Looking after the traces of Bahía Blanca as "development pole": a contribution to the analysis of an argumentative-rhetoric memory

Abstract

During the de facto government of general Juan Carlos Onganía (1966-1970), the city of Bahía Blanca was designated a regional “development pole” and a provincial “growth pole”. Although this designations responded to a recent economic theory formulated by Perroux (1964), the arguments that supported them had been used since the late nineteenth century in the various projects of provincialization and capitalization of the city (Silva et al., 1972). This paper proposes the existence of a rhetorical-argumental memory (Vitale, 2010) that links the discourse on designation of Bahía Blanca as a “development pole/growth pole” with the previous discourses on its provincialization and capitalization. The analysis is deployed in two instances. First, memory effects are analyzed (Courtine, 1981), which allow us to verify the entry of the scientific concept of “development pole/growth pole” into the political-governmental sphere. Second, the central topics of rhetorical-argumental memory are constructed and analyzed. Finally, two hypotheses that could guide future inquiries are presented.