Commitment Trouble: Gender Performance and Poetic Dissident in the Cuban Revolution
(2018) Latin American Literary Review — Vol. 45, n° 90, p. 44-52 (2018)
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- Abstract
- In 1966, under the patronage of the Cuban Communist Party, the first official poets of the Cuban Revolution founded a journal entitled The Bearded Caiman. This ‘beard’ was a reference to the beards often maintained by former Revolutionary fighters in remembrance of combat, which had become a revolutionary insignia which merged masculine identity with political identity. Starting in 1966, these young, smooth-faced poets brandished their discursive beards as one would have displayed a red star. Yet, to what extent did their virile displays amount to political displays? How was the “new man”, ushered in by political leaders, supposed to articulate gender and political commitment? And how should excessive, borderline parodic gender performances in these texts be interpreted? To answer these questions, we must first examine the political and gendered dictates weighing on the official poets, as well as on the whole literary field. We must thus consider their gender performance, in their texts and in their social performances, as the deliberate casting of a doubt over their political commitment. Could the object of the parody be the revolutionary subject rather than the gendered subject?
- Affiliations
Sorbonne Nouvelle University
Citations
Damerdji, A. (2018). Commitment Trouble: Gender Performance and Poetic Dissident in the Cuban Revolution. Latin American Literary Review, 45(90), 44-52. https://doi.org/10.26824/lalr.38 (Original work published 2018)