A route to the last frontier: interpretations, geographical imaginations and mapping processes in the region of the Negro and Branco rivers

• Grant number: 18/23482-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: February 01, 2019
• End date: January 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Science
• Principal Investigator: Iris Kantor
• Grantee: Patricia Marinho Aranha
• Supervisor: Sandra Carreras
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/20819-5 - A road thru rivers: geographical imagination and scientific research in the region of the rivers Negro, Branco and its tributaries, BP.PD

Abstract

The objective of this research stage is to analyze the different approaches to the route thru the Negro and Branco rivers. From the eighteenth until the twentieth century, this area was subject of numerous research travels and is described in various tones in documents such as maps, notebooks and scientific relates. These documents outlined its population, territory, diseases, culture, nature... mobilizing the argument of the "discovery", of the pioneering, to conceive an imaginary definition of what would be the "last frontier" of Brazil. I propose, therefore, a study of the layers of subjectivity in these interpretations of the route, examining the dimension of the imagined in the geographical knowledge construction and processes of cartographical description. In addition to the metaphorical representations, I intend to investigate the political and strategic implications of these registers, the intentionality of maps and relates, how they were instrumentalized to guarantee the possession of the territory, to define this "last frontier" in a literal sense.