Linguagem cartográfica e imaginários espaciais: uma análise dos testes de ancestralidade genética

Abstract

The exponential growth of genetic ancestry tests has brought new ways of interpreting spatial identities. Given this scenario, questions arise regarding what the users of this product are looking for, what practices are being reiterated based on the use of the tests and the discourses that are used to validate their results. The focus of this work is to understand the uses of cartographic language in the production and validation of imaginaries about an alleged genetic ancestry, thus analyzing the languages used by the companies that sell the tests, observing the use and interpretation of these results by the users and mapping the production of imaginaries about themselves. The work is developed from two phases: in the first, an analysis was carried out of the pages of the three companies that sell the product in Brazil, identifying current languages and discourses; in the second, two rounds of narrative interviews were conducted with users of ancestry tests from four different cities in Rio Grande do Sul with the support of a mental map. The results point to (1) the use of a scientific language that associates maps with discourses of truth, such as genetics, statistics and historiography; (2) the production of subjectivities that reiterate or confront family histories, mobilizing users to new places in territorial perception; (3) the suggestion of fixed and stable geopolitical imaginaries, reinforcing geopolitical, racial and stereotypical relations with territories. It is concluded that the genetic ancestry test is an instrument that acts in an articulated manner with other discourses in the promotion of a problematic geographic imaginary consolidated by static and uncritical cartographic languages