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Author: Par Kumaraswami
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137559403
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
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.
Author: Par Kumaraswami
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137559403
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Get Book
Book Description
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.
Author: Luis Martínez-Fernández
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813048761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
This is the first book in more than three decades to offer a complete and chronological history of revolutionary Cuba, including the years of rebellion that led to the revolution. Beginning with Batista’s coup in 1952, which catalyzed the rebels, and bringing the reader to the present-day transformations initiated by Raúl Castro, Luis Martínez-Fernández provides a balanced interpretive synthesis of the major topics of contemporary Cuban history. Expertly weaving the myriad historic, social, and political forces that shaped the island nation during this period, Martínez-Fernández examines the circumstances that allowed the revolution to consolidate in the early 1960s, the Soviet influence throughout the latter part of the Cold War, and the struggle to survive the catastrophic Special Period of the 1990s after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. He tackles the island’s chronic dependence on sugar production, which started with the plantations centuries ago and continues to shape culture and society. He analyzes the revolutionary pendulum that continues to swing between idealism and pragmatism, focusing on its effects on the everyday lives of the Cuban people, and—bucking established trends in Cuban scholarship—Martínez-Fernández systematically integrates the Cuban diaspora into the larger discourse of the revolution. Concise, well written, and accessible, this book is an indispensable survey of the history and themes of the socialist revolution that forever changed Cuba and the world.
Author: Mauricio A. Font
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315524996
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
First Published in 2016. If scholarship on Cuban studies after the 1959 revolution focused on the historical and cultural aspects of the construction of a socialist order, the post-1989 crisis of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe raised questions about the island’s state as a socialist model. The scholarly gaze gradually began to focus on possibilities for alternative transformations at various levels of social life rather than on the deepening of traditional twentieth-century state socialism. This volume explores the newly emergent themes and debates about Cuban society and history.
Author: Teishan A. Latner
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146963547X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Cuba's grassroots revolution prevailed on America's doorstep in 1959, fueling intense interest within the multiracial American Left even as it provoked a backlash from the U.S. political establishment. In this groundbreaking book, historian Teishan A. Latner contends that in the era of decolonization, the Vietnam War, and Black Power, socialist Cuba claimed center stage for a generation of Americans who looked to the insurgent Third World for inspiration and political theory. As Americans studied the island's achievements in education, health care, and economic redistribution, Cubans in turn looked to U.S. leftists as collaborators in the global battle against inequality and allies in the nation's Cold War struggle with Washington. By forging ties with organizations such as the Venceremos Brigade, the Black Panther Party, and the Cuban American students of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and by providing political asylum to activists such as Assata Shakur, Cuba became a durable global influence on the U.S. Left. Drawing from extensive archival and oral history research and declassified FBI and CIA documents, this is the first multidecade examination of the encounter between the Cuban Revolution and the U.S. Left after 1959. By analyzing Cuba's multifaceted impact on American radicalism, Latner contributes to a growing body of scholarship that has globalized the study of U.S. social justice movements.
Author: Lillian Guerra
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030023533X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A leading scholar sheds light on the experiences of ordinary Cubans in the unseating of the dictator Fulgencio Batista In this important and timely volume, one of today’s foremost experts on Cuban history and politics fills a significant gap in the literature, illuminating how Cuba’s electoral democracy underwent a tumultuous transformation into a military dictatorship. Lillian Guerra draws on her years of research in newly opened archives and on personal interviews to shed light on the men and women of Cuba who participated in mass mobilization and civic activism to establish social movements in their quest for social and racial justice and for more accountable leadership. Driven by a sense of duty toward la patria (the fatherland) and their dedication to heroism and martyrdom, these citizens built a powerful underground revolutionary culture that shaped and witnessed the overthrow of Batista in the late 1950s. Beautifully illustrated with archival photographs, this volume is a stunning addition to Latin American history and politics.
Author: Enrique Oltuski
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0787966584
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Vida Clandestina is the first U.S. publication of the dramatic memoir of an important Cuban revolutionary who led a dangerous double life from 1952 to1959. Educated at University of Miami, then a high-ranking manager and engineer for Shell Oil, Enrique Oltuski was also a leader in the urban guerilla 26th of July Movement in Havana and Santa Clara, risking his life to join forces with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and working at the highest level of the Cuban government in the forty-three years since.
Author: Charles McKelvey
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319621602
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
The book interprets the Cuban revolutionary movement from 1868 to 1959 as a continuous process that sought political independence and social and economic transformation of colonial and neocolonial structures. Cuba is a symbol of hope for the Third World. The Cuban Revolution took power from a national elite subordinate to foreign capital, and placed it in the hands of the people; and it subsequently developed alternative structures of popular democracy that have functioned to keep delegates of the people in power. While Cuba has persisted, the peoples of the Third World, knocked down by the neoliberal project, have found social movement and political life, a renewal that is especially evident in Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement. At the same time, the capitalist world-economy increasingly reveals its unsustainability, and the global elite demonstrate its incapacity to respond to a multifaceted and sustained global crisis. These dynamics establish conditions for popular democratic socialist revolutions in the North.
Author: Ada Ferrer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501154567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 576
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Book Description
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued--through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country's future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington--Barack Obama's opening to the island, Donald Trump's reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden--have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an ambitious chronicle written for an era that demands a new reckoning with the island's past. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History reveals the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the influence of the United States on Cuba and the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba. Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States--as well as the author's own extensive travel to the island over the same period--this is a stunning and monumental account like no other. --
Author: Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 1629631302
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442
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Book Description
Grounded in painstaking research, To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture revisits the circumstances which led to the arts being embraced at the heart of the Cuban Revolution. Introducing the main protagonists to the debate, this previously untold story follows the polemical twists and turns that ensued in the volatile atmosphere of the 1960s and ’70s. The picture that emerges is of a struggle for dominance between Soviet-derived approaches and a uniquely Cuban response to the arts under socialism. The latter tendency, which eventually won out, was based on the principles of Marxist humanism. As such, this book foregrounds emancipatory understandings of culture. To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture takes its title from a slogan – devised by artists and writers at a meeting in October 1960 and adopted by the First National Congress of Writers and Artists the following August – which sought to highlight the intrinsic importance of culture to the Revolution. Departing from popular top-down conceptions of Cuban policy-formation, this book establishes the close involvement of the Cuban people in cultural processes and the contribution of Cuba’s artists and writers to the policy and praxis of the Revolution. Ample space is dedicated to discussions that remain hugely pertinent to those working in the cultural field, such as the relationship between art and ideology, engagement and autonomy, form and content. As the capitalist world struggles to articulate the value of the arts in anything other than economic terms, this book provides us with an entirely different way of thinking about culture and the policies underlying it.
Author: Antoni Kapcia
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786736470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Few island nations have stirred the soul like Cuba. From Hemingway's intoxicating Havana to Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club, outsiders have persistently been fascinated by Cuba for its music (jazz to rumba), its rich literature, its art and dance (danzón to mambo) and perhaps above all for its bold experiment of a socialist revolution in action. Antoni Kapcia shows how the thaw in relations between Cuba and the USA now makes a fresh appraisal of the country and its modern history essential. He authoritatively explores the 'essence' of the Cuban revolution, revealing it to be a maverick phenomenon tied not so much to socialism or Communism for their own sakes but instead to an idealistic vision of postcolonial nationalism. Reassessing the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the author examines the central personalities: not just the famous trio of Che Guevara, Fidel and Raúl Castro in shaping the ideas of the revolution but, still further back, the visionary ideology of José Martí. Kapcia's book reflects on the future of the revolution as aúl nd his government began to cede power to a new generation.
