History's Peru the poetics of colonial and postcolonial historiography - Thurner, Mark (University Press of Florida, 2011)
Includes bibliographical references and index
The founding abyss -- The arts of history and the arts of rule -- The as if of the book of kings -- The proper name of el país de los Incas -- The postcolonial death of the book of kings -- Popular sovereignty and the history of the soul -- The end of the Peruvian history of Peru
Thurner examines the development of Peruvian historical thought from its misty colonial origins in the 16th century up to the present day. He shows that the concept of 'Peru' is both a strange and enlightening invention of the modern colonial imagination - an invention that lives on today as a postcolonial wager on a democratic political future that can only be imagined in its own historicist terms, not those of European or Western history