acase@tulane.edu

Au début des années 1990, avec le décret de la « Période Spéciale », Cuba connaît une crise sans précédent qui remet en question, pour la première fois de son histoire, les fondements mêmes de la Révolution. La littérature cubaine, marquée matériellement par ce contexte, se fait l’écho des bouleversements survenus dans l’Ile. Ce dialogue qui s’instaure entre fiction et réalités sociales est au cœur de notre réflexion. A travers l’étude des nouvelles publiées depuis le début de cette période, nous avons essayé de saisir l’esprit d’une époque. Nous retraçons ainsi le destin littéraire de La Havane, en ces temps troublés, depuis les représentations de la destruction de la ville jusqu’aux images de sa dispersion. Ceux qui ont choisi d’écrire La Havane en crise s’exposent au chaos et au néant. La décadence physique et morale de la capitale et de ses habitants s’impose comme un thème artistique majeur. Face à une réalité en pleine décomposition, les écrivains cubains deviennent les artisans d’une possible restauration de la ville. Ils invoquent l’écriture pour sauver une Havane qui est entrée dans une phase accélérée de destruction. Métaphore d’une société et d’une nation en crise, la ville, détruite sur le plan matériel, se reconstruit, peu à peu, sur le plan littéraire. / At the beginning of the 1990’s, with the “Special Period” decree, Cuba knows an unsurpassed crisis which questions, for the first time in its history, the foundations of the Revolution. The Cuban literature, marked materially by this context, echoes the turnovers that arose on the Island. This dialogue, established between fiction and social realities, is at the heart of our reflection. Throughout the study of the short stories published since the beginning of this period, we have attempted to seize the spirit of this era. In thus doing, we recount the literary destiny of Havana, in these flustered times, from the representations of the destruction of the city until the images of its dispersal. The authors who chose to write Havana in crisis run the risk of chaos and nonexistence. The physical and moral decline of the capital and of its people stands out as a major artistic subject. Facing a reality in full decomposition, the Cuban writers have become the artisans of the city’s possible restoration. They call upon writing to save Havana which has entered a hastened destructive stage. Metaphor of a society and of a nation in crisis, the city, destroyed on a material level, rises again, little by little, on a literary level.

As a consequence of Cuba’s severe mid-1990s economic crisis and the government’s attempt to remedy it by investing in the tourism sector, a new interactional space has opened up, providing Cubans with the opportunity to form economically advantageous relationships with foreigners. This thesis contributes to the anthropological understanding of the lifeworlds of Cuban women who engage in relationships with foreign men that are sexualized and commercialized to various degrees. These touristic encounters are morally and ideologically contested in late socialist Cuba. They are also characterized by an ambiguous tension, as the women have to manage foreign men’s expectations regarding exchanges of love and money. Based on six months of fieldwork in Havana, I examine the components and developments of such relationships and discuss the women’s particular role. I highlight their agency as they capitalize on touristic desires and fantasies of the exotic and erotic Caribbean Other, simultaneously reproducing a system of sexualized, racialized and gendered inequalities. Through a discussion of the methodologies employed in the research, I question the analytical use of empirical categories in anthropological analysis. I argue that emic categories applied to relationships between Cuban women and foreign men are political and normative markers of social statuses, but are not valid analytical units.

This project charts the emergence of the Cuban Theatre of the Absurd, or teatro del absurdo, over the course of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, its suppression by the revolutionary government, and its revival during the "Special Period" of the 1990s. Rather than understand the category as either an extension of the European Theatre of the Absurd, or as the invention of scholars intent on exporting such a schematic to Latin America, the Cuban teatro del absurdo should be recognized as a material phenomenon that evolved organically within the Havana theatre community, proposed a historically specific Cuban absurd as its object of representation, and assumed great ideological importance within the cultural and political landscape of the time. Its chief pioneer and practitioner was Virgilio Piñera, while José Triana and Antón Arrufat produced foundational absurdist works of the post-revolutionary period. Their plays and critical essays affirm the teatro del absurdo as a site of edification for audiences because of the anti-ideological nature of the works performed, and the authority these performances bestow on spectators as meaning creators. Because the teatro del absurdo opened conceptual space for difference in reception, while also operating as a cosmopolitan margin where European influences were incorporated within plays that spoke to the absurdity of Cuba's socio-political reality, it posed a threat to the univocal ideological control of the revolutionary government. The absurdo's resonance during the Special Period and within contemporary Cuban theatre is a testament to its enduring viability as a dynamic form that allows multiple truths and voices to be heard. Chapter one of the study explores the critical archive surrounding both the European Theatre of the Absurd and the Theatre of the Absurd in Latin America and Cuba. It argues that, rather than discard the category as imperfect or perpetuate a paradigm that privileges text over performance, critics should account for its unique ideological currency within the specific context of pre and post-revolutionary Cuba by tracking the material extension of the term and the works subsumed by it within Havana's theatre and performance archive. Chapter two investigates the historical basis of the Cuban absurdo, localizable in the concept of choteo, and maps the concept's valence in the context of 19th century teatro bufo as well as Piñera's early theatre of the 1940s and 50s. Chapter three considers the role of the teatro del absurdo in post-revolutionary Cuba by examining works by Piñera, Triana and Arrufat in conjunction with their critical essays of the time, in order to capture the political significance of the genre as a zone of dissidence and opposition to the total system of the revolution. Chapter four tracks the revival of the teatro del absurdo as a source of endurance during the privation of the Special Period of the 1990s. The re-emergence of voices like Piñera's signaled a return to a past of provocation and confrontation in order to generate a future in which space for difference would be preserved. / text

Through the broader contextualization of ethnographic fieldwork in Havana’s newly reformed housing market, this study theorizes the Cuban late socialist condition through a lens of utopian ideological conflict. A popular narrative of free market utopia has emerged in the face of the state’s recalcitrant ideology of state socialism. The popular narrative is reproduced through growth in the informal economy, while the socialist utopian narrative is maintained by the ubiquity of its bureaucratic apparatus. Inspired by postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1994), this thesis theorizes the Cuban state narrative as an ideological simulation, supported only through its strongest simulacrum – the government bureaucracy. Previous work on Cuba has cited the importance of access to government-purchased goods to fuel the informal economy and individual wealth accumulation. This study highlights the reproduction of a narrative of free market utopia in the desire for access to transactions as intermediaries, particularly as the deals increase in hard currency value. The passage of Decreto-Ley Number 288, which authorized the buying and selling of homes has served to rapidly capitalize the market and encourage further development of an informal network of brokers. Greater economic hybridization in the housing sector, among others, is gradually eroding the totalizing nature of the state’s socialist utopia. / text