A01=Yvon Grenier
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Yvon Grenier
authoritarianism
automatic-update
Castro
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=GTB
Category=GTM
Category=JP
Category=JPF
Category=JPS
COP=United States
Cuba
cultural policy
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€100 and above
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781498522236
- Weight: 581g
- Dimensions: 159 x 238mm
- Publication Date: 08 Nov 2017
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Culture and the Cuban State examines the politics of culture in communist Cuba. It focuses on cultural policy, censorship, and the political participation of artists, writers and academics such as Tania Bruguera, Jesús Díaz, Rafael Hernández, Kcho, Reynier Leyva Novo, Leonardo Padura, and José Toirac. The cultural field is important for the reproduction of the regime in place, given its pretense and ambition to be eternally “revolutionary” and to lead a genuine “cultural revolution”. Cultural actors must be mobilized and handled with care, given their presumed disposition to speak their mind and to cherish their autonomy. This book argues that cultural actors also seek recognition by the main (for a long time the only) sponsor and patron of the art in Cuba: the “curator state”. The “curator state” is also a “gatekeeper state,” arbitrarily and selectively opening and closing the space for public expression and for access to foreign currencies and the global market. The time when everything was either mandatory or forbidden is over in Cuba. The regime seems to have learned from egregious mistakes that led to a massive exodus of artists, writers and academics. In a country where things change so everything could stay the same, the controlled opening in the cultural field, playing on the actors' ambition and fear, illuminates a broader phenomenon: the evolving rules of the political game in the longest standing dictatorship of the hemisphere.
Yvon Grenier is professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University.
