber, 1958). As Weber highlights, rational ground rests “on the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority”, traditional ground rests “on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them” and charismatic ground rests “on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns” (Weber, 1958:140).

However, other authors questioned such legitimacy of the state’s affect on a nation because they consider that it should be reduced to limiting any attempt to condition the natural order of the market. As Hayek points out “we are mainly concerned with the limits that a free society must place upon the coercive powers of government” (Hayek, 1981: 41) and “the demands of those who suffer from state interference…are certain to receive popular sympathy and support” (Hayek, 2007: 150). In this context, for him, the affect of the state should be “minimal” (Hayek, 1981: 54). However, other authors, such as Rawls, believe that the state has the function of intervention in compensation tasks. For this reason, health, education and justice would be considered as places ruled by the state, and in favour of the disadvantaged. In that context, he noted that “the poor must be listened to” (Rawls, 2003: 219).  However, even with this emphasis, politics seems to be absent and the problem becomes how to organize the coexistence between people with different conceptions of the good, divided by philosophical doctrines, religious and moral grounds.

The solution could be the construction of Rawls’ principles of fair justice. Rawls, based on the idea of “public reason”, seeks to answer how the plurality of a government should be respected. He claims that there is a duty of civility to prevent individuals’ appeal to reasons that are specific to their religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, for the resolution of constitutional issues and basic questions of justice. Accordingly, questions of morality are located in the relationship between state and their people. He points out that “the state is not at liberty to abuse its own people (Rawls, 2000: 361) and “the individual’s relation to the State was claimed to be determinate of his moral identity” (Rawls, 2003: 101). Therefore, to defend principles of political order, political neutrality should be respected and it would be necessary to avoid and ignore the philosophical and moral controversies and “public reason” to reach a consensus freely around the principles of justice.

A critic to such conception comes from Chantal Mouffe who believes that to reach a unique moral consensus in a well-ordered society such a society would be in fact free of politics. As a consequence, far from leading to a democratic pluralistic society, that society manifested a strong tendency towards uniformity leaving little space “for dissent and contestation in the sphere of politics” (Mouffe, 2005: 146).

Another point of view came from John Maynard Keynes, who contributed to changing the focus of this analysis when he considered that there is no incompatibility between capitalism and democracy. For Keynes, the State has an active role in macroeconomic management based on a commitment to antagonistic classes, manifested in the relationship between capital and labour. Then, for Keynes “it is not the ownership of the instruments of production which is important for the state to assume. If the state is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary” (Keynes, 1997: 433). This could happen, even when “the Keynesian commitment became increasingly dependent upon economic concessions granted to groups of people organized as non market actors” (Ferguson and Rogers, 1984: 339).

Besides, the State could also be seen according to another dimension, one that sees it as an entity in itself or as a device whose existence depends on the human will. In the first case, for Guibert, the state would have to have “a simple, sound management, easy to rule. It shall resemble those big machines that by means of uncomplicated springs produce great effects. Such state’s force shall be born from its own force, its prosperity from its own prosperity. The time that destroys it all shall increase its power” (Guibert, 1772: 1). In the second case, as Hayek points out “since man has himself created the institutions of society and civilization, he must also be able to alter them at will so as to satisfy his desires or wishes” (Hayek, 1994: 7).

However, for Marx and other authors, the State has not existed for all eternity. According to Engels “there have been societies which have managed without it, which had no notion of the state or state power. At a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage” (Engels, 1972: 232).

For Lenin, the capitalist State creates an apparatus of rule which stands outside society as a whole and acts through coercion. He points out that “when there appears such a special group of men occupied solely with government, and who in order to rule need a special apparatus of coercion to subjugate the will of others by force-prisons, special contingents of men, armies, etc.-then there appears the state” (Lenin, 1929: 7).

However, other Marxist voices are contrary to this view about state coercion over subjugated people. Among them, Gramsci denies that the subordinate class is simply the passive tool of the dominant ideology, because, as he points out, “in the liberal nation the flows of power are multi-directional and the state nationalism becomes a popular movement founded on consent” (Gramsci, 1971: 322). Gramsci’s essential question is how the state can dominate without constraint (Barret, 2004)[1] and his answer is that State can dominate through ideology and hegemony. For him, ideology plays an active role as a process of leadership through which dominated classes of nations consented their own domination by ruling classes, “as opposed to being simply forced or coerced into accepting inferior positions” (Gramsci, 1971: 53)[2]. Besides, “hegemony is the principle that enables this tacit consent through popular consensus. Hegemony mediates between the individual and the exercise of choice, and hegemony permeates the structures within which choices are made possible; it alters our knowledge about the world.” (Gramsci, 2004: 82-83).

Althusser complements Gramsci’s approach. He thinks that civil society, associations, institutions and organizations are part of this process of mass programming and the state is articulated with a number of groups within society, groups which depend on state support. As Althusser explains, no one can hold state power over a period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over institutions and organizations such as religion, education, the family, the political parties, the trade unions, the media and the cultural apparatus. In this way, as pointed out by Schmitt, “all matters that up to that moment were social, turn into state matters, and all sectors that were ‘neutral’ – religion, culture, education, economy – stop being ‘neutral’ in the sense of non-state” (Schmitt, 1996: 22) and they turn into State matters. In this way, Althusser includes institutions and organizations as part of the apparatus of the state which is producing in fact the hegemony of an ideology. As he said: “I shall call the Ideological State Apparatus a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions” (Althusser, 1977: 65).

He adds that the State apparatus functions by violence whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses function by ideology, a representational system that would explain the causes and effects of the lived experience and even the alienation in the imaginary representation of people’s conditions of existence. For Althusser “ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence (Althusser, 1977: 75). The definition of the word Ideology is similar to the word Idea that derives from Ideim, which means ‘to see’. Besides, according to Zizek, ideology could be considered as an unconscious fantasy[3] that structures social life (Zizek, 1994). As Zizek states in his book “The Sublime Object of Ideology”, “the fundamental level of the ideology, is not that of the illusion that masks the real status of things but that of a fantasy (an unconscious one) that structures our social reality. Ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build to escape the insupportable reality; in its basic dimension it is a fantasy-construction which serves as a support of our ‘reality’ itself: an “illusion’ which structures our effective, real social relations” (Zizek, 1989: 45). In the same way, ideology “is needed to provide people with a kind of imaginary ‘map’ of the social totality, in a way that it helps people to find its path within it” (Eagleton, 1991: 150).

In this sense, from the Ideological State Apparatus, to the hegemony of a dominant group, a monopoly over cultural norms is exercised, producing the idea that existing norms, practices, beliefs and institutions are natural and inevitable. Once in the state, those elites need to constantly educate and re-educate their communities through the intervention over all discourses or fictions. An example of this type of intervention could be the idea of nationality. This could be done, among other resources, through the use of “compulsory state-controlled primary education, state-organized propaganda, official rewriting of history and militarism” (Anderson, 1983:101). Furthermore, as Edmund Morgan points out, “the success in the governmental tasks…demands fictions’ acceptance, the voluntary suspension of incredulity” (Morgan, 1988: 13) and to tell the citizens a national common history and a national common myth of origin. This production of fictions could be called the state apparatus of cultural fiction. As Hommi Bhabba points out, “nations are imaginary constructs that depend for their existence on an apparatus of cultural fictions” (Bhabba, 1990: 49).

Section II. The State apparatus of cultural fictions

The way ideology structures social reality is by spreading symbolic fictions. As Zizek points out, “it should be accepted that everything we have are symbolic fictions”, and “all we are dealing with are symbolic fictions, the plurality of discursive universes, never the reality” (Zizek, 1994: 17). Those symbolic fictions project a light, a horizon, a vision that would contain people and make them feel that all the individual and collective efforts can have meaning if they follow a given idea.

Symbolic fictions are carried out by myths. In fact the origin of the word Myth comes from Mythus which means “story”, although “myth can also be taken more broadly as a belief or credo” (Segal, 2004: 4). The idea of Myth, can also be taken from Barthes, not only as an archaeological reservoir of magic Greek tales, but also as a current way of thinking that is culturally reducing the fact’s interpretation by offering an accepted path to the reader of stories (Barthes, 1970). Besides, a myth, as stated by Levi-Strauss, could be understood as an instinct of knowledge that tries to find certainties by simplifying existing or non-existent possibilities from similar situations becoming a cause and effect from where the person disposes of the illusion by reading what will come. As Levi Strauss explains, referential myths respond to an organizational need in view of the existent options (Levi Strauss, 1964) and (Levi Strauss, 1966).

A myth could also be an attempt to organize the coming into being of life, which places the person as more or less active and ignorant of what life will reveal. Those myths would offer several essentialist and anticipatory thoughts, working as mechanisms to diminish the anxiety generated by the absence of absolute access to the real or by the impossibility of knowing what is to come. In such cases, a myth would be always a story, a story understood as “the period of delay between the setting of the enigma and the solution” (Cowie, 1996: 55).

Moreover, as Barfield pointed out, traditionally “myth is commonly used as a term for purely fictitious narrative that often involves supernatural people, actions, or events, but which also embodies popular ideas about the natural world and historical events in a given culture….Such stories have stood the test of time, sloughing off aspects of marginal interest and replacing them with a better match for the deeper, less-conscious anxieties of the listener. These imperceptibly evolving stories were accepted as factually true and had a profound influence on how the culture structured and interpreted the experiential environment” (Barfield, 1997: 334-335).

In this sense, as it has been mentioned above, the hegemonic elites disseminate their ideologies through the use of symbolic fictions taken from myths. Therefore, the arguments of national discourses could be reduced to mythologies, national mythologies that existed, were raked up and, when they did not, they were invented with the aim of elaborating a feeling of belonging and of the common fate.  In the last case, as Hobsbawn explained, the particularity of invented traditions is that they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations. As he pointed out “Invented tradition is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past” (Hobsbawn, 1992: 1).

These mythologies, stories and plots are spread by the state by using particular objects provoking each person to feel part of their nation. In this sense, the plot of the nationality, the imagined community, is greatly written and propagated by the state and the discourse has to penetrate the whole society “not merely to illiterate masses, but even to literate masses reading” (Anderson, 1983:140). This is done in educational books and the use of flags, shields, banknotes and public sculptures among others[4] which give the chance to massively reproduce the myths that sustain the event of the nation, fixing such discourses mind by mind and sector by sector of the nation. In this way, the state projects its own signs of nationality, confronted with the other signs fostering and settling its selective reading of the national reality. In doing so, the state tries to capture the power to embody national organizations and the power to define nationality as a whole and especially the ideal citizen who would inhabit this nation. As a consequence, the power of defining is a major act of exercising hegemony (Hall, 1997: 348).

In addition, the apparatus of cultural fictions is the process of shaping the person’s thoughts, ideas and frameworks, producing and reproducing the nation’s consciousness and ideology. It requires three main resources to work. These resources include an existing common content, the power to institutionalize an interpretation of nationality and support for the content which will be developed in the following section.

II.1. The resources of the state apparatus of cultural fiction

As it has been mentioned above, the apparatus of cultural fictions requires three main resources to work such us existing common content, the power to institutionalize a chosen interpretation of nationality and a support for the content.

To start with the existence of common content, it is necessary to highlight what a common-collective or national identity is and how it is created and maintained, starting with the concept of identity and going on to national identity.

Different paradigms are competing in the conceptualization of identity. For instance some authors, such as Leibniz, understand identity as something fixed, as an entity identical to itself and yet other authors understand identity as a process of identification.

In the first case, the idea of identity lies in the existence of an entity with something pertaining to itself, “as the real nature of self” (Leibniz, 1996: 232), a testimony of the existence of a pure self. Accordingly, a common agreement based on etymology situates the word identity as from Latin idem, the same[5]. This traditional conceptualization offers the certainty of the impossibility to discern between identicals, an absolute correspondence that encourages people to define themselves as identical things coherent with themselves and to see some conditions of identity as something with a centre as a fixed quality. This would be something “unique and singular” (Jung, 1958: 9), crystallized in itself, the owner of static features beyond the eyes of the beholder. For that reason, that entity has to occupy the empty space of its inscription (Hegel, 1998: 7), taking such space by itself and just for its sake.

The problem with the conceptualization of believing in identities as something given, is that it defines a place of power by arguing the natural right to justify activities of limitation and exclusion to whom belong and do not belong to this body. It sustains the right of a natural order as coming from a gift of god or to invoke a natural selection law to interpret the social field, even if others could be left behind. Moreover, as this identity is supported in itself, it seems that it does not need anything or anybody else to be explained or even to transcend. Thus, this lack of any external ties or shared features detaches identity from the commitment to the deep recognition of the other as part of it, with no need for the “law of friendship and contracts” among parts (Mauss, 1990: 104), and is a kind of external and magic gift that is coming from the symbolic order. As Zizek points out, “the symbolic order emerges from a gift, an offering that marks its content as neutral in order to pose as a gift: when a gift is offered, what matters is not its content but the link between giver and receiver established when the receiver accepts the gift.” (Zizek, 2007: 12).

In the second case, other authors have another point of view, a view that understands identity as a process of identification which is the process of acquiring identity through shapes, contents and dreams from the outside. Identification can also be understood as the process through which an image is assumed as our own, as the transformation that takes place in a subject when such an image is assumed. Like a man recognizing himself in his image (Lacan, 1977: 1-18) or as Freud defines it, identification is when an attribute belonging to another is taken as belonging to him/herself (Freud, 1975: 50). Within this line of argument, the process of identification would be a process of making sense and of acquiring meaning, a process in which institutions and people would be made by a series of identifications.

As a consequence of the process, any identity would be just a transitory moment in the process of identifying with something external, something different from other things that is producing the differentiation of an entity among others. That means to identify from a difference (Hegel, 1998: 229), because as also Heidegger points out “difference is identity” (Heidegger, 2003: 13). The mechanism to work is described by Chantal Mouffe who notes that “an identity’s constitution is always based on excluding something and establishing a violent hierarchy between the two remaining poles” (Mouffe, 2005: 141).

The way that this process of identification can become a process of collective identity could be explained using the concept of inter-subjectivity of Lacan by which there is an articulation of reciprocity and symmetry in a dual relation of one with the other, just like one with one’s image in the mirror, but now one with an enlarged image of us integrated by the people who compose that collective identity. Besides, to approach the concept of inter-subjectivity, Lacan focuses on questions of language due to its importance in each person’s structure. He believes that language always implies the existence of another subject, as an interlocutor and highlights that “the unconscious is the discourse of the Other” (Lacan, 1977: 60). From this point, Lacan defines discourse as the essence of inter-subjectivity, as “a social bond founded in language” (Lacan, 1975: 21), while the existence of inter-subjectivity can be defined as the result of common and articulated discourses among its members[6]. In a Nation, the discourses that awake the process of collective identification could be real, invented or imagined and all have the same power.

