En Carne Propia: Embodied Identities in Cuban and Mexican Cultural Production

In twentieth-century Cuba and Mexico, each post-revolutionary state consolidated power through cultural production, especially film and literature, by funding national cinema and institutions such as the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists. This project examines the ways in which contemporary writers, filmmakers, and performance artists (1980-2006) emphasize personal, embodied experience to examine and frequently contest the generalized and overarching identity constructs propagated as part of an explicitly national post-revolutionary culture in Cuba and Mexico. Writers such as Ena Lucia Portela, Abilio Estevez, Pedro Juan Gutierrez, Antonio Jose Ponte, Jorge Volpi, Federico Campbell, performance artist Astrid Hadad, and filmmakers Tommy Lee Jones, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, and Alfonso Cuaron explore how the destabilization of revolutionary ideology and increasing economic and political changes in each country affects the daily lives of artistic subjects, thereby underscoring the social role of art and the tensions between art and commerce in contemporary Cuba and Mexico.