The Social Life of Literature in Revolutionary Cuba

Narrative, Identity, and Well-being

verfasst von: Par Kumaraswami

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Einloggen, um Zugang zu erhalten

Über dieses Buch

This study explores the social functions of literature from the perspective of policymakers, writers, readers and residents in contemporary Cuba. It provides a new perspective on post-59 Cuban literature that underlines how cultural policy has made literature a hybrid activity between elite and mass culture, with inherent social, rather than aesthetic or political, value. Whilst many traditional studies of Cuban literature assume either its subjugation to politics and ideology or, conversely, its role in resisting political discourse via a rather naïve notion of artistic freedom, this project explores the varied, dynamic and multiple ways in which literature works in Cuban society: as a catalyst for identity construction aimed at consensus and belonging, but also as an instrument of self-differentiation and self-definition, even in the more recent context of a more market-oriented system. The study reviews policy from 1959 to the present, and presents contemporary case studies exploring the social functions of literature for writers, readers and ordinary Havana residents.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction: The Social Life of Literature in Contemporary Cuba: Negotiating Identity, Attaining Well-Being, and Surviving Social Change

Abstract

The Introduction sets out the initial questions behind this project: “What are the functions of literature in Cuba and why has the post-1959 Cuban government prioritized literature?” It provides an outline of cultural policy approaches to literature in post-1959 Cuba, drawing on perspectives from development studies and cultural studies in order to illustrate the special status of literature as an instrument of individual/national development. It reviews the existing scholarship on Cuban literature since the Revolution, and indicates the gaps, misunderstandings, and ideological and critical fashions that predominate in the field. Lastly, it sets out the aims of this study: to study how literature functions in Cuban society, and to explore the complexities and tensions inherent in that process.

Par Kumaraswami

Chapter 2. Culture, Identity, and Well-Being: Reviewing the Possibilities

Abstract

This chapter outlines existing ways of understanding the complex relationship between culture and identity, exploring how culture as everyday life and as artistic representation intersects with identity. It provides a critical analysis of the contributions of seminal thinkers from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and proposes a relational model of culture and identity. The second part of the chapter focuses on the concept of well-being acquired through culture, through exploring changing definitions and criteria for well-being, most notably the “cultural turn” in well-being scholarship that, in the second half of the twentieth century, sought to move on from a purely material understanding of well-being (housing, food, clothing) to emphasize the subjective (cultural, emotional, social, moral) over the objective.

Par Kumaraswami

Chapter 3. Social Change, Cultural Policy, and the Functions of Literature: Understanding Culture and Revolution in Cuba, 1959–1989

Abstract

This chapter underlines the value of literature to the Cuban Revolution and to the post-colonial nation-building project from 1959 to 1989. Through tracing cultural policy over 30 years, the chapter argues that the social value of cultural participation in terms of its contribution to subjective well-being (SWB) has been much overlooked in studies of Cuban social change and, more significantly, that literature (as a socialized cultural form) had a crucial role in representing, and also questioning, social and political change. The chapter ultimately proposes that the development of a multi-functional role for literature—as writing and reading—laid the foundations that help to explain the survival of the Cuban Revolution after the collapse of Communism in 1989.

Par Kumaraswami

Chapter 4. “La cultura es lo primero que hay que salvar”: Writers, Literature, and Well-Being in the Período Especial, 1990–2000

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the impact of the Período Especial en Tiempos de Paz that was declared by the leadership in the early 1990s. The chapter explores interviews with writers conducted in 2005–2006 to examine how they responded to the material and moral crises that characterized Havana in the early 1990s. In particular, these interviews indicate a new threefold role for literature in terms of SWB: as a mechanism to compensate material shortages; as a survival strategy to articulate a common project of survival in the midst of growing social inequality and fragmentation; and, crucially, as a means of critique and consciousness-raising which frequently contested the ability of the government to address new social realities.

Par Kumaraswami

Chapter 5. “La cosa esta que vino después”: Reading Testimonial Literature, Well-Being, and Narrative During the Batalla de Ideas

Abstract

The chapter summarizes the main aims of the Batalla de Ideas campaign from 2000 to 2007, designed to counteract the corrosive impact of the Período Especial via a renewed emphasis on nation-building through culture and education. The campaign thus once again acknowledged explicitly the social function of literature and the centrality of cultural participation to individual/national well-being. The chapter presents the results of a reader-response study undertaken with a small but generationally diverse group of readers of testimonial texts in Havana in 2002. This study illustrates that the core value systems behind, and criteria for, SWB that had characterized the first three decades were still relevant in different ways, despite significant social change.

Par Kumaraswami

Chapter 6. Subjective Well-Being and Culture as Everyday Practice in Contemporary Cuba, 2007–2012

Abstract

This chapter adds a new dimension to the previous case studies: the everyday practice of culture as an integral part of the attainment of SWB. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Havana neighborhood of the Vedado in 2012, it examines how respondents of various generations and socio-economic backgrounds used culture in its two definitions. Using the concept of the “nocturnal map,” it explores at the local level how participation in culture and well-being intersected. It also provides a snapshot of local life in a small Havana neighborhood, underlining how everyday cultural practice offers insights that reveal as much about the socio-cultural impact of the economic reforms implemented by Raúl Castro’s government as more public discourses.

Par Kumaraswami

Chapter 7. Conclusion: The Promise of Well-Being Through Culture in Contemporary Cuba: Morality, Culture, and the Market

Abstract

The Conclusion asks in a contemporary context why literature and well-being have been linked so closely since 1959. It examines how the cultural economy for literature has changed from 2007 to 2012, and explores responses in the public sphere to the economic reforms, responses which reveal both continuing tensions and contradictions and also a remarkable consistency of approach from artists and intellectuals. It plays these prominent public discourses against the narratives articulated in the three case studies in order to present a complex picture of the cultural contemporary landscape. Finally, it raises important questions for the social life of literature in the future, and highlights the challenges and opportunities for well-being and culture in twenty-first-century Cuba.

Par Kumaraswami

Backmatter

Titel: The Social Life of Literature in Revolutionary Cuba
verfasst von: Par Kumaraswami
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-55940-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56963-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55940-1