Cuba in the Special Period : Culture and Ideology in the 1990s

This collection examines Cuban cultural production during the Special Period of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Contributors address the cultural forms; and the associated ethics and practices of labour, leisure, and bureaucratic organization that arose in the transformation of the socialist cultural infrastructure. This collection examines Cuban cultural production during the Special Period of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Contributors address the cultural forms; and the associated ethics and practices of labor, leisure, and bureaucratic organization that arose in the transformation of the socialist cultural infrastructure "This is a first rate collection comprised of work by respected specialists who develop a collective view of a knotty issue: how Cuban socialism survived, or didn't, in the period attending the dissolution of the Soviet Union. While the express ambition of the book is to refine debates about globalization, to read Hernandez's introduction, the fate of late socialism, and other broad political and economic patterns of observation, the practice of focusing on particular cultural phenomena makes good on the ambition precisely because macro questions cede to the micro-histories of art's negotiation with particular constraints and opportunities. A strong contribution to the field." - Doris Sommer, Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University "This book offers a definitive backward-glance at a contradictory threshold in Cuban history, a moment that has been celebrated and over-exposed at the level of consumption but relatively under-analyzed. Hernandez-Reguant's unprecedented collection gathers a host of thinkers who dwell critically in the culture of the Special Period and think through its contradictions with subtlety and rigor. Hernandez-Reguant and her contributors illuminate what was at stake - politically, culturally, and socially - in the Special Period, and remind us why it is important to understand both its exceptionality and its lasting effects." - Ana Maria Dopico, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese, New York University Front Matter....Pages i-x Writing the Special Period: An Introduction....Pages 1-18 Front Matter....Pages 19-19 Truths and Fictions: The Economics of Writing, 1994–1999....Pages 21-36 Filmmaking with Foreigners....Pages 37-50 Spiritual Capital: Foreign Patronage and the Trafficking of Santería ....Pages 51-66 Front Matter....Pages 67-67 Multicubanidad....Pages 69-88 Preemptive Nostalgia and La Batalla for Cuban Identity: Option Zero Theater....Pages 89-104 Wandering in Russian....Pages 105-122 The “Letter of the Year” and the Prophetics of Revolution....Pages 123-140 Front Matter....Pages 141-141 El Rap Cubano: Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop the Movement....Pages 143-158 Audiovisual Remittances and Transnational Subjectivities....Pages 159-177 Ending the Century with Memories...: Paper Money, Videos, and an X-Acto Knife for Cuban Art....Pages 179-195 Back Matter....Pages 197-226 This collection is a multidisciplinary evaluation of the impact of market reforms in Cuba's cultural policies and practices after the fall of the Soviet bloc. Anthropologists, musicologists, and literary, film, media and art scholars examine revolutionary discourses, representations of people and places, ideologies and practices of cultural production, dissemination and consumption, and the circulation of various cultural forms in transnational networks of publicity and exchange. These insightful contributions shed light on the changes that Cuba's opening to global markets of mass culture brought to the cultural field during the so-called Special Period in Times of Peace