Critical Social Inquiry 0274 - Cuba/Revolution/Discontents

How do we study a reality as complex and contested as that of contemporary Cuba? What intellectual, political and affective frameworks do we have available? What images of Cuba circulating in US popular and official culture do we have to recognize and perhaps displace to even begin? What are and have been the competing lenses for examining Cuban history? The Cuban Revolution? The post-1989 period? Can we extricate Cuba from the Cold War frameworks that have dominated US academic (and US political) approaches to the island, at least until recently, moving from "Cubanology" to "Cuban Studies," reinserting Cuba into academic arrangements made in her absence? How then do we locate Cuba analytically-as part of the Caribbean [with its history of plantation economies and slavery]? Latin America [conquered by the Spanish, and strongly influenced by the Cuban Revolution]? In relation to the US [with its "ties of singular intimacy"] ? To other socialist or "post-socialist" countries? As a significant part of the African diaspora? As part of worldwide neoliberal restructuring of economies, cultures, politics? This course will challenge the view of Cuban "exceptionalism," the view of Cuba as unique, unrelated politically, culturally, economically, or historically to the forces and imaginaries that have shaped other parts of the world. We will ask how race, gender, and sexuality have figured in defining the Cuban nation. Finally we will analyze the development of exilic culture and ideology in Miami, "Cuba's second largest city."