The metaphors of Peru in the diagnoses of three Peruvian intellectuals of the twentieth century

Abstract

This article analyzes a set of utterances in which the reference to heterogeneity was a key element, and that have served to diagnose and project Peru between 1930 and 1990. These utterances imply a way of understanding and acting Peru, in two aspects of the same social process. First, the socio-cognitive framing of a complex and disputed reality, such as a country, through the features of other simpler and more acceptable realities, such as a body or a pathway. And, second, the communicative triad formed by the narrative image or metaphorical concept of the country, the intellectuals and the audiences. As part and sample of the development of this triad, metaphors represent and transform part of the world in which they are recognized, so they have performative capacity that recreates the social power of those who are included in the metaphor, of the intellectuals who develop it and of the audiences who give them credit. Methodologically, the article starts from the socio-political history of Peru, the semiological study of texts and visual resources, and the political sociology of intellectuals and communication. The sources have been the exemplary texts that support these metaphors, the trajectories and performances of the intellectuals who developed them, and the audiences that gave value to these metaphors.