“Public women”

The construction of female intellectual sociability networks in the hispano-american world (1880-1920)

Abstract

The research proposed in this article focuses on the analysis of the construction of trajectories and networks of feminine intellectual sociability in the Hispanic-American world, from the late 19th to the early 20th century. For this, we focus our studies on the relationships established among women from the trajectory of the Peruvian Clorinda Matto de Turner and Aurora Cáceres, political exiles in Buenos Aires, on the occasion of the deposition of the Peruvian president Andrés Avelino Cáceres. The military coup provoked political persecution of the Cáceres family, including his daughter Aurora, and of friends and political allies, such as Matto de Turner, whose publishing house was set on fire in Lima. We took as sources for the investigation of feminine intellectual sociability networks: the friendship album, produced by Aurora Cáceres, between 1890 and 1920, and the speech “Las obreras del Pensamiento de la América del Sur” delivered by Clorinda Matto de Turner at the Ateneo de Buenos Aires, in 1895, and published the following year in his newspaper Búcaro Americano. We take advantage of the theoretical contribution of Intellectual History and Social History of Women to understand the discussions established by these literary figures.