In this way, Anderson remarks on the existence of imagined communities as the engine of nationalism and a collective’s identification. For him, a nation is an imagined community[7] because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings” (Anderson, 1983: 7). Therefore, discourses and narratives could be considered as the agency of the event which symbolically structures the national imagination.

According to Anderson, a Nation is an imagined community constructed by new political entities which produce, reproduce and validate the figure of the Nation as the correct one for representing such communities (Anderson, 1991: 22). Consequently, the crystallization and materialization of a collective imagination is a “quilting point” in Lacanean sense, a point without positive identity but working just as a reference from where the rest of questions can be recognized and organized. For Lacan “this point around which all concrete analysis of discourse must operate I shall call a quilting point. Everything radiates out from and is organized around this signifier, similar to these little lines of force that an upholstery button forms on the surface of a material. It is the point of convergence that enables everything that happens in this discourse to be situated retroactively and prospectively” (Lacan, 1997: 267-8).

For Laclau, this quilting point would be expressed by the figure of the state which would have an institutionalized role as a mediator of nationalistic sentiments. He develops the concept of populism in understanding attachments of national sentiments fixed to a difference as a representation of collective identity[8]. For him, although there are differences between populism and nationalism[9], “populism is settled in an open rhetoric that allows particularities to get involved in a discursive totality, incarnated in the name of people” (Laclau, 2004: 225). People are understood as a joining materialization of multiple demands which require a particular demand to assume and to institutionalize the existence of the whole social field as an entity (Laclau, 2004).

Besides, Laclau considers that popular identities are made around tension and negotiation, between universality and particularity, but producing the approach of the social field according to “the logic of hegemony” (Laclau, 2004: 226). That hegemony involves the pivoting of the national question over other collectives’ identifications and in order to do so a national representation needs to dominate other differences, consolidating and closing the rest of the differences and demands in its national totality.  In this regard a Nation is a hegemonic construction where the national becomes the main way to understand any other social organization, placing other identities or belongings in second place.

As it was mentioned before, the state has an institutionalized role as a mediator of nationalistic sentiments. Those sentiments, as identity, change over time and the prevalence of one or of some of them depends on the historical context and the power of different groups to prevail, to become a hegemonic group and to narrate their version of nationalism. In this sense, the state has the power to institutionalize and interpret nationality.

To understand the different types of national sentiments that exists a deep description of each nationalistic sentiment and its structure will be developed. This conceptual work that follows will allow us to analyse the Argentine case in a historical context and to see what national sentiments and national discourses have prevailed in different moments of the country, something that will be done in chapter 3.

The common content: National sentiments and its structure

Beginning with the analysis of national sentiments, it is found that during the last years of the 18th century and the first years of the 19th century, the idea of nationality was predominant in America and Europe and was spread to the rest of the world. As Shumway points out “notions of universal brotherhood gave way to an upsurge of nationalistic sentiment in which each country affirmed its ethnic, linguistic and mythical uniqueness” (Shumway, 2002: 1)[10].

In modern times, the presence and persistence of national common sentiments become a central question of nationality. For some authors, people of the same Nation live their nationalistic feelings as something natural and given, where nations exercise individual love instances (Anderson, 1983)[11], satisfy recognition needs or bring them a sense of personal reference (Bhabba, 1990: 133). Meanwhile, for others like Harris, national sentiments give “a sense of stability and rootedness, a sense of difference, of distinctiveness and separateness, a sense of continuity with previous generations of the cultural unit and a sense of destiny and mission, of shared hopes and aspirations of that community” (Harris, 1995: 131).

On the contrary, for other authors, the idea of nation should include not only feelings, values, ideas and beliefs, but also the political dynamic of the self interest of particular groups that are trying to impose their own vision of what the nation is. As Gramsci says, “patria is a passion… though passions could be only synonyms of economic interest” (Gramsci, 2004: 404-405).  In between, a plurality of discourses can be found that highlight specific sentiments or dimensions such as of belonging, of property, of difference, of sharing, of religion and of the organization of the social field.

II.1.a. A dimension of belonging: nationality as a home

The English word nation is derived from the Latin noun natio which means to be born. As Raymond Willams noted, “we are born into relationships which are used to being settled in a place” (Willams, 2003: 191). This original place, a territory, generates strong attachments, feelings of belonging and become an identity definer. In Grosby words, “the nation is a territorial community of nativity, one is born into a nation” (Grosby, 2005: 7). When a person is born, he or she must fit into an already existing nation and that nation will hold that person to the stony materiality of its eternal figure. As a consequence of that, the nation gives the security of belonging to the permanent existence of that eternal being that the nation is supposed to be, by fixing certainties of a person’s and of a given community’s coming to being, even when the person ends its life.

Following this argument, national sentiments would be founded in that intergeneration experience, linking people to familiar, kin or ethnic ties, close to the Greek idea of patris to the Latin patria or fatherland (Strauss, 1993: 195).  For this reason, nation and nationalism are also defined as the motherland or fatherland or even as ‘homeland” (Bhabha, 1990: 317), where a home means where I began, and where I shall return to an ideal place that will always be the same and will remain in its place. This eternal place, a Nation, has been placed for their descendants and ancestors too (Benjamin, 1979: 47).

For that reason, the nation can be seen as a home, as the “Real”, in Lacanean sense (Lacan, 1988: 141) a place where a member of a Nation can always return, something absolute that is beyond the person (Lacan, 1988: 66), but something that fixes the life, the social experience of that person and something structural for the mental stability of the person.

II.1.b. The proprietary sentiment

Weber defines national sentiments as “specific sentiments of solidarity” in the sense that “it is proper to expect from certain groups specific sentiments of solidarity in the face of other groups. Thus, this concept belongs to the sphere of values” (Weber, 1971: 172)[12]. Renan also sees Nations as “having in the future a large scale of solidarity” (Renan, 1882: 19).

However, other authors, such as Locke, believe that solidarity grows not from values but because of interest[13], in a utilitarian sense as belonging to the exercise of self rights and interest. Therefore, and based on this approach, a Nation could be considered as a framework from where an individual or a group would share values of solidarity but also a framework that can guarantee the interest of the proprietary of this territory. For this reason the purpose of the government of any nation is often seen as having no other end but the “preservation of property” (Locke, 1991, 329).  Besides, in the origin of modern nations the owner’s condition resembled that of a citizen (Locke, 1963). By his side Rousseau includes non-owners in the social contract, but he excludes slaves and women in that membership (Rousseau, 1960: 188).

From the rights to private property and from the exercise of citizenship, the owners achieve their political rights over the rights of others, such as monarchs or non-owners. Therefore, modern time elites require that those who inhabit the common space called nation respect the established and constructed order, a mandate that replaces a monarch’s divine mandate, a mandate that rules the group.  In this sense, nationalism does not originate as a form of social commitment but as a result of the interaction of State elites and the people. As Marx points out, “in the early modern period states sought to legitimate their authority and the masses sought to contest or collude with states” (Marx, 2003: 258).

II.1.c. The principle of difference: our blood, our language, our culture

Nationality is given either by the right of soil or by the right of blood. In the first case, as in Argentina, nationality is given if someone is born within national boundaries independently of the origins of their parents. In the second case nationality is acquired by being a blood descendant of a person of that nationality. Thus, national legislation considers it possible to find the sharing of blood as something that defines nationality[14], something that happened when nations or people themselves gave significance to the biological facts to classify their relatedness. For instance Weber highlights the importance of recognition or social classification according to blood or ethnic belonging while suggesting that it is possible to call ethnic groups those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent “because of similarity of physical type or of custom or of both” (Weber, 1919: 389).

However, the link between national belonging and ethnic origin is difficult to rationally sustain nowadays and can be seen just as a transit between a natural to cultural interpretation of the theme (Wade, 2007: 11). In that way, and as Hobsbawn points out about nations and nationalism, “yet the genetic approach to ethnicity is plainly irrelevant, since the crucial base of an ethnic group as a form of social organization is cultural rather than biological” (Hobsbawn, 1992: 63).

Ludwing von Mises points out something else which is that “a nation that believes in itself and its future, a nation that means to stress the sure feeling that its members are bound to one another not merely by accident of birth but also by the common possession of a culture that is valuable above all to each of them” (Mises, 2006: 76). In this way, the consolidation and transmission of the people’s culture is what encourages national sentiments and ties people in terms of language, as a culture that can be expressed linguistically. Then, for Herder, “the nation in question is not racial but linguistic and cultural” (Herder, 2004: 29), while a shared common language is pre-eminently considered the normal basis of culture and nationality.

In addition, what defines how a group is, “what they speak, what they think, what they do or feel depends on the organization of their social experience, the data of immediate experience” (Chisholm, 1976: 23), and more so the differences of belonging. The difference pertaining to race, ethnic or social origin, culture, language or birth, only have meaning when its social significance is useful for another different “biological” group to justify their protection towards the first group, “as a doctrine of exclusion to legitimize domination of phonetically diverse groups” (Guibernau, 1996: 89). In this way, questions of classification according to physical differences “maintains an indisputable strength which derives from the visibility of physical traits” (Guibernau, 1996: 86).

Therefore and as Zizek says, there are no such people as Christians, Jews, or black people because there are only systems of classification induced by interests and fears of social groups (Zizek, 2000: 397). From there, it is possible to deduce that the threatening intruder, the foreigner, the weird or the different one, are nothing but a projection to the exterior, the incarnation of antagonisms and the embodiment of that antagonism in a stereotype which justifies a social reaction towards the one identified as the other. Meanwhile, it could be deduced that classification and difference or the social signification of the difference, and the social choice of acquiring a specific system of classification instead of another, are part of a game of power in itself, which is why the place where it settles is essentially political, in the general sense of the term.

In this context, in early modern times, as Marx points out “nationalism was the “glue” produced by an exclusionary state mechanism in which popular “passions” coincided with political efforts to secure loyalty and legitimacy. The exclusion of internal enemies was a means of achieving this unity: both States and peoples (but principally the former) seized on religious differences—of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims—to draw the boundaries of the nation”. (Marx, 2003: 258).

II.1.d. The sentiment of sharing

To some authors, popular and national culture contains the essence of what joins and what gives each of its members the joy of being part of that group. This centre, that thing, can be seen as a magical spirit that inhabited a given people at a given time, like Hegel named as a “spirit of the age” (Hegel, 1997: 32). Renan focuses on his concept of the “will of the people” (Renan, 1982: 170) to produce a social contract, a voluntary ascription based on the right of the population to determine its own destiny. This sentiment is considered as a kind of joy among the individuals who compose the national society and that is constantly reinforced by people boasting of having done great things together and the wishes to “do more things together in the future” (Renan, 2007: 49).  Besides, it is possible to understand that thing belonging to a certain community, as Zizek put forth, as the referent that is holding together a given national community without depending on a theme. That “Thing” is materialized in a group of social practices, where the cause or national thing is nothing more than the way in which the subjects of a given community organize their joy.  Thus, the bond that links the members of a community implies a shared relationship towards a “Thing”, towards something that can be seen as the incarnation of the enjoyment (Zizek, 2006: 125).

For that reason and as defined by Zizek, “national identification is by definition sustained by a relationship towards the nation qua Thing, our thing… the Cosa Nostra: our nation, revolution, and so on” (Zizek, 2006: 305).  This Thing is internally a tool for integration, for unification of the society in a tangible form, and is a consequence of the social ties that are growing inside the collective body. Then, as Zizek developed, the Thing revolves around the fact that it means something to us, conditioning our life style and mobilizing us to defend what we love most as a group, what is embodying our joy. In this manner, this relationship towards the Thing, would be what emerges “when we speak of the menace of our ‘way of life’” (Zizek, 1993: 201), a menace incarnated by something as a socially constructed opposite to ourselves.

II.1.e. The religious dimension

In modern times, the figure of the Nation replaces past religious and spiritual sentiments. Accordingly, many feelings holding people’s nationality are closer to sacred beliefs, just as the idea of being a chosen community, the nationalistic messianism, the religious imagining or the cult of the past. As Anderson explains, the Nation “suggests a strong affinity with religious imagining” (Anderson, 1983: 10). For Renan, the figure of the Nation is seen as a soul, a spiritual principle of sacrifice and devotion. For him, the national sentiments rest on “sharing, in the past, a glorious heritage and regrets” (Renan, 1996: 41). Then, in his view it is possible to realize how in modern times nationalistic sentiments are replacing past religious and spiritual sentiments, pushing spiritual beliefs into the national sphere.

As a consequence of that, belonging to the nation is transformed by the society into a kind of civil religion organized around a sacred flag, whose followers engage in periodic sacrifice to protect and unify the group. Thus, “when soldiers swore the oath of allegiance to the flag, the flag attained the status of a sacred shrine. The pledge to the flag assumed the function of a religious rite sanctioned by a priest. Enticed by the magic implicit in the pledge, millions of soldiers have marched to their death throughout history” (Hoffmann, 1996: 11).

The first reason that nations acquired for themselves religious sentiments can be found in questions related to time. A feeling that has mutated from the divine sphere to the national sphere is how time is experienced. In that way, nations bring “a messianic time, a simultaneity of past and future” (Anderson, 1983: 24), something that also gives sense of continuity with previous generations of the national unit. This is accomplished through memories, myths and traditions, giving a sense of destiny and mission to people by fixing certainties on the coming into being of the national life. Hence, as Brennan points out, in the daily national life “the ritualization of memory, celebration and all those forms of magical behaviour signify defeat of the irreversibility of time” (Brennan, 1988:51). The nation performs this by attaching the person to something that transcends him or her.

The second reason why nations took some aspects from religion can be found in the personal attempt to survive death[15] and to belong to a nation that offers people a resource against the irreversibility of the passing of time, a kind of anti-death process (Brennan, 1999: 50).  As a consequence of this fusion between national sentiments with religion, nations are transformed into a sort of divinity for their citizens acquiring power and natural rights. These natural rights can justify any action done just for the sake of the nation because of “spiritual motives and purposes of the nation” (Grimley, 2004: 99) and just for that reason, the nation can ask for any sacrifices (Balakrishnan and Anderson, 1996: 208).

II.1.f. An organizational dimension

Many individuals love their nationality. This is supported by their desire to have something from where to hold on to, something to be part of which would acts as a principle of social organization as opposed to the nothingness. This kind of collective inter-subjectivity is achieved with the figure of the Nation and can act as a kind of defence against people’s fear of lacking structure, the horror of social uncertainty, loneliness or of being in a collective fragmented body (Lacan, 1971: 4). Therefore, the acceptance of a principle of organization could be seen as a fundamental foundation which underlies all social relations and organizational laws and is what makes social existence possible[16]. The Law would appear as a mechanism to regulate the political and social relationship of the group. It is the reason why this law is already a “principle of organization as opposed to nothingness, is the acceptance of the law for the simple fact that it is law” (Zizek, 1993: 51), where the ruler is still the only source of social order, and where the individual wills are still fully structured or organized by such law. In this way, when people are challenged by a radical anomie, the requirement of order is pushing people to accept any order. As mentioned by Hobbes, “the total emptiness, the nature, the total fragmentation or an essential disorder legitimizes any Leviathan’s action, if after that action the order is achieved” (Hobbes, 2007: 190).

