Through close critical readings of a representative set of contemporary Cuban novels and works of visual art, this book argues that ethics and gender, rather than ideology, account for the intellectuals’ fidelity to the Revolution. Community and Culture does three things: it demonstrates that masculine sociality is the key to understanding the longevity of Cuba’s socialist regime; it examines the sociology of cultural administration of intellectual labor in Cuba; and it maps the emergent ethical and aesthetic paradigms that allow Cuban intellectuals to envision alternative forms of community and civil society.
Guillermina De Ferrari is Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Her previous book, Vulnerable States (2007) studies the metaphorical power of the vulnerable body in comparative Caribbean literature.