Browsing by Subject "Cuban literature"
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Item 19th century plantation counter-discourses in Juan Francisco Manzano, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido), and Eleuterio Derkes(2010-12) Oleen, Garrett Alan; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Salgado, César Augusto; Nicolopolus, James R.; Harney, Michael P.; Sidbury, James; Bernucci, LeopoldoMy purpose in writing this dissertation is to re-evaluate the works of three influential Spanish-Caribbean authors who seem to be remembered more as exceptional historical characters rather than for their literature itself. Although often considered to be important contributors to the Spanish-Caribbean literary canon, these writers have also suffered a measure of marginalization as scholars have relegated them to the status of discursive subjects rather than evaluate them as authorial agents. As a consequence, the majority of their works have not been fully recognized as important factors in nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first century literary production. I show how in their writings – many of which have been misunderstood, under-evaluated, and/or forgotten altogether – these writers narrated their own precarious situations and lifted their voice in protest against slavery, racism and economic oppression at a time when the dominant discourses and heavy-handed controls of the Spanish colonial government strictly forbid them to do so. These authors are Juan Francisco Manzano, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido) and Eleuterio Derkes. Because these authors lived in Cuba (Manzano and Plácido) and Puerto Rico (Derkes) as colonial subjects underneath the oppressive structures of their respective plantation and hacienda economies based on sugar production and slave labor, they experienced difficult colonial conditions and as such are able to narrate this life through a unique perspective that other writers associated with the dominant discourses of the time could not. While these brands of hegemony were indeed forced upon them as writers and artists, it did not stop them from narrating and communicating their unique Spanish Caribbean perspective. I show how these authors, as marginalized figures of nineteenth century plantation society, engineered their own discourses around these hegemonic institutions – writing between the lines of hegemony and concurrent with it at the same time – in order to create an alternative image of nineteenth century Spanish Caribbean society that requires further critical consideration and perspective.Item “Altamente teatral” : subject, nation, and media in the works of Virgilio Piñera(2010-05) Cabrera Fonte, Pilar; Salgado, César Augusto; Lindstrom, Naomi; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth M.; Rossman, Charles; Wilkinson, Lynn; Dominguez-Ruvalcaba, HectorThis study analyzes Virgilio Piñera’s concept of performance in relation to his representation of mass media products and technologies. The central argument is that Piñera’s notion of theatrical representation connects fiction with politics in subversive ways, challenging assumptions of naturalness at different levels, from that of the gendered self, to the family and the nation. To support this argument, the study focuses on Piñera’s representation of a variety of mass media genres as these inspire everyday life performances, mainly in Cuba but also in Argentina. While fictional models and sentimental narratives from the mass media most often convey oppressive conceptions of gender, family, and nation, the author’s representation of the media’s pervasive influence questions and denaturalizes those conceptions. Piñera stresses the disruptive potential of individual performance against the repetitive character of both the mass media industry and the social reenactments of its sentimental myths. His references to mass culture thus destabilize structures of power, including stereotypes of both sexuality and gender. The analysis shows that Piñera’s fictions exhibit important characteristics of queer aesthetics. The study comprises a time span of almost three decades, from the early 1940s to the late 1960s, and focuses on a selection of Piñera’s criticism, drama, poetry, and narrative. Within those texts, special attention is given to references to photography, radio programs, romance novels, movies, and popular music. The organization of Piñera’s texts in this study answers to both thematic and chronological considerations. Chapter 1 outlines the study’s objectives and methodology, also providing a background on critical studies about Piñera. