Community and Culture in Post-Soviet Cuba

ISBN-13: 9781138934382 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 218 str.

Guillermina De Ferrari

Opis

Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the globalization of Cuban culture, along with the bankruptcy of the state, partly modified the terms of intellectual engagement. However, no significant change took place at the political level. In Community and Culture in Post-Soviet Cuba, De Ferrari looks into the extraordinary survival of the Revolution by focusing on the personal, political and aesthetic social pacts that determined the configuration of the socialist state. Through close critical readings of a representative set of contemporary Cuban novels and works of visual art, this book argues that ethics and gender, rather than ideology, account for the intellectuals fidelity to the Revolution. Community and Culture does three things: it demonstrates that masculine sociality is the key to understanding the longevity of Cuba s socialist regime; it examines the sociology of cultural administration of intellectual labor in Cuba; and it maps the emergent ethical and aesthetic paradigms that allow Cuban intellectuals to envision alternative forms of community and civil society."

Recenzje

"De Ferrari explores the barriers between non-Cubans and Cubans, i.e., what the latter think and feel as they move away from a Stalinist model. Her response to the "pure incompatibility" between politics and ethics that describes Cuba today is stimulating. Summing Up: Recommended." -- O. B. Gonzalez, Loyola University of Chicago, in CHOICE

Spis treści

1. Socialism and Sociability  2. The Friendship Plot  3. Ethics After Dark  4. A Poetics of Evil  5. Ethics is the New Aesthetics  6. A Curated Culture

O autorze

Guillermina De Ferrari is Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Her previous book, Vulnerable States (2007) studies the metaphorical power of the vulnerable body in comparative Caribbean literature.