(Social use of Visual stereotypes in Quebrada de Humahuaca: Reflection on the possibilities of iconic deconstruction around heritage discourse and tourism)

Abstract

The article reflects, mainly, from the narrative, and from the performative display in a Cultural Center, on the possibilities of deconstruction of patrimonial and tourist stereotypes registered in images of the Quebrada de Humahuaca, province of Jujuy, Argentina. The stereotypes were identified and obtained in situ in the localities of Volcán, Purmamarca, Tilcara and Humahuaca from an emic perspective. For this analysis stereotypes about the Quebrada of the official site of Jujuy “visitejujuy.com” were also observed and considered. For this article the corpus of the four locations was reduced and two spaces, Humahuaca and Volcán, were specially selected, mentioning and showing to the rest. The first locality was considered as a great tourist affluence where patrimonial stereotypes can be visibly seen, and the second as contrastive, evidencing other views about heritage. Methodologically from the ethnographic approach, discourse analysis, with special emphasis on the narrative dimension for the study of the image as a discourse, and tools from semiotics together with performance studies that enrich this analytical proposal, it can be given an account of the possibilities of deconstruction of stereotyped tales. In this sense, it is worth underlining that the courses as narratives, textualize the Quebradeño landscape, configuring a “textual landscape” that enables the construction of a “visual narrative”. The performance of the “visual narrative” that exhibits the deconstruction, initial, of stereotypes through the contrast, was presented in a Conference at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA, (2015) within the framework of a Research Conference on heritage and tourism, in which I take part of a postdoctoral research on strategic issues (CONICET).