Conflictos y pactos en la familia del Comendador de Juana Paula Manso: Formación de nación a través de políticas matrimoniales

In one of the first talks in Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault avows that the formal hegemonic organization of knowledge hides, silences, or disguises other forms of knowledge that do not conform to it or that are not considered as knowledge. He calls these latter forms of knowledge "subjugated knowledges." Using Foucault's concept, I examine how family structures and marriage politics as presented in Juana Paula Manso's La familia del Comendador (1854) are a means to expose some kinds of knowledge that were silenced socially and nationally. These kinds of knowledge have multiple functions in the text: to invalidate the discursive logic on which slavery systems were based; to propose more democratic models of family-nation; to reveal the ethic inconsistencies of hegemonic systems; and at the same time, to make visible the difficult national pacts that must be carried out in hopes that the future nation will be more socially and racially democratic.