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with plays and short-stories written before the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Chapter 2 examines texts that represent both family and nation in relation to a variety of mass media genres, from Cuban “radionovelas” to Hollywood gangster films. Chapter 3 focuses on two narratives, written in Buenos Aires, that address posing and self-representation in relation to issues of sexuality, masculinity, and power. Chapter 4 deals with a selection of poems written, for the most part, after 1959. In these poems, the literary use of photography stresses theatrical self-representation, often in direct resistance to revolutionary reformulations of masculinity in the figure of the “New Man.”Item Archiving the revolution : claiming history in Cuban literature and film(2014-08) Gonzalez-Conty, Enrique Jose; Salgado, César Augusto; Arroyo-Martinez, Jossianna; Borge, Jason; Ramirez-Berg, Charles; Fierro, Enrique; West-Duran, AlanThis dissertation examines how both literature and film were responsible for the construction of the Cuban Revolutionary Archive. On one hand, the immediate foundation of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) three months after the triumph of Fidel Castro's 26 of July guerrilla movement in 1959, showed the urgency to establish a cinematic apparatus that would support the Cuban Revolution itself, that is, the need to project what had just happened to the outside world. On the other, literature also emerged as an important artifact of the Cuban Revolutionary Archive with the support of the literary prizes granted by Casa de las Américas-- another key cultural institution founded in those first years. Most of the first films-- such as Historias de la Revolución (1960)-- and novels-- such as Maestra voluntaria (1962)-- produced then were either about the Cuban struggle or served to record the main events and accomplishments of the post-1959 revolutionary process. That is why I considered them as historical records instituted and manipulated by the Cuban government. I also analyze the films and novels published outside the island as a "counter-archive" that contests the official version. My goal in writing this dissertation, then, was not only to trace how this Cuban Revolutionary Filmic and Literary Archive was constructed but also how it has evolved throughout the years. To do so I analyze primary works from the sixties-- such as the film P.M. (1960) and Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) and the novel Bertillón 166 (1960)-- to contrast them with works produced thirty to fifty years later that revisit those first years-- such as the films 8-A (1992), City in Red (2009) and Memories of Overdevelopment (2010). The aim is to decipher why these two mediums were used as artifacts of the archive, what was hidden or erased, how did the archive of the sixties differ from the one that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and during the "Special Period," and what challenges arose with the passage of time and the decadence of the revolutionary process. By looking for answers to these questions, this dissertation aims to contribute to the recent revision by cultural scholars of Latin American Revolutions in their anniversaries.Item Realigning revolution : the poetics of disappointment in Cuban and Angolan narrative(2011-08) Millar, Lanie Marie; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Tissières, Hélène; Salgado, Cesar A.; Roncador, Sonia; Afolabi, OmoniyiThis dissertation traces how Cuban and Angolan novels published in the final decades of the twentieth century engage with the political and artistic projects promoted by and through the post-revolutionary socialist-aligned political systems. The dissertation sustains that there are a collection of textual practices that insert themselves into the official “orthodox” historiographic and literary debates by reconsidering not just historical moments in the past that are central to these debates, but also reference how these moments are written and read from an official point of view. By employing tactics of ironic citation, parody and anachronism, these works not only comment upon official readings of history and demands of post-revolutionary literature, but they also reveal “silences,” to use Rolph-Trouillot’s term, in the literary corpus and in the experiences of Angolan and Cuban people that these alternative corpuses represent. Through revision of official discourses, they present an alternative reading of present subjects’ interactions with the past. These practices, which together I have termed “poetics of disappointment,” allow an intervention into the discussions surrounding both the production and the criticism of contemporary Cuban and Angolan literatures from a variety of political perspectives. The dissertation analyzes Cubans Alejo Carpentier’s La consagración de la primavera, Reinaldo Arenas’ La loma del ángel and Eliseo Alberto’s Caracol Beach as well as Angolans Manuel Rui’s Memória de mar, J. E. Agualusa’s Nação crioula and Boaventura Cardoso’s Mãe, materno mar. On one hand, these works recall the monumental events that the Cuban Revolution and Angolan independence represented, evoking a collective optimism and sense of community forged among pueblos/ povos in the processes of decolonization and promoting movements for social justice. On the other hand, the novels analyzed point out the