To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture

Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt

Description

Grounded in painstaking research, To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture revisits the circumstances which led to the arts being embraced at the heart of the Cuban Revolution. Introducing the main protagonists to the debate, this previously untold story follows the polemical twists and turns that ensued in the volatile atmosphere of the 1960s and ’70s. The picture that emerges is of a struggle for dominance between Soviet-derived approaches and a uniquely Cuban response to the arts under socialism. The latter tendency, which eventually won out, was based on the principles of Marxist humanism. As such, this book foregrounds emancipatory understandings of culture.

To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture takes its title from a slogan – devised by artists and writers at a meeting in October 1960 and adopted by the First National Congress of Writers and Artists the following August – which sought to highlight the intrinsic importance of culture to the Revolution. Departing from popular top-down conceptions of Cuban policy-formation, this book establishes the close involvement of the Cuban people in cultural processes and the contribution of Cuba’s artists and writers to the policy and praxis of the Revolution. Ample space is dedicated to discussions that remain hugely pertinent to those working in the cultural field, such as the relationship between art and ideology, engagement and autonomy, form and content. As the capitalist world struggles to articulate the value of the arts in anything other than economic terms, this book provides us with an entirely different way of thinking about culture and the policies underlying it.

Sujets

• Cultural policy
• Cinema

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629631301
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Praise for To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture
Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt is an internationally esteemed curator of contemporary art and a committed commentator upon cultural policy, and, in this unique work, she turns her attention to the cultural policy of the Cuban Revolution.
Although there exist academic studies of Cuban art since the Revolution, there has been little examination of the policy underlying this practice. As such, this book is of inestimable value not only to those Cubans and exiled Cubans (in the US and elsewhere), interested in the policies which have shaped the representation of their cultural identity, and to students of Cuban culture more generally, but also to cultural policy-makers in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
At a time when Cuba is undergoing a period of political transition and economic reform which anticipates significant cultural transformation, this work is both timely and necessary to situate, contextualize and inform contemporary debates on future Cuban cultural policy, in particular, and the ways in which local and national cultural strategies address issues of globalization and neoliberalism more generally.
– Ross Birrell, co-director of the film Guantanamera and founding editor of Art & Research, Glasgow School of Art.
Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt has written a tremendous book, one that allows us to imagine what culture might look like in a free society – a society in which art and culture are not dictated by a market and can be developed and expressed freely, limited only by the imagination. This opening of the imagination as to what is possible is achieved through a detailed cultural and political description of the early years of the Cuban Revolution. Gordon-Nesbitt finds a wonderful balance between expressing the unencumbered prioritization of cultural expression in Cuba and the various challenges that this process faced.
– Marina Sitrin, author of They Can’t Represent Us! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy .
Che Guevara believed that art was the highest form of revolution. And Fidel Castro, searching for the appropriate rank to confer upon Guevara at the public wake following his death, called him Artist. To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture is a brilliant and comprehensive study of the Cuban Revolution’s struggle to counteract neoliberalism’s commodity-oriented degradation of culture with a strategy that recognizes art as an integral part of life, honors the creative mind, and has promoted an ongoing conversation between artist and public that has moved far beyond the borders of the small Caribbean island. It is a struggle that has had its extraordinary highs and painful lows, and Gordon-Nesbitt documents its complex history. This is a must read for everyone interested in Cuba, art, and culture. And it is long overdue.
– Margaret Randall, author of Che on My Mind and Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression .
There is, I am sure, a great deal to be learned from the Cuban experience. And I couldn’t agree more with Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt about the threat to culture under the neoliberal assault on the general population.
– Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For all the obvious reasons, there is very little useful scholarship on the achievements of socialism past, present and to come. This valuable study of emergent cultural structures in the Cuban Revolution fills a real gap and reminds us of one of that revolution’s many (and mostly ignored) successes. Cuba is still in existence; maybe it actually has some lessons for us, in our current social distress.
– Fredric Jameson, author of Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism .
Writing on cultural policy has completely forgotten the socialist and communist regimes of the 20th century – or preserves them as historical memories only. The end of the Soviet Union and the gradual erosion of any explicit social values from the Chinese regime has left us with an impoverished set of cultural policy goals, in which city branding, innovation systems and tourism dollars reign supreme. That there could be another conception of artistic practice and cultural policy; that this could be socialist and not be about tractors and propaganda; that this might persist as a living tradition – all this remains hidden from view. Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt’s new book makes an enormous contribution to the process of retrieving buried histories and opening new futures for cultural policy at a time when the value of culture is utterly debased and obscured.
– Justin O’Connor, Professor of Communications and Cultural Economy, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt is to be congratulated on having had the courage and tenacity to explore this largely uncharted territory and thereby to have given fresh impetus to the debate on cultural policy in Cuba. With a specific focus on the visual arts, her study is as timely as it is enlightening at this particular historical juncture. This is not only because Cuba is undergoing significant transformations but also because her detailed study of cultural policy under socialism provides much food for thought for all those interested in broader questions of policy-making and provision. This certainly contributes significantly to our understanding of the current neoliberalisation of the cultural domain in the West.
– Chin-tao Wu, author of Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s .
This book will delight some readers and provoke others. But whatever your take on socialist cultural policy, this broadly affirmative account of Cuban experiences makes fascinating reading. Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt’s meticulously researched study makes a substantive contribution to our understanding of the historical development of cultural policy under different political and economic regimes.
– Oliver Bennett, editor of the International Journal of Cultural Policy .
This study is thoroughly researched and commendably detailed, excelling especially in its methodical approach to tracing the formation and evolution of cultural policy in Cuba from 1959 to 1976. It is likely to prove of considerable use to others working on, and interested in, the relationship between art and politics, not only in Cuba but also beyond the Cuban case.
– Antoni Kapcia, Professor of Latin American History, University of Nottingham, author of Literary culture in Cuba: Revolution, nation-building and the book .
Understanding the uniquely Cuban approach to the support of one of the world’s most celebrated, diverse cultures is essential to a thorough understanding of the Revolution. With meticulous research and insightful analysis, Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt documents the policies, programs and, most importantly, the philosophy behind the active cultivation of vibrant and authentic arts and culture by and for the people. Revolutionary women, like Haydée Santamaría and Celia Sánchez, played a particularly important role in the arts and culture movement, and this book gives voice to their invaluable contributions.
– Betsy MacLean, editor of Haydée Santamaría: Rebel Lives .

