Clorinda Matto de Turner's Herencia as the Creation of an Alternative Social Knowledge

Abstract

In this article I examine the broad discourse of private citizenship in Clorinda Matto de Turner's Herencia (1895) to ask how she alters the existing hierarchy of values to create an alternative social knowledge (by social knowledge, I refer to the shared collective knowledge held within the social body that informs habits and practices). I argue that Matto de Turner reconfigures values by presenting two radical changes to social knowledge. First, she presents a secular framework, based on sociological thought, for making choices and understanding social and economic relationships. Second, she uses these new principles to contest European and oligarchic ideas about miscegenation.