La escritura, la ilustración europea y el mito del Buen Salvaje. El caso de: La sociedad de Amantes del País, Lima (1791- 1794)

Abstract

In this paper we will study the discursive mechanisms used by European colonialism to adapt and maintain the idea of savagery attributed to civilizations belonging to this continent called by them as America. Through which they justified a self-awarded superiority awarded by them to these civilizations. Which was maintained from Columbus to the depositary men of the European Enlightenment. It is precisely this point that has been analyzed with greater insistence throughout the text because the European Enlightenment was built on the idea of reason in a sense antagonistic to the matrix of mythical thought. It was even used by Voltaire and members of The Lima Society of Lovers to discredit the social groups that possessed this form of thought. However, they start from the myth of savagery adapted by Rousseau to the myth of the "Good Savage", that in the absence of a semantic rupture indicating a move in the structure of thought, we understand that only the matrix was modified from where the other American was thought and not the myth from where it departed. This being the main inconsistency of the Enlightenment because, as we mentioned, it is positioned as antagonistic to mythical thinking, but begins its reflections from a myth. Then, from these placements, we explore the productions of the Society of Lovers of Lima as a repeater of a mythical language surreptitious in the Enlightenment. Thus, from the structure of colonialist thought we can understand in a way closer to historical truth the production of postcolonial authors, not only as sources but as producers of knowledge.