Cuba Represent!: Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures

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Duke University Press, 25. okt. 2006 - 218 síður
In Cuba something curious has happened over the past fifteen years. The government has allowed vocal criticism of its policies to be expressed within the arts. Filmmakers, rappers, and visual and performance artists have addressed sensitive issues including bureaucracy, racial and gender discrimination, emigration, and alienation. How can this vibrant body of work be reconciled with the standard representations of a repressive, authoritarian cultural apparatus? In Cuba Represent! Sujatha Fernandes—a scholar and musician who has performed in Cuba—answers that question.

Combining textual analyses of films, rap songs, and visual artworks; ethnographic material collected in Cuba; and insights into the nation’s history and political economy, Fernandes details the new forms of engagement with official institutions that have opened up as a result of changing relationships between state and society in the post-Soviet period. She demonstrates that in a moment of extreme hardship and uncertainty, the Cuban state has moved to a more permeable model of power. Artists and other members of the public are collaborating with government actors to partially incorporate critical cultural expressions into official discourse. The Cuban leadership has come to recognize the benefits of supporting artists: rappers offer a link to increasingly frustrated black youth in Cuba; visual artists are an important source of international prestige and hard currency; and films help unify Cubans through community discourse about the nation. Cuba Represent! reveals that part of the socialist government’s resilience stems from its ability to absorb oppositional ideas and values.

 

Efni

Artistic Public Spheres and the State
1
Changing Ideologies in Socialist Cuba
23
Film Publics Critical Debates and New Modes of Incorporation
42
Local Rappers Transnational Crossings and State Power
85
DJ Flipper
96
Anónimo Consejo
102
Magia MC of Obsesión
113
Adeyeme Umoja of Anónimo Consejo
129
Elio Rodríguez Tropical
165
Alexis Esquivel Acción afirmativa
166
Carlos Garaicoa Ahora juguemos a desaparecer I
169
Carlos Garaicoa Ahora juguemos a desaparecer II
170
Carlos Garaicoa
171
Carlos Garaicoa En las hierbas del verano I
172
Carlos Garaicoa En las hierbas del verano II
173
Carlos Garaicoa Cuatro cubanos I
174

Papo Record
131
State Institutions Public Art and the New Market Conditions of Production
135
Carlos Garaicoa Homenaje a 6
140
Alexis Esquivel La soga maravillosa
162
Elio Rodríguez The Temptation of the Joint Venture
164
Carlos Garaicoa Cuatro cubanos II
175
Conclusion
181
Notes
191
Bibliography
199
Index
213

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Um höfundinn (2006)

Sujatha Fernandes is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York.

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