To Defend the Revolution Is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of the Cuban Revolution
Copyright © 2015 Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt.
This edition copyright © 2015 PM Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978–1–62963–104–2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930872
Cover by John Yates/Stealworks
Interior design by briandesign
Index by Chris Dodge
Editing and proofreading by 100% Proof and Gregory Nipper
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For Haydée Santamaría
Contents Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Key to Institutions and Abbreviations FOREWORD Jorge Fornet PREAMBLE Cuba as an Antidote to Neoliberalism ONE Conceptualising Cultural Policy in Cuba Cultural Policy under Capitalism The Cuban Revolution Dawns The Centrality of Culture to the Revolution A Uniquely Cuban Approach to Culture A Subject for the Object The Cultural Gains of the Revolution Charting the Trajectory of Cuban Cultural Policy A Focus on the Plastic Arts A Note on Style by Way of Conclusion TWO Revolutionary Rebuilding Nuestro Tiempo Cultural Society Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industries (ICAIC) Casa de las Américas National Council of Culture (CNC) The Ministry of Culture ( MINCULT ) National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) Museums and Galleries Casas de Cultura Educational Institutions An Institutional Overview THREE The Emancipatory Potential of Culture under Socialism Art as a Form of Social Production Culture as a Tool of Class Struggle Culture as a Means of Enhancing Spiritual Growth The Revolution and Aesthetics Freedom of Expression Remarks in Conclusion FOUR The Early Cultural Climate Cultural Discussions as the Revolution Dawns Words from the Intellectuals (October–November 1960) PM and Its Aftermath (May–June 1961) Words to the Intellectuals (30 June 1961) The First National Congress of Writers and Artists (18–22 August 1961) Remarks in Conclusion FIVE Cultural Policy 1961–7 Formulation of Cultural Policy by the CNC 1961–4 The Persistent Polemic around Socialist Aesthetics Socialism and Man in Cuba, March 1965 Crisis Talks between Armando Hart and Intellectuals, October 1965 Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), November 1965 The Centra