On that account, it is possible to see the structure of nationalism as a channel or a mirage for the social order and for social integration, an integration of fragmented groups into a wider figure which can contain them. Thus, it is easy to find this figure in times of dynamic social masses, like modern times produce something that Grosby highlights when he understands nationalism “as a vehicle for this permanent, yet transformable, longing for community for the increasingly dislocated masses” (Grosby, 2000: 279).

As it has been described, there is no one dimension to analyse the existence of nationalistic sentiments. The complexity and consequent difficulty to define just one dimension would lie in the fact that those sentiments are flowing across political-economic and cultural dimensions that organize the world, the personal and social experience according to circumstances, such as historical background, productive demands and social and personal requirements. Besides, all mentioned dimensions are articulated by contextual particularities manifested in different contents or axes. The relationships and resemblance among those sentiments as long as they form bonds with each other are creating a sort of net among the various ‘threads’ of which nationalist discourse is woven and analysed using the image of Wittgenstein’s rope.

II.1.g. The structure of national sentiments: a rope

The relationship between those sentiments can be figured as a kind of textile or rope, using the idea put forth by Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein, 1953)[17]. Wittgenstein shows a rope as a complicated network of similarities and relationships overlapping and criss-crossing, in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. As Wittgenstein points out, “what ties the ship to the wharf is a rope, and the rope consists of fibres, but it does not get its strength from any fibre which runs through it from one end to the other, but from the fact that there is a vast number of fibres overlapping” (Wittgenstein, 1953: 87). Besides, one of its constitutive fibres only could be visible for a while before being hidden underneath another in the next segment.

The rope could be seen as the representation of the nationalistic sentiments as a whole. This figure is used to understand that no dimension alone could represent or symbolize the whole collective sentiment due to the fact that national sentiment is formed by the weaving of the different constitutive dimensions and their inner relations. Furthermore, the figure of the rope is useful for seeing how national sentiments are constituted and also to understand what gives strength to national identity. In that way, it can be said that in the dimensions of nationalities, such as the proprietary, belonging, difference, religion and organizational ones, sentiments are quilted, incarnated by one figure that is structuring all of them. This structural dimension, a quilting point, is the State and represents the whole nation. This State is also tracking the civil society, holding and tying the totality of the different dimensions of nationality at its end, and the one which keeps the woven fibres of the rope united producing what Gramsci defined as hegemony (Gramsci, 1996: 197). This state is also something so stable that it can support any movement of the rope, being that the state is the formation to the organization of Nations and their attached feelings.

Consequently, the State supports traditions, even invented ones, with the aim to empathize the invariability and stability of the socially woven nation. As Hobswam pointed out, the object of real or created tradition is to stress the invariability, stability and the embodiment of consensus of a given group (Hobsbawm, 2002: 140), while “their justifications are technical rather than ideological” (Hobsbawm, 2002: 3). Accordingly, Roberto Da Matta distinguishes between the “ritual of inversion” and “ritual of reinforcement”. Thus, the first case is associated with a rupture of a social classification system, placing in the same area what was usually belonging to different spaces, integrating elements which otherwise would be normally excluded from each other. For instance, Peron founded in Argentina the cheerful festivity of the first of May as Labor Day taking an anarchist day that representing a worker’s struggle. In the second case, the ritual of reinforcement tends to reinforce the validity of the existing social classification mechanism clarifying each place within the social stratum. As an example of both cases, Peronism considers the 17 of October of 1945 as the starting point of the transformation of the ritual of inversion, with workers taking former forbidden places such as a public space in the May square, and in a ritual of reinforcement assuming and confirming its own place beyond the workers and transforming the event into a spectacle (Da Matta, 1991: 93).

II.2. The power to institutionalize a chosen interpretation of nationality

The maintenance of one collective representation of the whole social woven nation also requires the power to be preserved as an organic and organized whole and to be fixed in all participants’ communal imagination. In this context, national imagination can be seen as a theatre where the constituted power is displayed, applied and maintained. This theatre and space of power the state and the dominant groups have are the main authors of that idea of the imagined community and are responsible for the institutionalization of national sentiments. This is connected to memory because, as Connerton explains, the causes of what is happening in the present world could be interpreted as connected with past factors, which influence or distort the experience of the present (Connerton, 1989: 2).

Within this notion, the construction and maintenance of references that testify and give continuity to memory is the central practice in the attempt to keep the visualization of a collective identity throughout time, on the part of those that want to keep that identity or those that want to destroy it. But in order for all of this to be kept, an existing support system that allows identity to achieve continuity in time is required and memory is also very important. It would seem that without memory this laboriously found identity could get lost; it only lives in the moment, its conceptual capacities of connecting and relating issues that have been set from experience and to be located in the world would disappear. Thus, the owner of this identity would seem to break down into pieces and everything that was constructed by it or from it would seem to vanish. It would only remain a thinking substitute without duration, as put forth by Candeau, without the remembrance of its origin, without the conscience of itself (Candeau, 1998: 15), it would fall under the control of immediacy.

For this reason, and due to the importance of memory, the control of the basic objects that are supporting the collective memory could be seen as a resource to condition the hierarchy of power among different collectives’ identities, redefining the shared memory as the constituent base of a social order. Connerton points out that “it is an implicit rule that participants in any social order must presuppose a shared memory to the extent that their memories of a society’s past diverge, to the extent its members can share neither experiences nor assumptions” (Connerton, 1989: 3).

Otherwise, if a collective story has no limit and if everyone in a social group shares the same illusion, the illusion would be constantly confirmed and reinforced becoming a collective assumption. The myth, as a speech of the collective assumption and memory, starts to speak through the individuals (Barthes, 1990: 14) and circulates thanks to the existence of some support[18] something that will be fully developed in next part.

II.2. A support for the discourse, a myth, a fiction

The idea of discourse may be thought of as different ways of referring or constructing knowledge, since any series of events exist as much as they are caught by the narrative of a discourse. In this way, discourses may be understood as the materiality of sense, but organized from the articulation and exhibition of a chain of associated attributes, being so, and according to Lacan, a device that dominates and rules all the words (Lacan, 2001: 117).

Therefore, the Ideological State Apparatus and specifically the apparatus of cultural fiction contribute by action or omission, to form, consolidate and spread ways of seeing the national identity. This created representation of a Nation can be expressed through the channel of material culture just by the discourse that a simple and everyday object is carrying by the spectator’s eyes. This is what makes objects very structural in the national inter-subjectivity because they are information and sense carriers such as those created and spread by the state through stamps, banknotes, monuments and statues among others. In this manner, such national objects that portray information and sense about nationality are also instruments of the imagination of that national community. Consequently, objects become fundamental elements in this process since their role in society is to make the social structure of the nation become tangible and visible, as well as to make visible the national fictions. In doing so, those objects are also transforming the matter and its visual presentation into meaning. As Bordieu believes, using meaningful objects, the state “contributes to the production and reproduction of the instruments to elaborate the social reality” (Bordieu, 1997: 230) and this is what makes national objects and images very necessary for the state.

Accordingly, the projection of image and identity through national artifacts would be understood not only as a container of the national identity, but also as a dynamic message about what someone considers that nationality is. In this way, all national objects act as educational institutions that work in valuing and rejecting some association about what the nation is, and control the parameters of knowledge, fixing the meaning of the experiences of the individual human subject and framing the social reality in a certain way as an ideological activity. Hence, this frame functions as the official symbolic matrix where the “me” of the individual socially participates (Lacan: 1971: 5-7). Moreover, such national objects are also instruments of the imagination of that national community by fixing a succession of common representations. Thus, as a marbled national hero is pointing with his finger at what needs to be done, the official apparatus of image and identity production is also telling that person how he/she should act and be. Then, nationality can be seen as a process of identification with a nation. Lastly, national objects could also be seen as the support of nationality, while they are the mediums of representation of that organized community and “channels of transmission, visualization, (reinforcement) and maintenance” (Levi-Strauss, 1964: 108) of that community as such.

As it has been developed up until this moment, the support for the nationalistic discourse is expressed through the channel of material culture, by the discourse that a simple and everyday object and image is carrying in the spectator’s eyes. However, to fully understand why this could happen, the social role of images is developed. Thus, it is shown that different conceptualization of what an image is and the social importance of the act of seeing, of representing, of interpreting, of imagining and of desiring will be developed as the sources that give power to these images.

Section III. The social and political life of images

As it was mentioned before, national identities are built in a process of identification which is related to the social life of images. For this reason, it is important first to analyse what an image is.

There are many definitions of what an image is. As Mitchell pointed out, Plato relates the definition of image to that of an idea, whose root idea means to see (Mitchell, 2006: 348). Likewise, the image has also been defined as imitation in itself relating its name to the Greek term imitari, to imitate (Barthes, 1991: 21). Later, Maimonides defines the image as likeness such as in the “man’s creation in the image and likeness of God[19]” (Mitchell, 1986: 31), as a series of predicates, listing similarities and differences, as “this essential reality of a thing” (Mitchell, 1986: 32).

Second, as it has been developed in section I, there is no identity until it is materialized in some form. Accordingly, an identity would be no more than matter composed by a group of strokes, a beam of features that are summarized in a few traces that represent the “being” (Heidegger, 2002: 46). However, that traces must also contain something so valuable that it would speak in name of someone, transmit something that differentiates someone from other identities and from other marks in the self-reference within the universe of marks. This mark would produce a cut of what one thing is and what it is not, emerging from the action of assuming a particular image and leaving something aside. Thus, at the same time an image can be defined as an intentional cut-out of the world surrounding us, “a cut of interpretation” (Lacan, 1977: 270) which reaches the status of an entity in itself.

This “cut out” definition follows the idea that an image is the consequence of the crystallization of an instant and of isolating something from the visible surrounding world, framing or cutting the continuous picture that is around which appears to eyes as a whole. As Barthes describes “I am already cutting off the continuity that is before me” (Barthes, 2002: 225). Thus, an image is a cut-out that is understood as a whole, as a meaningful unit linked to the act of consciousness that accompanies it. In any case, “it is a captivating and fascinating whole” (Lacan, 1997: 3) from the natural and believable world, displaying the content that the image is performing.  Furthermore, this act of marking implies the assumption of something and the rejection of other, as an act of cutting. As Saussure stated about how signs are made of a cut in language, a sign for him is based exclusively on “relations and differences with other signs…in the language itself, there are only differences” (Saussure, 1990: 116-118). In a parallel way, even identities can be produced by this act of cutting.

Third, and from a psychological point of view, an image is the integration of parts of what is seen as a fascinating totality by the mind, like the one someone saw with the image of his/her body in the mirror, an image “which establish[es] a relation between the organism and its reality” (Lacan, 1977: 4). Therefore, this totality is also working as an organizational anti-chaos mechanism that allows people to find sense. On the one hand, this sense can come from the information that each part of any image transports, acting as words which articulate information in the way of a text. On the other hand, the strength of an image arises from instantaneous, synthetic, organic and organized parts that confuse the perceptions in the spectator, naturalizing or presenting an assembly of fragments as some meaningful and a reliable totality.

However, to understand the effect that images generate in the way nationality and the national reality would be seen it is necessary to analyse the nature of the power of images. For that reason, the analysis of the social importance of the act of seeing, of representing, of interpreting, of imagining and of desiring will be developed as the sources that give power to images.

III.1. To see: my image, their image, our image

As Wally Olins reminds us, “what you see is what you get” (Olins, 1995: 9). Therefore, the sole exposure to a created image can influence the way someone reaches his/her order and can force someone to be in contact with a new possible order that can then produce an alternative classification of his/her daily experience. As Charles Newton notes about such created images, “they changed the perception of the world by thrusting forward pictures sometimes tinged with fantasy, sometimes composed of it, ineluctably creating a store of mental images in everyone” (in Timmers, 1998: 232).

The influence that other image can have on our sense construction process can be a non- spontaneous anchoring on the way we see reality, produced by those who wants to canalize someone else’s desires into certain particular fantasies. This can be done by those who want to define who is left outside that order, maintaining thus the capacity to define what or who is different. Those who want to have the “power to mark, assign and classify, power to represent someone or something in a certain way” (Hall, 1997: 259). Power by which that image will exercise a ‘hypnotic’ effect (Lacan, 1995: 176) on those who see, and consequently motivate people to behave in a certain way.

This can be seen inversely. For instance, even if an image failed in dominating a conscience, it could have helped someone to clarify their standpoints and fears, humbly contributing to reconsider any reading of a subject matter. Thus, stories portrayed by images allow possible alternatives of seeing the way reality and identity are.  For instance, one of the ways through which philosophy can circulate is by creating image[20], where this act of composing reality is forcing the spectators to answer, to think, to explain their positions. As Macaulay pointed out, in this field, the role of the image creator is based on questioning: “initially, [it] is knowing how to ask the right questions.” (David Macaulay in Baer, 2008: 45).

For that reason, when the relationship between images and nationality is analysed, the result is that the state becomes powerful when it enters in one or another domain of the discourses (Lupton and Miller, 1996: 66), because the state is there questioning or reinforcing the definition of what the nation is. However, in doing so, the state needs to have an active stance from where to think, to project and to produce this action of defining which is based on the apparatus of cultural fictions. This apparatus is specialized to embody the fiction in itself, to translate the narrations, myth and fictions to the material world, producing understandable and social known images of how the nation and nationality should be seen.  Therefore, the state, as an image constructor, carries out the action of modeling, supporting, defending and fixing the images that express national identity allowing some image creators, such as painters, sculptors, architects and designers to work. As Garamond noted, a designer “in the broadest sense of the word is, above all, an image constructor” (Garamond, 1997: 21).

III. 2 To represent

Images are not only the reality but also representations in the whole sense, intermediaries between what is not physically present and our mind. As Mitchell points out, “an image is a reproduction in the mind of a sensation produced by a physical perception” (Mitchell, 1986: 12). Then, something could be represented by being conjured up in our mind’s eye, being this something a kind of resurrection, a living presence. In that way, for Stuart Hall “to represent something is to describe, to depict it, to call it up in the mind by description or portrayal or imagination” (Hall, 1997: 16). Afterwards, this representation would be internalized as a reflected double of a prototype of what the image represents, giving the beholder the mirage of making visible and alive what is absent. Thus, images can be seen as tokens, immaterial or material objects which serve as a channel to the matter and to the invisible, mediator objects between the soul and the being, between perceptions and ideas.

