On the "Meeting of geographers of Latin America". Essay of theoretical approaches around a name

Abstract

This essay analyzes the intended (and already concretized) name change of the renowned scientific event: Meeting of Geographers of Latin America. The emphasis is on the new name adopted and its implications. Its content pivots on the relationship between the name and the thing represented: what underlies, hides or encrypts behind a name. It is a semiotic approach, with cognitive-epistemic edges, which differentiates it from other positions. The conceptual approach draws on the cognitive sciences, semiotics and epistemology, using analytical categories from transdisciplinary fields with illuminating power towards the particular sciences, in this case the geography, to interpret the name change of the aforementioned event. It is proposed to re-center the discussion on the formal object of geography, considering its logical-ontological, cognitive and semiotic foundations from said approach, distinguishing it from the discursive intentions of its cultivators and without neglecting a broad criterion of the notion of cognitive subject. The educational implications of the topic are raised and as the main conclusion the need for a deeper discussion of the sense of the proposed change is emphasized, which considers its semiotic support and its formative (educational) derivations, and recovers the theoretical foundations of geographical science, the ontology of its object and its research heritage without ignoring current contexts, given the significance of EGALs for the development of geography in the Latin American context.