2 research outputs found
Cuba\u27s Desired Revolution: Cinema and the Micro-Politics of Affect
Flyer for Fall 2013 ICS Faculty Fellow Lecture by Pedro Porben.https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/ics_fellow_lectures/1089/thumbnail.jp
The Desired Revolution and the New Man: Assembling and Negotiating Cultural and Intellectual Practices in Revolutionary Cuba.
The Desired Revolution and the New Man: Assembling and Negotiating Cultural and Intellectual Practices in Revolutionary Cuba
In my dissertation, âThe Desired Revolution and the New Man: Assembling and Negotiating Cultural and Intellectual Practices in Revolutionary Cuba,â I argue that the narratives of the Cuban revolution produced by its organic intellectuals (as well as by its main ideological drive, the so-called ânew manâ [hombre nuevo]) have set in motion differential affective politics operating in the cultural field. These narratives operate via complex flows of âstructures of feelingâ that generate the desire to desire the Cuban Revolution on the collective social body, inside and outside the island.
The deepest social transformation was perhaps created by the peopleâs own identification with and desire for the revolution. It is my contention that this âdesireâ (as Deleuze and Guattari suggest) was partially created by mainstream/ pro-revolutionary intellectuals. Within this framework I propose to analyze the cultural transformations in Cuba since the early 1959 vis-Ă -vis the âstructures of feelingâ and âpolitics of affectâ that dominate the revolutionâs political apparatus.
In sum, my dissertation details how Cubans have come to desire a âhegemonic Revolutionâ â a desire maintained through the unstable equilibrium between consensus and repression (following Gramsciâs views), and how such a balancing act can be critically analyzed through an extensive body of cultural texts. These include âcanonicâ films such as Fresa y Chocolate by TomĂĄs Gutierrez Alea, and other films by Arturo Soto, Enrique Ălvarez, Eduardo del Llano; novels, plays and short stories by Humberto Arenal (El sol a plomo and El mejor traductor de Shakespeare), Virgilio Piñera, JosĂ© Soler Puigâs BertillĂłn 166, Manuel Cofiño, to name a few; foto-reportajes [photographic reports] from Cuban magazines; art installations from Pedro Pablo Oliva, Alexis Leyva Machado âKcho,â Wifredo Lam, and Jorge PerugorrĂa; historietas [comics] such as Juan PadrĂłnâs Elpidio ValdĂ©s; as well as a number of interviews with intellectuals of this time period that I have conducted in Cuba and in the U.S. Cuban exilic communities.Ph.D.Romance Languages & Literatures: SpanishUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62383/1/pporben_1.pd