As a consequence of that, an image can represent something powerful for the beholder, something that can be present both before open eyes and before closed eyes. This enables the evasion of blindness in a world without images, transporting the spectator towards a likely parade of imagined scenarios, mobilizing “powerful feelings and emotions of both positive and negative kind” (Hall, 1997: 10). Moreover, images can project the spectator towards realities and illusions, their deepest desires or fears or even the materiality of what surrounds it, the recognition of something real that makes it possible to see the world right as it seems to be.

As Freedberg notes, by using images it is possible to register the perception of what the reality is, by having a kind of visual map of the world, allowing someone to have the feeling of knowing where s/he is or where s/he can go, by “mapping the space, the time and the sense of life have practical and effective ends such as keeping an individual on a course” (Freedberg, 1989: 440).

Then, it could be thought that constructing words and images is in part creating reality, where certain significant images act as supports for concepts and ideas, facilitating everything necessary for thinking (Levi-Strauss, 1968).

Hence, images help to deal with known issues, to allow the recording of perceptions of what the immediate world is, of what happened and what is happening by recording and processing past experiences.  Consequently, images are stored in the mind allowing the memory recall them whenever necessary. Whenever they are needed they are recalled in order to remember and understand the world where someone is living, inducing the association of ideas and connections of meanings that help to reassure, comfort, and improve someone’s relation to the world.  In this sense, Lacan points out that the “image has the advantage of being a captivating signal isolated from reality, which attracts and captures certain libido of the subject, some instinct thanks to which, in fact, the living being can almost organize its behaviours” (Lacan, 1999: 233).

Besides, among those images there will be stories and memories from where we can find the initial images, the visual basis of each person’s memory, images which somehow have conditioned the classification for the rest of the material that was added next. In this sense, such as Freud argues, in the first three or four years of someone’s life certain impressions stabilize our memory. As he points out on his writing about the uncanny, “our earliest childhood memories will always be an object of special interest, because the problem of why it is that those impressions that have the most powerful effect on our whole future need not to leave a memory image behind – leads us to reflect on the emergence of conscious memory in general… given the great sensory intensity of the images and the efficient functioning of the memory in the young” (Freud, 2003: 19-21).

Accordingly, different events and scenarios are seen as familiar and acceptable. For instance, the world becomes fixed because images in the mind are constructed on the basis of our memories of things (Levi-Strauss, 1971:71), offering information about who someone is in time, space and sense.  It is in this inter-textuality[21], where an image triggers off in our mind an older image that we already had, connecting both into inter-referential chains of citation. Hence, visual representation immediately shoots the association chain that would catalogue anything under the cultural parameters possessed by the spectator, determining which of its attributes, which scene and belonging contexts are part of this information. Thus, to represent a reality, a representation must contain something so valuable that would speak in the name of someone or something; it must transmit something that differentiates values and it must customize its messenger. One of these “somethings” is information. Besides, portraying information socially helps those images to “communicate complex information in a rapid and simple way” (De Harak, 1997: 35) through a silence discourse of the image[22].

However, the role of image as representation also involves the exercise of power that such representation can generate. Lacan highlights that the power of an image is due not to any intrinsic quality of the image in itself, but to the place which it occupies in a symbolic structure (Lacan, 2001: 369). Therefore, an image could be seen as something having an unwarranted irrational power over somebody just because it is a repository of power which someone has projected into it but which in fact it does not possess.

That implies, as Cowie argues, that “there would be no true image” (Cowie, 1997: 39). The meaning of an image is constructed using representational systems which generate this sort of language, where images are only a useful embodiment of concepts, ideas and emotions in a symbolic form, to be transmitted and meaningfully interpreted.  In that context, created images project a picture that represents something; that is to say which publicly substitutes it, occupying the role of a narrator of the identity and contributing in fact to the “transformations of the identity” (Strauss, 1969: 89) of the one who is dealing with this picture.

Therefore, in a world in which people are mostly known through representations more than in person, images become an essential part not only of identities but also of all aspects of social life. Then, images are important for current life, for collective identities and for men and women’s souls, because they allow people to identify, organize, classify, embody and make sense of the world. Besides, images are not something given but rather fragments of reality that have sense just by being part of that sort of language, a language understood as the place where our ideas, thoughts and feelings are given meaning, a form that is structural for social life. In that way, as Saussure pointed out “language is nothing other than a social institution” (Saussure, 1990: 76).

III. 3. To interpret

It is possible to think that images are powerful only if they succeed in being or becoming the reality rather than a masked discourse hidden and created by somebody. This fact drives towards the problem of separating the reality from the idea of the real. For Lacan, the real always has connotations of matter, beyond appearances, “like an absolute” (Lacan, 1997: 51). Hence, he defines the real as an absolute “without fissures” (Lacan, 1988: 97) that resists to be symbolized and which socially allows itself to be interpreted. Barthes also reflexes about that impossibility of the mind to get certainties of the real. He asks himself “But, what is real? It can only be known under the shape of effects (physical world), functions (social world) or ghosts (cultural world); in brief, what is real in itself is never more than interference” (Barthes, 2003: 224).

This issue reminds us of what Stanivslansky states about the truth in the theatre, as anything in which we sincerely believe, either in ourselves or in our partners’ souls. It is where the truth is inseparable from the belief, and the belief from the truth, because “one cannot exist without the other, and without any of them, it is absolutely necessary that you live your role like…a sense of faith in the reality of your sensations” (Stanislavsky, 1989: 141). Therefore, image’s actions involve not only the act of representing but also the interpretation of the real by ‘pretending’ to be the real and reality (Aumont, 1997: 158).  In this way, it would be the reaction of the beholder that fixes the meaning so firmly that, after a while, it would be natural and inevitable that meaning and image are the same. Then, “images mean nothing until they are interpreted” (Gallie, 1952: 11).

For that reason, an image would evoke our imaginary world and neither an icon nor a symbol would function or be active unless or until it is interpreted by members of such culture[23], as well as assumed by the beholder in his or her imagination. This is because images express relations of identification and fear in the place where subjectivity rests, that is, in the imagination, in the unconscious, through fantasies, in visual scenery and language. This capacity of imagining the world, to be part of the process of “reality construction” (Cronin, 1998: 80), brings to the image a magic and mystery for being a possible medium for the creation of new realities where the society inhabits. Besides, image creation is also part of the way of seeing the social reality and attitudes. Then, “the arts and designs are also part of people’s set of cultural understandings of the world and reality, a reality structure so profound that it blinds us to certain dimensions of the universe even as it fixates us solidly on others” (Steiner and Haas, 1995: 6).

III.4. To imagine 

Images always make it possible to see something, acting as a door that give access to contents and pieces of information that are translated as narrations, stories, myths, memories, desires, fantasies and dreams.  This is because an image, as Todorov points out, is defined as a medium that always arouses in those who observe it a story. A story that will always raise a message, something between what really happened and what can happen (Todorov, 1990: 105), or “when the event happened to me and the moment when I described it” (Todorov, 2002: 151).

Besides, the process of condensation of such a story in a single image rests basically on the usage of the pair of tools that both poetry and psychology value, which are metonymy and metaphor[24]. First, metonymy would be understood as the briefing of what is most important in something that comprises it all, integrating a referent that by deploying its meaning involves all that it contains (Lacan, 1990: 20). Secondly, metaphor is conceptualized as the senses’ game between what something means and something else that will be able to mean, playing with the senses, changing the sense of things, mobilizing meanings, imagining realities and possibilities, interpreting scenes, creating hopes and desires, giving that desire directions and form, teaching to desire, awakening or recreating feelings in our bodies. In other words, “generating meaning” (Lupton and Miller, 1996: 101). Therefore, the act of anchoring meaning, captures the ideological power to fill up the empty container of any expression, “giving suture to the fissure” (Bathes, 1977: 70) and offering a whole sense to the subjects. In this way an image could define things, while the act of image design could be considered as an action that is performed over the sense of a being.

Nevertheless, images also help to recreate, represent and to give protection in front of the unknown. For instance, if someone thinks in other times, an imaginary planet or anything else, there will always be a blurred image giving the slightest bit of comfort in front of the unknown. In other cases, a simple image from a fiction film or book is enough to have some protection in the face of the unknown, the fear of the unknown, and especially the fear of the future. Regarding that, Barthes describes that fantastic power of those images that represent the future as something deriving from some sort of clairvoyance that the creator of those images has in being able to see something that is beyond our immediate access (Barthes, 1989: 200), giving the supposition or affirmation that there is a link between that person, their images and the beyond. Nevertheless, it can also be thought that creators, due to their sensibility and involvement to a social context, can interpret the present day issues of society and people by collecting, organizing fragments and giving shape to questions that are latent in the community. For instance, social traumas and symptoms that generate anxieties, desires, dreams, phobias and fears that need to be expressed or exteriorized, become a kind of escape valve[25].

In addition, images are also part of the art of the reconstruction of what is missing in our world by activating the spectator’s interpretation. For that reason, Zizek goes deeper into the personal aspects of the interpretation which he defines as the decisive moment of the act of the perception, of the encounter of the sense (Zizek, 1998: 22). Therefore, as Zizek explains, those artists who are interpreting reality would have before them “meanings without a significant” (Zizek, 1998: 264) and from then onwards, they would construct possible shapes or imaginaries and the society could start having shape and being able to anticipate the future. In order to do so, those artists help society to get a self understanding and a knowledge of what can happen and they retain some relation with the truth because “art is knowledge; art itself knows truth” (Adorno, 2002: 179). In this manner, art can be a tool that allows society to recognize and organize the world and its task is “to bring chaos into order” (Adorno, 2005: 222).

Images also function as a vehicle where society’s latent stuff manages to be projected, visible and with forms. In this direction, as described by Jorge Luis Borges, we are not afraid because we dream about Monsters, we dream about Monsters because we are afraid (Borges, 1999: 163). Thus, from the figure of the monster it is possible to understand the need of constructing images as the action of designing monsters on the part of the interpreter’s fear. This spontaneous and personal act of dreaming about, creating or drawing a monster from a nightmare, can also be transported to the social ground as soon as the figure of the monster is produced, reproduced, taken and seen by a social group in the figure of the designer[26].  In such a case, this situation can open up for the figure of the monster to be working as a social container of something that collectively is going on. This could be something that is integrating and going on between people of a given group, a group that needs to recognize in that monster the fear on the part of the spectators, in a communion where that drawn image articulates what many people have imagined. Accordingly, the magic possibility that an image created by someone would involve a plurality of fears together, also establishes a place where spectators’ fear can be integrated in the common monsters’ recognition with other members of their community. Here, spectators will have the shelter to share their monsters with their companions and not be alone facing their fears.

III. 5. To desire

Moreover, seeing images can mobilize, encourage to do and to feel things because as Benjamin points out, “only images in the mind vitalize the will” (Benjamin, 1979: 75). In this way, a flag, the photograph of a loved person, a Virgin statue or the image of a landscape invoking our home, bring the faces of the non-present to be kept in our mind. As Freedberg claims pictures have “an ontological communion of identification with what is copied” (Freedberg, 1980: 77). This mirage potentiality allows the beholder to be connected with prototypical places or people providing consolation for absence, making him/her believe that the substitute or double of the desire is present with the same capacity that the prototype has to give us consolation or anger.

In that way, images created by someone can be thought of as a kind of dream that someone is creating to condition our own dreams and our desires. Thus, constructing images can be seen as a resource which provides a screen or support that sustains the “orthopaedic experience of the collective power” (Buck-Morris, 2000: 171). These dreams and fantasies mediate between the formal symbolic structure and the objects encountered in reality. They provide a formula to which a representation can function as monsters or on the contrary as objects of desire. At the same time, it can be said that those designed images, which are vitalizing the will, show whom to desire (Barthes, 1990: 136).

Some conclusions

In this chapter a theoretical framework has been formulated to analyse how a State designs national identities through the creation and spreading of images.

In this framework, design is conceptualized as a political action and as the projection of a certain designation which transforms the way of seeing of the people involved and their identities.

Besides, a national State has been defined as a political association with sovereignty over a Nation, being the entity which exercises the territorial sovereignty and government which dominates through ideology and hegemony. According to Gramci, hegemony is the principle that enables a tacit consent and ideology plays an active role as a process of leadership through which dominated classes of nations consented their own domination by ruling classes. According to the same author, nationalism becomes a popular movement founded on consent. Besides, Althusser includes civil society, associations, institutions and organizations such religion, education, the family, the political parties, the trade unions, the communications and the cultural apparatus of the State as part of this process of mass programming and part of the apparatus of the state which is in fact producing the hegemony of an ideology. He calls it the Ideological State Apparatus that works also through ideology, a representational system that would explain the causes and effects of the lived experiences and unconscious fantasy[27] that structures social life (Zizek, 1994).

From there, from the ideological state apparatus, from the hegemony of a dominated group, a monopoly over cultural norms is exercised to educate and re-educate their communities through the intervention of the state over all discourses. This production and spreading of symbolic fictions could be called the state apparatus of cultural fiction (Bhabba, 1990) which produces and reproduces the hegemonic ideology. It requires three main resources to work which are: existing common content, a support for the content and the power to institutionalize an interpretation of nationality.

The existence of a common content or discourse is important because the result of common and articulated discourses among the members of a group (the concept of inter-subjectivity of Lacan) allows a process of nationalism and collective identification. This is because identity is understood as a process of identification which is the process of making sense and of acquiring meaning, the process through which an image is assumed as our own, the transformation that takes place in a subject when such an image is assumed and when an attribute belonging to another is taken as belonging to him/her. As a consequence of that process, any identity would be just a transitory moment in the process of differentiation.

This discourse or symbolic fiction is carried out by myths. A myth is a story, a belief or credo, (Segal, 2004). It is a way of thinking that culturally reduces possibilities by offering an accepted path to the reader of stories (Barthes, 1970) and an instinct of knowledge that tries to find certainties by simplifying existing or non-existent possibilities from similar situations (Levi Strauss, 1964-1966). Also, it is an attempt to organize the coming into being of time, which places the person as more or less active in as much as he/she is ignorant of what life will reveal. Moreover, myth is commonly used as a term for purely fictitious narrative that could involve supernatural persons, actions, or events and popular ideas about the natural world and historical events, have stood the test of time, were accepted as factually true and had a profound influence on how the culture structured and interpreted the experiential environment (Barfield, 1997).

Therefore, discourses, narratives and symbolic fictions are considered the agency of the event which symbolically structures the national imagination. According to Anderson, a Nation is an imagined community constructed by new political entities which produce, reproduce and validate the figure of the Nation as the correct one for representing such communities (Anderson, 1991). The crystallization of a collective and unified human will is a “quilting point” in Lacanean sense and is expressed by the figure of the State which has an institutionalized role as mediator of nationalistic sentiments (Laclau, 2004). In addition, Populisms become the way national sentiment attachments fix a difference as a representation of collective identity and popular identities are made according to “the logic of hegemony” (Laclau, 2001: 85).