limits of programmatic interpretations of post-revolutionary history. Demonstrating positions of discomfort with the notions of messianic immanence, idealized racial synthesis and the aftermaths of violence and displacement that official sources rarely document, these novels both privilege and question literary creation as a way of negotiating this disappointment.Item Rostros del reverse : José Lezama Lima en la encrucijada vanguardista(2012-05) Robyn, Ingrid; Salgado, César Augusto; Roncador, Sonia; Lindstrom, Naomi; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Pimentel Pinto, JúlioThis dissertation reassesses the dialogues between the aesthetic and cultural projects of Cuban writer José Lezama Lima (1910-1976) and the avant-garde, in both its European and Latin American manifestations. My main assertion is that Lezama Lima’s negative appraisals of the avant-garde are more a symptom of his will-to-power and self-legitimization than a categorical rejection of avant-garde values. My work thus revises the critical consensus that fixates on Lezama Lima’s presumed rejection of the avant-garde by documenting the deep relationships between texts and contexts, that is to say, between his poiesis and the intellectual, artistic and cultural manifestations that conform the late ‘30s and ‘40s Cuban scenario, to which the pervasiveness of European and Latin American avant-garde movements such as muralismo were fundamental. I hence consider Lezama Lima’s intricate engagement with avant-garde manifestations in the visual arts, an essential element in his aesthetics underestimated by critics despite the centrality of the concept of image to his works, and the attention 20th century art and thought gave to vision and visuality, as shown by critics Martin Jay and Mary Ann Caws. My dissertation thus explores the interconnections between intellectual, literary and visual art history in order to demonstrate how, despite his critical pronouncements against the avant-garde’s will-to-novelty and rejection of tradition, Lezama Lima actually incorporates several avant-garde topoi and techniques into his works (such as André Breton’s concept of “objective chance” and Pablo Picasso’s “completive technique”), in direct response to the epistemological shift they embody – a shift that has deeply impacted the contemporary regime of perception and patterns of representation. By driving Lezama Lima’s works back to its original contexts, my dissertation represents an important contribution to Cuban avant-garde criticism and its relationship to the broader cultural context of the avant-garde in Latin America and Europe, dialoguing with recent theories that emphasize the impact of the avant-garde on the establishment of contemporary regime of perception and patterns of representation as well.Item Transcolonial listening : dissonances in Cuban and Philippine literature(2014-05) Park, Paula Chungsun; Salgado, César Augusto; Arroyo Martínez, Jossianna; Cárcamo Huechante, Luis; Donoso Jiménez, Isaac; Fierro, Enrique; Wojciehowski, HannahThis dissertation compares the origins of an aesthetics of dissonance in twentieth century Cuban and Philippine literature. To do so, it examines Cuban authors Alejo Carpentier, Severo Sarduy, and Filipino writers Jesús Balmori and José García Villa, as critical "transcolonial listeners." I argue that their elective affinity to radio productions, music and sound effects in texts produced by people subject to colonization or coloniality, helped them refashion their imperial heritage. I first analyze Balmori's early career as a Romantic poet and novelist, and proceed with a close reading of his war novel Los pájaros de fuego, which reveals the strong disharmonies of Philippines' relationship with Europe, the US and Japan, during the Second World War. Then, I examine Carpentier's interest and consequent disappointment with radio production, his interest in Richard Wagner and his novel Los pasos perdidos. I demonstrate that despite Europe's decline in the wake of the Second World War, Carpentier's fascination with European musical forms, especially atonality, persisted. The second half of the dissertation focuses on the avant-garde tendencies of exile writers Villa and Sarduy. Revealing that Villa remained a "heritage listener" of Spanish, I prove that before publishing his experimental writings in English in the US, Villa avidly read and translated Hispanic poets. Finally, I analyze Sarduy's early poetry and radioplays, written inspired by travels to Asia, America and Western Europe in the late sixties and early seventies. While Villa, away from the Philippines, realized that Latinidad was compatible to Filipino identity, Sarduy compensated the loss of his Cuba by attentively listening to the music and sounds produced (or reproduced and replayed) in the locations he traveled to, such as African American jazz. Expanding Mary Louise Pratt's understanding of transculturation, this dissertation proposes that even though these writers inherited "imperial eyes," their hearing remained transcolonial.