Corporeal Readings of Cuban Literature and Art: The Body, the Inhuman, and Ecological Thinking - Paperback

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Overview

Tracing corporeality and materialityacross Cuban texts and images of the twentieth century Thisvolume looks at Cuban literature and art that challenge traditionalassumptions about the body. Examining how writers and artists have depicted racial, gender, and species differences throughout the past century, Christina Garcíaidentifies historical continuities in the way they have emphasized the sharedmateriality of bodies. Garcíashows how these works interact with ecologies of the human and nonhuman acrossdiverse media, time periods, and ideologies. Garcíaexamines corporeality in a variety of works, including the poetry of NicolásGuillén and experimental writings of Severo Sarduy; transspecies drawings, paintings, and sculptures by Roberto Fabelo; Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's popularqueer film Fresa y chocolate; and contemporary narrative fictions byEna LucíaPortela, Antonio José Ponte, and Ahmel Echevarría. Using the lenses of newmaterialism, critical race studies, critical animal studies, queer studies, andpoststructuralism, García engages with Cuban cultural production at theintersection of diverse social issues. Inthis book, García explores how certain artistic practices focus on portrayingecological relationships instead of recognizable subjects or shared identity.Corporeal Readings of Cuban Literature and Art demonstrates that throughtheir attention to the connections that different kinds of bodies share, Cuban creatorshave long undermined rules of classification and unification, reimaginingcommunity as shared vulnerability and difference. Publicationof this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the AmericanRescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.