In this regard a Nation is a hegemonic construction where the national becomes the main way to understand any other social organization, leaving other identities or belongings in second place.

The State has an institutionalized role as mediator of nationalistic sentiments or discourses (Laclau, 2004). Those sentiments, as identity, change over time and the prevalence of one or of some of them depends on the historical context and the power of the different groups to prevail, to become a hegemonic group and to narrate their version of nationalism. In this sense, the State has the power to institutionalize any interpretation of nationality in the representation of the self interest of particular groups that are trying to impose their own vision of what the nation is.

The most important nationalistic sentiments a Nation could awaken are to make a Nation feel like a home, to let people feel the country in a religious way, to feel that a citizen is proprietary, to let people have a sentiment of sharing a language, blood and a culture.

In the first case, a Nation is understood as a place, a territory that generates strong attachments, feelings of belonging, like a home or like the Real. That is where an intergeneration and social experience can be lived, close to the Greek idea of patris or to the Latin patria, fatherland, a place where a member of a Nation can always return.

Second, in the case of the proprietary sentiment, a Nation is considered a framework to guarantee the interest of the proprietary of this territory, the owner’s condition resembling that of a citizen. Solidarity grows but as pertaining to the exercise of self rights and interest. For this reason the purpose of a government is the preservation of property.

Third, the feelings of the members of a Nation are bound to one another not merely by birth but also by the common possession of a culture that is valuable above all else to each of them. The consolidation and transmission of the people’s culture are what encourage national sentiments.

Fourth, popular and national culture contains the essence of what is joining and what is giving each of its member the joy of being part of that group, the will of the people, a sentiment of sharing. It is constantly reinforced by the pride of having done great things together and the wishes to do more things together in the future. Besides, that Thing, as Zizek put forth, is the referent that is holding together a given national community without depending on the theme and is the way that a given community organizes their joy.

Fifth, in modern times nationalistic sentiments replace past religious and spiritual sentiments, pushing into the national sphere spiritual beliefs. Therefore, to belong to a nation offers people a resource against the irreversibility of the passing of time, a kind of anti-death process and a sense of continuity with previous generations, through memories, myths and traditions. It gives a sense of destiny and mission to people by fixing certainties on the coming into being of the national life.

Sixth, a Nation gives people something to hold on to, something to be part of that acts as a principle of social organization as opposed to the nothingness. This kind of collective inter-subjectivity acts as a kind of defence against the person’s fear of everything from the lack of structure, to the horror of social uncertainty, loneliness or of being in a collective fragmented body. On that account, it is possible to see the structure of nationalism as a channel for social order and for social integration, an integration of fragmented groups into a wider figure which can contain them.

The relationship between those sentiments can be figured as a kind of textile or rope, using the idea put forth by Wittgenstein who understood it as a complicated network of similarities and relationships overlapping and criss-crossing. Besides, one of its constitutive fibres only could be visible for a while before being hidden underneath another in the next segment and no dimension alone could represent or symbolize the whole collective sentiment. This is because national sentiments are formed by the weaving of the different constitutive dimensions and their inner relations.

Thus, in the existing dimensions of nationalities and sentiments, such as the proprietary, belonging, difference, religion and organizational ones, sentiments are quilted and structured in a quilting point which is the State. This State is also tracking the civil society, holding and tying the totality of the different dimensions of nationality at its end, and the one that keeps the weaving and the fibres of the rope united producing what Gramsci defined as hegemony. The State and the dominant groups are the main authors of that idea of imagined community and responsible for the institutionalization of national sentiments. Thus, National imagination is a theatre where the constituted power is displayed, applied and maintained.

The State projects its own signs of nationality, confronted with the rest of the other signs related to fostering and settling its selective reading of the national reality. In doing so, the state tries to get the power to embody national organization and the power to define nationality, itself and especially the ideal citizen who would inhabit this nation. As a consequence, the power of such definition is a major source of the exercising of hegemony.

In this context, the Ideological State Apparatus and the apparatus of cultural fiction contribute by action or omission, to the forming, consolidating and spreading ways of seeing the national identity and national sentiments through the creation and dispersion of stamps, banknotes, flags, shields, monuments, and statues, among others. They portray information and sense about nationality, are  instruments of the imagination of that national community and make the social structure of the nation tangible and visible. Therefore, the myth, as a speech of the collective assumption and memory, starts to speak through the individuals and circulate thanks to the existence of a support.

As it has been mentioned, National identities are built in a process of identification with images which get power because of the social importance of the act of seeing, of representing, of interpreting, of imagining and of desiring that images have. In this sense, first, images influence our sense construction process and the images and objects spread by the State questions and/or  reinforces the definition of what the nation is and the view of a hegemonic group.  Second, images are not only the reality but also representations that offer information about who someone or a group is in time, space and sense.  Then, the role of images as representation also involves the exercise of power that such information can generate. Third, images contribute to the interpretation of what reality is and is a medium for the creation of new realities where the society inhabits. Fourth, images always make it possible to see a story, a story that always raises a message from where society expresses, transmits and recognizes its needs. Last, images mobilize and encourage desire. In this way, images can be considered as a screen from where power shows whom to desire.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011

There is a great moment during the shooting process, that is where light and the angle vision allows us to find new senses to the original idea. Especially, I found that working with translucent material is the best for me, because of the effect of transparency that may produces uncountable combinations of significances.

This series of pictures were commissioned by the Secretary of Culture of the Argentine Nation, for the Argentine National Commission of Science and Technology, for a producer and for the Argentine Pavilion of the Frankfurt book fair. The photographers who took the pictures are Silvio Zuccheri (www.silviozuccheri.com), Marcelo Mendiburu (www.marcelomendiburu.blogspot.com) and Alejandra Gutierrez (www.alejandragutierrezfotografia.com)

Sebastian Guerrini

The identity of the project had to transmit and explain the insight of the proposal, that is about the opportunity to refurbish and upgrade Spanish home as an engine to activate the local economy. The role of the created picture is to summarize the transformation process that is proposed.

Introduction

The aim of this essay is to introduce the reader to the role of the banknote in creating and preserving a Nation’s myth, with particular focus on the Argentine case.

In the first part, a brief history of the banknote will be developed, from China to the western world and from there to Argentina. The reason for choosing these examples is because paper money has its origin in China, where the banknote was introduced centuries ahead of its adoption in the rest of the world. The English and North American cases are included due to the influences these currencies have had politically, economically and aesthetically on Argentine paper money.

Furthermore, the history of the Argentine currency up to the period of national unification in 1881 will give a good introduction and analytical base for the analysis of current Argentine paper money in subsequent sections.

In the second part, the banknote will be analysed first as an agent of the material culture, emphasising the relationships between this object and the individual and collective identity. Second, the relationship between the paper money and its importance in the construction of social memory will be analysed. Third, will be made an analysis of how that social memory is conditioned by the narratives present in the pictures on the banknote. Subsequently, how the object, social memory and narratives are instrumental in generating the collective imagination of a nation will be looked at.

In the last part of this essay, the process analysed in the previous section will be illustrated with a case study of the Argentine banknote, decoding the visual symbols that ideologically shape their message. The visual references have been chosen according to their importance to the Argentine national myths, which are portrayed in the banknote at different points in history.

Thus, the visual performance of San Martin (a hero of the war of Independence), the choice of setting (such as the use of different landscapes), chronological time and the representation of women will be interpreted.

Part 1. Brief history of the paper money

The coin falls in my naked hand.

I couldn’t stand it, even it was light,

and I let it down. All was in vain.

The other told me: still wait twenty-nine.

Mateo, XXVII, 9

(cited in Borges, 1977: 1)

The earliest paper money appeared in China, in Sichuan Province, at the end of the tenth century. For the sake of convenience of people who had to transport the heavy and low value iron coins, shops allowed their clients to deposit cash in exchange for deposit bills. Those bills were transferable like paper money (Kranister, 1989).

At the beginning of the eleventh century, a group of merchants issued a kind of banknote called a Jiao Zi, which could be deposited, circulated and cashed. It was printed with a registration, scenery and figures to deter forgery. In 1024 the Song Dynasty issued the first government paper money and a special issue bureau was established to print official bills. One of the conclusions that the Chinese authorities reached was that banknotes should be decorated with vignettes and patterns to make them not only attractive but also to offer some protection against counterfeit. This was therefore, the beginning of the premise that the main principle behind banknote design was to make life difficult for forgers (Lott, 1981).

In successive years the notes started to be numerated, regulated and devalued. In 1277, Kubla Khan stopped the circulation of metal currency throughout the country. At that moment, news of the exchange system was introduced to Europe, first, by the French Priest William of Rubruk and then by the Venetian traveller Marco Polo. Marco Polo reported that the great Khan controlled more wealth through the issue of paper money than any other emperor in the world had done before. He announced to the western civilisation that ” the money of the Khan is not made of gold and silver or other metal, but they take the middle bark from the Mulberry Tree, and this they make firm, and cut it into divers and round pieces, great and little, and imprint the King’s mark thereon” (Barry, 1997,14).

In the West, more specifically in England, the origin of English paper money is the hand-written receipts given by goldsmiths in exchange for cash deposits. In 1694[i] the recently founded Bank of England[ii] adopted those goldsmiths notes as the basis of its own. The note was issued for the full amount of the deposit and was endorsed by the Bank cashier. Its text was also printed in a cursive script, reminiscent of the hand-written goldsmith’s notes. Over the next few decades, the medallion of Britannia (Henshll, 1994),  (based on the Bank’s corporate seal), a distinctive watermarked paper and the “sum block” showing a pound sign followed by the amount were introduced (Kranister, 1989)

The note continued to improve. In 1726 these pieces of paper, as a partially printed promissory note filled in by the Bank’s cashier with the details of the transaction to exchange for a cash deposit, became gradually more widely accepted and began to represent units of value. In 1797, during a period of gold restriction as a consequence of the war against France, the Bank of England suspended cash payments and replaced them with paper money to protect gold reserves. In such a time of crisis, the public wanted gold and the banknote, as a thing of no intrinsic value was viewed with fear (Barry, 1997). For instance, people said of William Pitt (Prime Minister in 1797) that “he found England a nation of gold and left it a nation of paper” (Barry, 1997: 15). This equation of property, gold and silver with value and the equation of paper with volatility and disaster is still present today in risky economies.

This bank restriction corresponded with the Romantic era and it was during this period that English paper money was introduced (Barry, 1997). In a society which valued and demanded things of the imagination, banknotes were involved with aesthetics and ideological features. Voices such as those of Ricardo highlighted that the signifier should not be detached from its signified, but should always be prepared to re-present, to be exchanged for, the signified, which means an understanding of what a symbol should be, according to the enlightenment. Others, such as Adam Smith insisted that society could tolerate ‘real’ paper, but not ‘fictitious’ paper, an argument that shifted from representation to interpretation and interpretation as “the source of signification and of meaning, the real equivalence to credit” (Barry, 1997:14).

The history of notes had similarities in North America (Kranister, 1989). The Continental Congress of 1775 defiantly printed its own notes, thereby declaring America’s independence of England (Barry, 1997). The colony’s lack of precious metal pushed the country to promote and defend its national currency, transforming paper money into a national object (Hewitt, 1995).

The history of the Argentinean Banknote

Argentina, as a former colony of Spain, had, as circulating money in its territory, the Spanish Crown minted in Potosi (now Bolivia) where the mines provided gold and silver to the crown. Since Independence in 1810, a local coin with national emblems on it replaced the one of the King Fernando VI of Spain. They had the sentence ‘Provincias Unidas del Rio de La Plata’ (United Provinces of the Plata’s river), the sun, the national seal with military trophies (flags, cannons and drum), the Friesian cap, hands toward a pique and, on the edge, the slogan “Equality under the Law”.

The launch of the first coins was a complicated political issue and the authorities were worried about the reaction of the people. On the one hand, the authorities knew that it was a powerful medium of communication to extend the idea of Independence. However, on the other hand, they also knew that it involved the presentation of the new economy of the country, and, replacing the guarantee of the monarch by the new referent was considered a risky manoeuvre. That analysis motivated them to mint in the same place (Potosi) maintaining the features of the coin, changing only the representation of the new government. The total substitution of the old coin by the new one was extremely slow to allow the citizens became familiar with the new one.

A short time later, the Constitutional General Assembly of 1813 imposed on local capitalists the obligation to loan money to the new independent government. The government gave them credits, promissory notes cancelling debts, to be transferred in cash by the state cashiers or to be transferred to others persons. These document treasury vouchers issued continuously. This was the origin of the current Argentinean banknote (Alvarez: 1929) and it is important to note that in Argentina the issue of paper money preceded the creation of Banks, either public or private were established as recently as 1823 (Berdou, 1955).

Years after Independence, the different provinces started to fight to control the central power of the country and to protect their own economic interests. A long civil war started and almost all the provinces began to issue their own paper money. The most important province was the Buenos Aires Province, which in 1822 printed its own proper paper money, displacing the gold and silver for trading and this became an example to the rest of the Provinces (Alvarez, 1929).

Argentina did not issue metal as a consequence of the lack of gold and silver mines in its territory. In this context, the paper money was an ideal solution. The notes with the name of the Spanish coins “peso”(weight) (Alvarez, 1929) referred to the heaviness of gold necessary to make a unit of money. Nevertheless, despite the name ‘peso’, the banknote did not always have equivalence with gold, because the State used and abused of its right to print paper money. This lack of convertibility of the notes had an impact on different social groups. As Bethell argues, the social group which suffered most was the lower income groups, that is the poorest and the weakest institutionally while the upper income group was less affected by the problems of the banknote (Bethell, 1993). This was not only because they enjoyed great family stability and drew strength from the ties of kinship, but also because the basic product of their economy was the primary production of cattle and crops which did not depend on a note to be converted to money (Panattieri, 1985).

During the civil war, the use of a certain note was a form of coercion and conformity, as shown by the banknote of one of the leader group, in which is printed the slogan “Death to the savage Unitarians” (Bethell, 1993), referring to an opposition group. Sometimes the ‘boletos en tierras’ (land certificates) which were rewards for military service against the Indians were used as real money.

Some years later, in 1828 and 1832 there was a large excess of import over export and the result was a shortage of currency at home which was replaced by ever larger issues of paper money (Alvarez, 1929). Then, during the decade 1843-1853, there was a period of furious struggle for national unification in which a regional sentiment was predominant (Escude, 1987) over nationalist feelings. For instance, some documents showed that people defined themselves as belonging to their native province as if it were his native country: Patria (Fatherland) Corrientes, Patria Buenos Aires (Ramos, 1965). Moreover, some of the provinces, according to their territorial placement also used Brazilian, Chilean and Bolivian coins together with the local paper and coins.

After 1853, the consolidation process of unification and the creation of national institutions started. A confederation of provinces approved a constitution (with French and North American ideological influences) and there was a clear and visible tendency to create a monetary unit similar to the United States dollar (1862) (Ramos, 1965). The government, through the new national army, occupied the parts of the country were controlled by the Indians. The nation was federalised and organised and a unified paper money was issued (Ferns, 1969). In 1880, the modern Argentinean State and Nation were built (Panattieri, 1985). As a consequence, in 1881 a single currency for the whole country, the national ‘peso’, was issued, while in 1887 the government ordered the withdrawal of foreign coins and regulated the issue of money by private banks (Bethell, 1993)

Once the Nation was established and through the 20^th century, the meaning of the Argentinean national banknote has been changing over the time. However, before turning to an analysis of its different meanings, part 2 will be devoted to the analysis of more conceptual aspects related to bank notes such as the meaning of paper money as an object, as an instrument of social memory and as a narrative tool.

Part 2. Rethinking the banknote

A banknote: an object

For Derrida (cited in Lupton, 1996), representation inhabits reality and the external images of things get inside their internal essence. In the identity of a person something similar happens because objects, as inducers and anchors of associations of ideas (Barthes, 1977), have a structuring place in the formation of the ego. As Melanie Klein argues, the first object relation is to the breast and to the mother, drawing the conclusion that if this primal object takes root in the ego with relative security, the basis for a satisfactory development is laid (Klein, 1957). Thus, the modes by which the subject constitutes his objects and the place that these objects occupy in its symbolic structure form the ego of a person (Lacan, 1977). Hence, there is something special that differentiates a personal way of reacting against objects, like a weak ego which is inclined to identify itself with a variety of objects (Frosh, 1991) or a strong ego which has other channels of identifications. As Frosh argues, “the world would be experienced as weird and uncontrollable, full of concrete objects, which are somehow imbued with personality” (Frosh, 1991,53).

Objects as material things are rapidly reduced to a pure signifying function as soon as they are caught by myth (Barthes, 1973). However the other side of signifier objects is that they are also integrators. As Klein pointed out, a certain amount of splitting or external object identification “is essential” for social integration (Klein, 1957, 24) and for being part of a group or community by sharing a common thing (Zizek, 1990)

A further theory, the symbolic interaction theory, that human beings act toward object on the basic of the meanings that things have for them, being the origin of the meaning of the object derived from the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows (Blummer, 1969). This would be understood as a kind of interpretative process used by the person in dealing with things. The meaning of the object would be only the expression of the given psychological elements that are brought into play in connection with the perception of the thing. Thus, perception, cognition, repression, transfer of feelings, and association of ideas/objects must be seen as social creations (Blummer, 1969), a process of role taking. Frosh gives another similar explanation of the role of the object, in the idea of the self-objects, as objects experienced as part of the self. Therefore, the self-objects become anchors for the development of the self, the introjection of the object produce that any projection of the self involves the object as a referent (Frosh, 1991)

As an object, the banknote is also a fetish (Evans, 1996) of the modern nation. For Freud, the genesis of the fetish is a part of the body that is substituted for the whole, or an object that is substituted for the part, and finally and inversely, the whole body can become an object being substituted for the whole (Stewart, 1993:135). For instance, in Argentina in 1991, the State launched a very clever propagandistic campaign called “Argentine return to have weight” (peso) when the peso was used again as the nomination of the Argentinean money. At that moment, the economy was stable and growing in contrast to previous years of economic problems with inflation and stagnation. Within that context, the banknote was everywhere symbolically substituting and promoting the attributes of the national economy at that moment.

1992

A banknote: a memory system

“If history is written by the winner, that means that it should be another history” (Popular Argentinean Song)[iii]

The causes of what is happening in the present world could be interpreted as connected with past factors, which influence, or distort, the experience of the present (Benjamin, 1991). Thus, the control of the collective memory could be seen as a resource to condition the hierarchy of power of a social group, redefining the shared memory as the constituent base of a social order (Connerton, 1989).  As Connerton points out, “the mental enslavement of the subject of a totalitarian regime begins when their memories are taken away”, (Connerton, 1989: 14) when the individual has no chance to separate his/her memory from the official one.

Therefore, as the individual identity is shaped in a never-ending negotiation between self and the other (Frosh: 1991), the collective memory as part of the other transforms the conditions of the identity of the individuals. As Benjamin highlights, the fact are constructed by a regimen of knowledge (Benjamin, 1996), and the knowledge is carried by the memory system. When the collective story has no limit, the individual opinion of events is calling to forgive. Furthermore, if everyone in the social group shares the same illusion, the illusion is constantly confirmed and reinforced, becoming a collective assumption, and the myth (Barthes, 1973), as a speech of the collective memory, starts to speak through the individuals.

To remember is precisely not to recall events as isolated, but to become capable of forming meaningful narrative sequences, localising and recalling the memories of the membership of a social group, particular kinship, religious or class affiliations (Connerton, 1989). Hence, it would be a process that involved the blurring the individual perception by linking it to a collective social understanding of cause and effect.  That is why one of the intrinsic advantages of an ideal democratic political system would be to allow the coexistence of different registers and renderings of memories, and thus to make relative any totalitarian view of the history.

However, the collective memory would not be the only responsible of this process because it would also denote the people’s efforts to establish links with others in societies, by seeking an easy refuge from the existentialist’s doubts in the illusion of wholeness (Anderson, 1983). In others words, the social memory could also be seen as a form of integration into a group and as an answer to the tendency of the society to separate from its memory what could separate its members. In this sense, Freud developed the idea that the ego and the superego are constructed on the basis of a series of identifications and eventually the identification with others (Evans, 1996). With a collective memory, this would partially come to denote the operation itself whereby the human subject is constituted (Evans, 1996). That means that collective memory, by the realisation of the fantasy of the shared reality, would be part of the symbolic registry of the structuration of the identity of the subject (Lacan, 1995).

As Borges wrote, ” to think is to forget differences, generalise, make abstractions” (Borges, 1964:66) and to be a subject would be the same.

Coming back to the printed paper, the idea that a simple printed paper would be involved in an ideological crusade would generate paranoiac doubt. It would be necessary to think of these images as the text of a discourse. However, some questions arise when asking how the process works.

The working method of this kind of discourse could be seeing as Yates describes in his book “the Art of Memory”. For him, this old art of memory seeks to memorise through a technique of impressing places and images on memory, piercing notions to object to remember them (Yates, 1966). In this sense, seeing the places, and seeing the images stored in these places opens an inner vision which immediately brings to his/her mind the thoughts and words of a discourse but which also put limits on the imagination.

The method, also called artificial memory, displays two kinds of images, one image for things and the other for words. Memory for the word’s image would bring to mind the words the memory is seeking through their sound resemblance to the notion suggested by the image.

For instance, a gothic Catholic cathedral would be seen as a place to stimulate the association of certain concepts, as a mnemotechnic[iv] instrument of faith and also as a cultural tool to help the formation of particular mental images of things that the institution wishes the believer to record. As Aristotle pointed out “the soul never thinks without a mental picture” (Mitchell, 1986:14), the thinking faculty would have forms in mental pictures. These mental images of things such as Faith, Hope, and Charity (Freedberg, 1989) have been placed and reinforced in the memory of the believer, with the contribution of the sign system that is a church.

The fixation of a concept to a particular image, and the agency of this image/concept in the religious environment, confine and define the form of the metaphysical imaginary of the individual. The believer there must assiduously remember the invisible joys of paradise and the eternal torments of hell (Yates, 1966), to be part of the cultural institution. Such images are always present in a Catholic passage by a sign system composed by statues, vitreaux, paintings and a symbolic use of the physical space, which narrate and dramatise narratives. Stories that would be completed or quoted being narrated by another believer without dependency on the learning skills of the audience. Like in a banknote.

The interest and the dedication that the national states have been entrusted in the design of the message of the banknote would be understood in its role as part of the ideological state apparatus in an Althusserian sense (Huyssen, 1995). As Foucault highlights (Lupton, 1996), design becomes powerful only when it enters the domain of others discourses, and the selective organisation of a hegemonic view of history is the old weapon of the repackaging of the discourse of history by the hand of the designers of the state. Therefore, the banknote is part of a regimen of knowledge (Foucault, 1972). In this sense, the banknote works as an educational institution that works valuing and rejecting some objects to control the parameters of knowledge, fixing the meaning of the experiences of the individual human subject and framing the social reality in a certain way as an ideological activity.

Moreover the note is also an instrument of the imagination of a sociological solidity by fixing a succession of plurals as hospitals, prisons, schools, museums and remote villages where the social space is clearly bounded by such repeated objects (Bhabha, 1990). The resources used in these framing processes would be the body of a particular form of enjoyment, proper to the social group instrumental to a certain hierarchical form of national power. For Balakrishnan, (Balakrishnan, 1996) the continuity of that power would exist as long as that specific way of collective enjoyment (or way of life) continues to be materialised and transmitted in certain social practices by using national myths that structure these practices. Such power would also exist as long as the members of the community continued to be part of this community of believers (Guibernau, 1996). In these context the banknote would be a medium of representation of this “enjoyment” (Zizek, 1990), and as such, one of its “channels of transmission, visualisation, (reinforcement) and maintenance” (Levi-Strauss, 1964:108).

In the next part, the way in which social memory has been defined in the Argentinean bank notes will be analysed.

Social memory in the Argentinean banknote

In the Argentinean banknotes, the magical emblems, the visual record of places and landscapes, anonymous and public persons, different historical events and the representation of the glorious past are the interwoven fibres of the dynamic Argentinean collective memory, expressed in the paper money. Using Wittgenstein’s figure, (Wittgenstein, 1963) the totality of the notes would be like a rope, where one fibre only is visible for a while, to be hidden underneath another in the next segment. The different fibre could be seen as the meaningful remembrance or representation of the nation. As a consequence, no one alone could represent or symbolise the whole collective memory because the collective memory is formed by the weaving of the different symbolic references and their inner relations. Therefore, they are all part of the cultural memory artefact called the Argentinean banknote. If the Argentinean national banknote were displayed following a linear temporal and historical disposition, it would be possible to find images that are visible in specific periods of time, hidden in some others and used again in further periods.

For instance, some presidents such as Avellaneda, Sarmiento, Mitre and Urquiza, were used in the notes issued in 1883, hidden after 1897, and used again in 1985. Besides, some important events of Argentinean history have been used either by democratic or by military regimes, such as Independence Day (1935, 1943, 1947, 1960, 1981, 1985, and 1992) and the picture of the founding of Buenos Aires with “Spanish and Indians” (1943, 1960 and 1989). The same happens with the use of the emblem of Liberty (defined as Liberty, Progress or Republic) (1897, 1947, 1985 and 1989), and the monument of glory (1976 and 1992). The realistic images of anonymous persons or landscapes were used in 1891, hidden in 1897, partially visible in one banknote of 1947, then occult and alive in 1970. The same happens with the portraits of San Martin whose image was first used in 1935, non-existent in 1985, and used again for a while in 1989.

Moreover, the use of a frame to delimit the visual space and the use of typography would follow the same pattern. For instance, some frame character was used since the 1883 series, not used since 1970, and partially used in 1985 and 1990. Besides, classical typography started to be used in different forms in the last century, to be replaced by a gothic one in 1897, used again in 1970, replaced in 1985 by an international one “Helvetica” (Bain, 1998:57) and printed on the national notes since 1989.

A Bank note: a tool of the Narratives

“The storyteller takes what he tells from his own experience or those reported by others”. Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller”

There is always a story in any national banknote. Printed on a white sheet of paper, there is a tale expressed by images and text (rebus) (Freud, 1914), that makes the difference between white paper and paper money. Hence, behind the monetary credibility there is a message. When someone would perceive the rebus s/he would infer that there would be something that someone would be trying to say to someone else through the note. Then, s/he could also realise that the only one who could speak through it would be the one who issues it, who made it. Finally, s/he would believe that this person could only be the State, or, more magically, the nation.

However, the prominence of this kind of tale would usually be present when a new story would be issued by the printing of another series of banknote. Thus, the tale could only last a while. The awakened narrative[v] that shows the bill would unavoidable fall in silent from the moment that it could be integrated into the everyday life of the people, as another cultural object of the social group (Stewart, 1993).

Perhaps only the child would pay attention to the meaning of the image because in order to become subjects and to be able to refer to him/herself in the social world, the child should acquire all the pre-existing means of signification (Freud, 1910), and one of these is the institutional one. For he/her, the banknote would be learned as one medium of introduction of the national embodiment[vi]. Then, for a child a banknote would be part of his/her significant environment, and he/she would be visually in touch with the institutional message of the note, and thus to incorporate some discourses into his/her system of meaning.

In fact the message would be kept hidden most of the time by the lack of protagonist of the discourse of the picture and against the exchange value of the token (Gallie, 1952:21). Even though the banknote is carried by one hand to another, the exchange value is the reason of its existence, and the reason for its power. In these contradictions of the importance and the non-importance of their printed story, could be where the particularity of the discourse of the paper money would be sustained.

A static narrative

A banknote is not a novel, a film or a song but it has a chain of symbols like musical notes, which are written on both sides of the paper. Furthermore, they also compose a kind of symphony on the totality of the picture with content and rhythm. That content, what Barthes called the “anchorage points” (Barthes, 1973:39), often provide crucial information in the message and the rhythm provides the dynamic that visualises the story. In a Lacanian sense, these anchorage points would be the key signifiers, which act to seal some kind of meaning to the participants in sign use. The registers become sealed or anchored together as a point of caption, sealing of word in a political (and cultural) discourse.

Being conscious that an image triggers a potentially infinite chain of associations (Barthes, 1973:39), the rhythm of reading made by the composition of any image could constrain the openness of interpretations. In this way, the image of any banknote links one symbol to another, trying to control what could be interpreted as the whole as a way to define an hegemonic definition of a situation (Laclau, 1985).

As has been mentioned, even though the banknote is not exactly a novel or a film because the scene on the note is frozen and the character cannot move in space and time, it has the same multiplicity and a similar form of working. In the bank note, there is a static narrative which plays with the before and after of what we know about the symbols. As a transitional door it plays with the projection of what we infer could happen and what actually happened. In the notes case, the frozen image is always the same, but the movement in time and space, cause and effect, runs in our minds.

Susan Pierce argues that vocabulary, content and grammar rules would be the fundamental deep structures within the human psyche which enable people to organise their world by the creation of a set of categories through which significance is created (Pierce, 1992). Therefore, following Barthes, the myth working as language, as a speech, would be also part of the organisation of the human psyche and the social world of the individual (Barthes, 1973). In this sense, the myth carried by an image has a social activity by placing certain opposition (like the savage-civilised one) (Hall, 1997) and by naturalising history. In this way, the myth (like the one printed in a note) also contributes forgetting the losers because there is always a mainstream idea in the interpretation of history.

Futhermore, some ideological ideas of the dominant social groups are present in the printed myth of a banknote, which would mean that the message would be spread among all the Argentineans, more specifically located in their pockets.

Finally, there is a strong meta – narrative in these type of mythical images[vii], one that provides information as a form of communications system to resolve or ratify the social conflict in order to organise or disorganise social life. In this sense the notes, as a novel, accompany the political rise of the Nation. As Benjamin points out for a novel, “it was the novel that historically accompanied the rise of nations by objectifying the ‘one, yet many’ of national life, and by mimicking the structure of the nation” (Benjamin, 1937:87).

One good example of this analysis will be done using the $100 N.D. bank note of Argentina issued in 1935.

1935

Even though there would be a personal way of gazing according to an unconscious interest or a selective perception, the spectator collectively would read what follows. On one side a picture, then the number 100, then the ornaments and the sentence ‘cien pesos’ (one hundred pesos). On the other side, s/he would read two oval frames of portraits, the right one free, graphics, a soldier (uniformed man) in the left frame (San Martin), then the number 100, the sentence ‘cien pesos’, Banco Central (Central Bank), and Republica Argentina (Argentinean Republica)

If we turn again to the note looking for more details, we could distinguish the scene of the picture, which is the conquest of Buenos Aires. In that scene, the man who founded the city is under a stone or tree as a monument, his troops are standing, some praying and all are around him with flags and implements of construction. On the right bottom, there are people sitting and looking at the ceremony, rounded with food, utensils and a tent. They are the Indians.

Given that image, one of the non-infinite ways of reading this tale would be reading as any other story with first an introduction, then a development and finally an end. In the introduction, the Central Bank, with the support of a military man, backed by classical figures of power and the amount of the note, introduces this story. In the development, it is shown that in an organic and natural process (vegetal ornaments) the city of Buenos Aires (the picture) was born by the recently arrived Spanish (16th century). The magnificence of the event could make the Indians fascinated with the situation, one of them kneeling down in the presence of the founder. At the end, Buenos Aires has been born, Spanish people have the power, and the role of the characters has been fixed and organised[viii].

In the last sections it was showed the working process of the object called banknote in relation to collective memory and to a potential agency of the national narratives Finally, in next part, the role of the banknote in the national imaginary will be developed.

Banknote and the image of nation

The imagination of a national wholeness is part of a process of collective identification, defining identification as the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image (Lacan, 1997). In this sense, if the individual is assuming an image that would mean that s/he is recognising and appropriating the image as her/himself. As Lacan explained in his essay “The Mirror Stage”, a child is captivated by his specular reflection in the mirror, this image being a primordial symbolic matrix where the I of the child is precipitated. The child is fascinated with his image because it brings him a visualisation of him as a whole, instead of the sensation of corporal fragmentation that a 3 years old child would be feeling (Lacan, 1997)

As in the case of a child, it would be possible to find a similar collective identification process when a fragmented body/group of citizen, feeling the lack of corporal integrity within the group, project an imaginary visualisation of the whole, being captivated by them. Instead of feeling the fragmentation between its members, the group is using imaginary static fixations to diminish the feeling of fragmentation of its members. Gellner stresses that nations are imaginary constructs that depend for their existence on an apparatus of cultural fictions, and a banknote, as part of the national apparatus, has a role to play (Gellner, 1983). By means of those visual resources, the individual is reaching the condition of feeling part of the imaginary wholeness called nation (Anderson, 1983).

Apart from that, for Durkheim “the permanence and continuity of the clan require only an emblem” (cited in Levi-Strauss, 1964:130) and continuity of figurative emblems, as the one that are present in the picture of the notes, contributes to the permanence of the clan as such. However the emblems and the pictures have no intrinsic power and their importance is in relation of being a medium to imagine and reinforce the symbolic inner link of the community, being as Bhabha says, unifying agents of the national organisation (Bhabha, 1990). In this sense, as Barry points out, “the emission and acceptance of paper money brings into being an imagined community” (Barry, 1997:16) and it contributes to the permanence and continuity of the community.

To reach a position of being a national message, in the surface of the banknote a set of symbols that intermediate between ideas and visual shapes has to be acting. Those symbols have specific local meaning and for that reason they could be easily decoded at a glance by the Argentinean people (Gandelman, 1991). Thus, dressing up by a varnish of naturalness and connecting the national myth with the “realm of the classic” (Barry, 1997:16) the visual paraphernalia naturalise the culture, linking the local history with the mythical ancestor (the mythological figures that are in the note) and repackaging the national history (Bain, 1998)

The visual symbols are the visual actors and background of the national narratives, the local heroes and the muses, the time and the space, all disputing the imagination of Argentinean society. In the next section, some of the particular images of the Argentinean banknote will be analysed.

Part 3. Images of nationality in the Argentinean banknote

 Since its creation, the Argentinean note has been used to name the Nation, to define some valuable attributes of the country, and to project the inner notion of the idea of a Nation. To do that, different visual referents have been used. In the next part, the meaning and sense of the visual referents used in the Argentinean Banknote will be analysed, focusing on the figure of the General San Martin, the gaze in the portraits in general, the use of space, time and the representation of women.

The portraits of San Martin

” Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiple and disseminate that universe”. Labyrinth, Jorge Luis Borges.

The “Liberator” San Martin is seen by the Argentinean as the emblematic historical figure of the nation. In 1998, a Gallup poll about the image of personalities showed him as the most popular person for the Argentinean people.

1980

He is the paradigm of a successful General. The South American’s narratives talked about him and the Colombian General Bolivar as the persons who created South American independence, something of which every Argentinean would be collectively proud. San Martin is the non-controversial figure of the Argentinean symbolic registry (Lacan, 1997), the “father of the country”, the one who made Argentina an independent country by his military campaigns against the Spanish Crown.

If, as Weber said “the nation is imagined most often in defensive postures” (cited in Balakrishnan, 1996), then General San Martin would be the ideal person to evoke to protect the Argentine’s identity. He would represent the one who defends the recent idea of independence and the recently born Nation against a return to the “Madre patria”(Mother Patrie, it is the way Argentineans still call Spain). In this way San Martin, as a father, broke the Oedipus complex of the Argentinean society, being considered till today our symbolic father. In present times, to be involved with his image is to get into some form of relationship with this symbolic father.

The image of San Martin has been used in notes but also in other public places. For decades Argentinean students have had on the wall behind their teacher the portrait of San Martin. The same happened to the German students who had in their classrooms the portrait of the Kaiser (Benjamin, 1937), and to the North American students with the portrait of Washington[ix]. Under strong gazes like these, under interpelations like these, the child has been pushed to define himself or herself as citizen of a nation and thus, as part of the community of believers in this symbolic link. In the Argentinean case, the remembrance of the childhood legitimates the presence and power of what San Martin means, converting him into a kind of totemic animal for everyone who was under his gaze.

Why was specially San Martin and not another historic figure present in the notes?

San Martin started his career as a protagonist of the paper money in 1932. Before that year, he was only one of the portrait of the 1894 series, together and on the same level as personalities like Arenales, Brown, Moreno, Alvear.

1935

However, in 1935 he becomes the central portrait of the Argentinean banknote. The presence of San Martin was repeated time and time again and as Connerton highlights, “the repetition automatically implies continuity with the past” (Connerton, 1989:45). From 1935 until 1984 there were no image on the national banknote of a former president or any civilian person. There were only San Martin and sometimes General Belgrano, the creator of the national flag

(1970 note). Therefore San Martin, the paradigm of the successful and clever military man was crystallised as the referent of the nation.

One hypothesis of such a situation would be that in 1935 Argentina was under the first military regime, which had pulled down a democratic government. These military groups represented themselves as the safeguard of the order and the national interest against the chaos of ‘democratic decadence’. Even though in the popular imaginary San Martin was never associated with political activities, the figure of the young San Martin as a man of action could have been useful for military to be associated with him, as a group that took action for the sake of Argentina.

1964

The young San Martin’s portrait had been on the notes till the sixties, to be then replaced by a portrait of an old San Martin. This image represents him as a serious father or grandfather replacing the heroic stage of the General. In the 60s, the society or the political form of social control had probably changed, and this fact corresponded with this change in the image of San Martin. The old San Martin inspires for the Argentineans either a father or the legacy of his words, showing him as a sensitive thinker advising his real daughter and symbolical daughter (Argentina). The old San Martin represents now a collective consciousness.

1983-84

Another interpretation of the replacement of the young for an old San Martin would be that the role of the symbols had changed when this happened. In a note, when San Martin was a young, he was complemented by a context of heavy classical and mythical ornament, which supports the General and makes a more institutional whole. In the sixties, the young who complemented the old San Martin was General Belgrano[x], who has in the notes the image of the young patriot who contributed to the institutionalisation of the country (the flag). So there would be another view of the nation reflected in the position and roles of those figures.

1976-82

There is some complication in the relationship between Argentinean people and San Martin. If we consider, in the Freudian sense, that identification would be a mechanism of internalisation by taking an attribute of the other as one’s own, Argentineans should have attributes of San Martin in their ego (not only in the superego). However, the size of his figure pushes him outside the frame of our world, so far from the mortals as to make any identification difficult.

The gaze

An important feature in a banknote is the direction of the gaze in a portrait. To analyse the psychological use of the visual space, it is possible to make a parallel with how the interpretation of graphology with the hand written expression. In a western visual culture, classical handwriting is directed in the sense of the hours in a clock, or the order in the sequence of a comic magazine, from left to right. This is understood as a natural approach to the future. The appearance of a tension to the left would involve a psychological requirement of coming back to the past, to the starting point of the writing. In this system the past is situated on the left and the future on the right. One example of this is the 1985 Spanish note, where in the 5000 pesetas note, King Juan Carlos is on the right looking to the left (past) while in the 10.000 pesetas his son (the future King) is on the left looking to the right, to the future.

There is something extreme in the Argentinean banknote, because since 1881 to the beginning of the century the gazes are always directed to different directions, mostly to the right. This could be because, from 1880 to the beginning of the century, massive immigration transformed the country and everything was to be done. However, since the beginning of the century the character always refers to the left, to tradition (Hobsbawn, 1983), to the conservation of an order by introducing the beholder to the world of the glorious past of the ancestors. Thus, during the 20^th century and after the establishment of all the people, the country started to consolidate itself, as a country with history. In this sense, in the Argentinean paper money the direction of their gaze as a designator (Gandelman, 1990) directs the beholder’s eyes to a point of fixation in a symbolic past.

1976

In other written systems that prescription does not work. One example is the Tunisian $10 note, where the production of oil is presented by a sequence of three images: the olive tree, the press of the olive, and the pure oil. But as the most popular writing system in Tunisia is the Arabic (the direction of the writing is from right to left), the process is shown by the oil on the left, the press in the centre and the olive tree on the right.

Space and time

“The most important portion of the Argentinean Republic is a green and flat surface… time acquires there a plastic presence. There is no detail that gets a man out of the contemplation without a variation of the days that rises and falls. Like a defence against the metaphysical feeling of fugacity, constantly remembered by the non-existent landscape, the man runs out from the contemplation of anything that contains any notion of time”

“…The State is a delegate of men: in it, it exits from the worry that involves the will of being, projected to the space”[xi] Raul Scalabrini Ortiz.

“Celestial space is not only cosmic theatre but is an extension of the human body and is in a permanent state of vibration, like a human skin” Octavio Paz.

In 1970 a new feature appears in the national notes, the landscapes. For the first time, a concrete and real photographic referent of a place is used to identify the nation. There is something particular in those Argentinean images, even though it would have been a European or North American influence in the design (especially from the United State’s notes issued in 1929, which showed the independence hall, the Lincoln Memorial, the U.S. Treasury Building, the White House and the U.S. Capitol).

1976-82

One of the groups of images are a photographic representation of institutionally important referential places, such as the flag’s monument at Rosario, the victory monument at Mendoza, the Central Bank and the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires. On these images, there is no interpretation of these places, only the “photography” is shown, contributing to make a referential agenda of these places as important for visualising the nation. However, there are no comments or political mediation about them, the technique of reproduction could be considered pure, only a photographic record.

1977

In these series issued in 1970, 74, 76 and 83, there are also “natural” landscapes, such as scene of Bariloche, the waterfalls at Iguazu, the coastline at Ushuaia, the coastline of Mar del Plata, a national park at Entre Rios. In these pictures we see lakes, cities, forest, river, all lonely places, places to be in. As in a postcard or a tourist poster, these pictures seem to be stimulating a personal identification with the landscape and may be also promoting the places for tourism. In fact they have been and still are the typical places for holidays in Argentina[xii].

1971

As Frosh points out, “fantasies of rural peace, of desert island solitude, of transcendence; these have both to do both with narcissism… All human activity is narcissistic in the sense that it is concerned with self maintenance and with uncovering positive self images” (Frosh, 1991:99 and 115). Therefore, an Argentinean person could internalise these places/pictures as self-image, being proud of these places as being proud of themselves[xiii]. In this sense, these places could be considered a physical projection of the Argentinean Identity.

1983-85

Apart from that, the landscape, in aesthetic terms, relates to an environment ‘visually perceived’ (Bourassa, 1991). The mental image of this environment is the one of the setting in which the Argentinean’s human relationships are possible and fixed on a mental map. In this map, the social group can locate and legitimate its memories and it could be also a kind of landmark where the Argentinean social segments (with different memories) get attached to these different places not only collectively, but also by the interweaving of individuals’ experiences.

The places as a home

Contrary to Nietsche’s expression “there is no home”, outside the individual psyche, the banknote is helping to prove the Argentinean people that there is a collective home to be called its own. ‘Homeland’[xiv] is itself a term constituted within nationalist discourse as well as the term ‘nation’ (Willams, 1983), which has its roots in the word native. Home and nation are the places where the nationalist imagines his or her identity fully realised because of the power of the social visibility. This is the power of the eye to naturalise the rhetoric of national affiliation by naturalising the place of origin of the social group. One example of that is that the Argentinean nationality is given by the State if someone is born within national boundaries and not by kinship or blood relationship as in many other countries.

1964

Argentina is a territorially extensive country with regional differences in economic and social terms but also in terms of landscapes, which are, in some way, represented by the landscapes in the notes. Thus, a strong idea of a common place (Connerton. 1989), a symbolic common floor where the particular social group has its own roots could be created. Each group would be participating in the territorial occupation of the space, and thus they could have a framework where their memories could be fixed and localised, a kind of social map of the Argentinean social space

Historical landscapes as a “scenery of a piece of land”[xv].

1976-82

The representation of landscapes emerged in Flanders and Italy during the Renaissance and became popular with the Dutch’s paintings. Since that time, there was a separation between subject and object, a hierarchical and power relation between the active subject and a passive observed object/nature (Rodaway, 1994). This aesthetic concept was transferred to England at the end of the sixteenth century where the most common landscape representations are scenes with no trace of human presence showing an apparent untouched/ideal landscape. Those images were used to create, represent and maintain identity in Britain during industrial revolution times. Therefore, historically the landscapes are scenery, which contain or receive meanings of great importance in the construction and placing of personal and political identity. It is possible to think of the landscape as a product of the development of capitalism by the European exploration and imperial expansion. In the same sense, the use of landscape by the Argentinean government would mean an effective expansion of nationality reaching the extremes of the country. This would be because there is a strong value attached to the spatial order, as if space were a power in itself. One example of that is related to the size of the country, where in the nationalistic imagination is always more comfortable and easier to imagine the nation as getting bigger than smaller, especially when some frontier conflicts arise with Chile (Escude, 1987).

Spaces without time

What is possible to deduce from the Scalabrini text at the beginning of this chapter is the feeling of spirituality one gets during the perception of a landscape. The fixation the space offers to the native is a way of fighting against the irreversibility of the passing of time. Hence, repetitions of certain places as well as the representation of memories, celebration and commemoration located in them, could be seen as a form of magical behaviour against the passing of time, through the pursuit of enclosing space and time as a temple (Bhabha, 1990), where no change is experienced. Moreover, the crystallisation of a space would also help psychologically to project the individual from the pass and the future, beyond the life limits (Hobsbawn, 1983). As Benjamin points, “there were places for my ancestors to…in a transcendental home” (Benjamin, 1979: 47).

1935

Like a museum of past glories, in the Argentinean notes time is homogeneous and empty (Huyssen, 1995). As a time machine, the banknote makes present what is absent with the excuse of the “genuinely epic experiences of time: hope and memory” (Benjamin, 1937:99).

Therefore, in the present and attached to the money, the issues of a heroic past are coming into life. Thus, a battle of the last century, the ceremony of the Independence declaration, the last century conquest of the desert, are resuscitated as if nothing had happened in between them. On other case, a ‘perfect’ President of the 1900 is here now with his clean clothes with the same expression that showed during his government, as if the past had no effect on him.

1987

As Pierce highlights, time “seems to lie somewhere in the nexus of accumulated history, geographical circumstance and influential individual restlessness which makes each community what it is, in each moment of time” (Pierce, S, 1992:170). Thus, what is anchored in a certain time is a constitutive principle of social identity.

Images of women

“The presence of this land made me it feel like something bodily tangible. Like a woman of an incredible secret beauty…I want to see Argentina in that way, as a woman, because woman is what gets love and matter”

Eduardo Mallea, in “History of an Argentinean Passion”[xvi]

The dominant position of woman at the end of the nineteenth century was “an object in disguise” (Barthes, 1973:84), situating her living body in the category of luxurious objects and imprisoning her in a condition of weakness and timorousness. Thus, for instance in France, a country that culturally influenced the modern Argentina, the female figure had a conventional role to play, “the conformist, idealised women were goodness and nymphs (or virgin and saint)” (Jeffrey,1989:20)

Somewhat similar ideas are possible to find in the representation of women in the Argentinean national banknote, where women were represented basically by two main roles: as a seduction object and as mythical emblems.

The first kind of representation in national notes, started with the first national issued[xvii], followed in the 1883 ones and lasting until the end of the century. The second kind of representation started in 1897 and followed on to the present days.

A seduction object

1888

The banknotes issued in 1881 are quite special because they have a seductive veil that imbues the whole picture (Derrida, 1982). There, the images represent women as girl (1884), poet (woman with lyric, 1895 and woman writing, 1895), model (women at monument, 1895 and reclining female, 1895) and as a mother (seated young woman with child, 1895). Most of the images show women as classical nymphs or sensual angels.

1881

The women in the note are acting or modelling[xviii], they are frozen in the middle of the action of doing or saying something creating some mysterious atmosphere. For example, it is possible to think that they are waiting for a male reaction (Jeffrey, 1989), or asking mute questions to the beholder. Her concentration (Fried, 1980) expresses her expectations rather than her activity. However, in fact, it is also possible to interpret in many other ways what these images of women are expressing. Thus, the objective of using such open images would be to open a variety of interpretations with the only reason to make the spectator to fill the image in his own interpretation (Hall, 1997: 60), with his desire, with what he was looking for. In Frosh’s words,  ” look your fill is exactly the kind of looking that fetishises the object” (Frosh, 1991: 51). This could be a special fetish for any beholder because what is in the paper is not a woman, is not a living statue of the Pygmalion, it is only a drawing. Besides, the model acting there was not doing any other activity but seducing for the sake of the institution which used her image, or her likeness in Maimonides’ sense (Mitchell, 1986). Therefore the one who was seducing and looking for something through the image of the banknote was not the woman of the picture but was the State[xix].

How was the state performing this action?

It is possible to project two imaginative approaches. On one hand, the last century’s man who was gazing and desiring the ideal woman of the banknote was not completely free to have an imaginary deal with her. He had to ask permission first of her tutors, who were the Generals and Presidents represented only few millimetres away from her, as if protecting the symbolic female “Argentina”, and limiting the behaviour of the beholder in relation to her.

On the other hand, the spectator would suppose that he should have to be like the Generals and Presidents to have that woman. Thus, the dialogue in the narrative of the banknote would be like in Velasquez’s picture “The Meninas”, where in a mirror’s play, the beholder is situated in the physical space of the King of Spain while he was seeing his daughters (Freedberg, 1989).

Furthermore, in the note, the man who is confronted with the portrait of a patriot would think that the reflection on the imaginary mirror (the patriot) is himself. Then, the picture would be a mirror and the man would be asked to read his reflection, his familiarity and his own likeness. As Barthes said about the posters of a political candidate, “the voter is at once expressed and heroized to elect himself, to weigh the mandate which he is about to give with a veritable physical transference”(Barthes, 1973:91). That interpretation is reinforced by the style of the frame of the portrait of the hero, a frame that would be the frame of a portrait, of a window or of a mirror.

Besides, the movement of the woman’s finger directing the gaze to the portrait is definitely involving a third person into the relation (or a simplification of such if the beholder behaves as the man of the portrait).

Finally there is one conclusion that involves both different interpretations: the nude body of the young woman is there to be in between the relationship of the user of this money and the institutional Argentina.

One hypothesis of why the State was doing that would be related to the historical period of massive immigration in Argentina. In this context, where a majority of the immigrants were men (Savigliano, 1995), images of women such as the one on the notes can not only attract them but also provide “consolation in the absence” of other women (Freedberg, 1989: 212). This would be a process that for Feedbag involves “looking, gazing, fetishization, enlivening, arousal and possession” (Feedbag, 1989:355). This activity of sublimation, in the Lacanian sense, would also be complemented with the implicit persuasive message that in Argentina there were women like the ones in the notes, a message that could look for consolidating a fluctuating human group, incorporating it to a country needing workers Bethell, 1993).

Moreover, the woman on the paper confirms, too, the virility of its electorate (Jeffrey, 1989). Her beauty and fragility would have pushed the common man to act as the men that the issued of the banknote wanted him. Therefore, this imagined woman was making indirectly a selection of her ideal imagined counterpart or contributing to the fixation of the stereotype of the ideal Argentinean man.

1908

In 1897, in the tradition of hiding the woman, as mentioned above[xx], women were represented in the notes in a classic and frozen idealisation. Since then (1895 to 1992) women were exclusively present in the paper money only as justice (1952), liberty, progress or republic.

1952

These kinds of representations could only be seen as the sublimation of a drive or involving themselves in a more stable relation. As Freud points out “sublimation describes something that has to do with the instinct, and idealisation, something to do with the object” (Frosh, 1991:82). Such idealisation would function in what Melanie Klein describes as the restoration of “the lost prenatal unity with the mother and the feeling of security that goes with it” (Klein, 1957:3). Besides, as Jeffrey says, “there is only a narrow gap between bare-breasted Liberty and tousled libertine” (Henshill, 1994) a gap or maybe a development.

1985

The idealised woman would mean more a maternal representation and the breast would be acting as a symbol of feed, wealth or contention. This image restoration would be involving a process of splitting, as Klein’s idea of the good object and bad object as well as good breast and bad breast symbolised by a woman naked from the waist up, or exposing a single breast with the other one covered. This would diminish the image of the woman’s sensuality and increase the image of organisation and authority.

Thus, the 1987 allegorical female figures on the paper money could be considered potential protectors or progenitors of wealth (Hewitt, 1995). However, to reach that condition there would have been an abstraction process, a process that linked Argentina to France. After the French revolution, the female emblem became important because of the political requirement of embodying the idea of the new authority in a visible and didactic shape, to be disseminated (Jeffrey,1989). With this propose, a young beauty female would be selected on the assumption that the idea of change with renewal is naturally activated in a simple gaze. As Blake points out, the knowledge of ideal beauty is not to be acquired, it is born with the person (Eitner, 1971).

Active and passive

What is always present in the Argentinean banknote is a display of an imaginary relation or complement, between a symbolic woman, and a symbolic man. This integration could be made in two ways. First, using a picture representing a supposed dialogue between the female figure and the archetypal Argentinean man (political or military). Second, including the two sides of the paper, one with a masculine face or activity, and the other with a feminine representation, as liberty, the muses, the republic, or showing a landscape, or a spatial place. This would be reflected in the conservative opinion of Freedberg for whom “time is a man, space is a woman” (Freedberg, 1989: 375), or for Proust “the image of a woman as a product of our temperament, an inverted projection, negative of our sensibility” (Jeffrey,1989:20).

Thus, on the other side of the man (or the banknote) there is a woman, as Bordieu describes in the Kabyle house, in Algeria (Bordieu, 1961) where the man is the owner of the external world and the human the inner one. Both are sides of a symbol as well as the banknote,

Thus, the performance of the whole banknote would be a kind of stability sign, like some religious symbols described by Eliade (Cirlot, 1971) where an horizontal line (passive, feminine) and a vertical one (active, male) are intersected, making the figure of the Catholic cross. Besides, it is possible to find the same interpretation in Judaism’s sign, where a passive triangle is integrated with an active one, thus making Salomon’s seal.

In a gestalts whole, the banknote gives the spectator an equilibrium of tension, as the balance of the seriousness of the character, the greatness of an event of independence and the contention instrumented by warm women, a floral pattern or a sensual motif.

Thus it could be possible to find active and passive (the male character are always standing the women mostly seated), time and space, man and woman, or in voice of the voice Argentinean writer Ernesto Sabato, the fatherland and the motherland.

Conclusion

The paper money appeared in China in the tenth century for the sake of the convenience of the people and the economy of the government. In the 17th century the western countries started to do the same, replacing the metallic coins by banknote in order to have control of the gold reserves. Argentina, and as other country of the America’s continent, began to issue its own currency since Independence, the symbolic monetary emancipation contributed in these contexts to national ideas and therefore to have different connotation. Thus, even though it has been originated for its exchange value such a popular object as a banknote was immediately seen as a medium of communication to support requirement of the modern Nation. Therefore, the paper money was useful as a mnemothecnic artefact of the social memory, national narratives and national identity.

The identity of a nation is non-hereditary information, which requires concrete channels of communication to be preserved and transmitted. One of those channels is material culture, through which different countries can contribute to the formation, consolidation and dissemination of their national identities. Consequently, objects become fundamental elements in this process because their role in society makes the social structure of the Nation tangible, by transforming the matter of the visual representation into meaning.

One important object to consider is the banknote, which from a simple white paper gets transformed into a receipt, a promise of payment; further transforming itself into a discursive practice, a treatise on the nationality of the group who issued it. In this way, the narratives present in the banknote condition social memory. Both of which are instrumental in forming the collective imagination of a nation. This whole process has been analysed in depth by looking at the Argentine case and decoding the visual symbols that ideologically frame the banknotes’ message. The images of Argentine paper money have been determined by symbolic laws and mandates, which emerge from the struggle between different political interpretations of what the patriotic mandate should be.

Hence, through the analyses of the images of Argentine national banknotes, it was possible not only to obtain an overview of Argentine history, but also to detect some features of the Argentine collective imaginary. For instance, it is possible to define a sequence of national causes expressed by the banknote images. Thus, it is possible to identify first the Seducer’s state (1881) with the basic aim of the incorporating the differences into a whole. Second, the Institutional State (1908) which consolidated the newly established population. Third, a Regulator State, which was attempting to shape the Argentine symbolic matrix in a certain way, in order to harness the national identity (1935). Lasts, the return to the Institutional State (1985) at the beginning of a new democratic period after the cruel military government in Argentine history.

In spite of the differences between the periods highlighted, some remarkable aspects of the Argentine collective imaginary could be read, in most of the banknotes, as general characteristics of their implicit message. First, the only social group to be seen in the Argentine notes is the European one and in general there is no cultural testimony of other cultures. The only image that makes reference to Indians was made to amplify the importance of the white mythology of Buenos Aires’s foundation.

Related to the implicit importance of different social groups is remarkable the idealisation of the military action as a social activity. Actions related to the war of Independence against Spain in the 19th century still appear on current banknotes which are denoting the necessity of continuously reinforce that the birth of the nation was made by military action. Within this context, the widely use of the image of San Martin was could be representing the break of the oedipal relationship with Spain, cutting Argentina from the dependency of the symbolic link with its “Mother Patrie”. Besides, his image has been used because of the political interest of military groups, to project the figure of one military with credibility to legitimate military governments by the transformation of the meaning and the age of the image of San Martin according to their political strategies and social perceptions. Moreover, the civilian Presidents portrayed on the notes are Presidents who governed the country before the beginning of the century, by continuing to be used today those images are hiding other important historical presidents of this century, such as Yrigoyen, Alvear, Peron, and others. However, it could also be a sign of the military situation that the country lived during almost all the century.

In some ways related to the former, the only gender present in the notes is male (especially white males). Women are never represented as complete human beings; they have no name or occupation, and are mostly only idealisations for the sake of men’s imaginations. This could be seen as contrasting with some important real and mythical women in Argentina, such as Eva Peron.

Besides, during decades the banknote disseminated images of Argentinean landscapes and institutional places, and thus the paper money contributed to the visualisation of the proper common ground of the Argentinean people, helping to the spatial mental mapping of the country and promoted narcissistically the image of Argentina.

Finally, the banknote in addition to be an exchange token is a national stability sign, a symbolic object that represent a totemic and meaningfully piece of land, the fatherland and the motherland of Argentinean people.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2011 (1999).