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From Burning Paintings to Domestic Anxieties: Shifting Cultural Relations between the United States and Cuba and between Cubans on and off the Island

Jorge Duany

in Picturing Cuba: Art, Culture, and Identity on the Island and in the Diaspora

Jorge Duany examines the shifting cultural ties between Cuba and the United States since 1959, and how they have reframed relations between Cubans on and off the island. Duany argues that the ... More

Jorge Duany examines the shifting cultural ties between Cuba and the United States since 1959, and how they have reframed relations between Cubans on and off the island. Duany argues that the cultural politics of Miami’s Cuban community have changed substantially because of demographic and generational transitions over the last three decades. Until the 1980s, Cuban artists and other intellectuals in the United States had limited contact with their island counterparts. However, it is now customary for U.S. museums and galleries to collect and exhibit artworks produced in post-1959 Cuba without much protest or opposition from Cuban Americans. Although some exile artists and critics still believe that U.S. cultural institutions should not display such artworks, the fault lines between Cubans residing on the island and abroad seem more porous than in the past. The author concludes that the visual arts may serve as cultural bridges across the Florida Straits.Less

How to Be an Intellectual:: Rorty v. Ross

Jeffrey J. Williams

in How to Be an Intellectual: Essays on Criticism, Culture, and the University

This chapter compares two models of the intellectual, one from the philosopher, Richard Rorty, and the other the cultural critic, Andrew Ross. It looks at a debate they had during the culture wars, ... More

This chapter compares two models of the intellectual, one from the philosopher, Richard Rorty, and the other the cultural critic, Andrew Ross. It looks at a debate they had during the culture wars, surveys their careers, and deciphers what models they present in their actual practice-of clarity but lack of engagement in Rorty, and of a turn toward socially relevant criticism in Ross.Less

Credibility and Criticism:: On Walter Benn Michaels

Jeffrey J. Williams

in How to Be an Intellectual: Essays on Criticism, Culture, and the University

This essay challenges Walter Benn Michaels' position on cultural politics. Michaels' argues for class over diversity, but the problem is Michaels' ethos: he has little credibility in actual political ... More

This essay challenges Walter Benn Michaels' position on cultural politics. Michaels' argues for class over diversity, but the problem is Michaels' ethos: he has little credibility in actual political work, so his argument is merely academic rather than a model to emulate.Less

Cultural Politics in Bahia

Scott Ickes

in African-Brazilian Culture and Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil

This chapter argues that the Vargas era in Salvador bequeathed a legacy for the rest of the twentieth century. This legacy was the creation of a political-cultural struggle over the meaning of Bahian ... More

This chapter argues that the Vargas era in Salvador bequeathed a legacy for the rest of the twentieth century. This legacy was the creation of a political-cultural struggle over the meaning of Bahian regional identity and the degree to which Bahia would be associated with African-Bahian cultural practices. These vectors of conflict and negotiation fed into wider political contestation over what the cultural inclusion of those practices should mean for justice, discrimination, equal opportunity, and quality of life for Bahians of African descent.Less

The Cultural Unconsciousin American Politics: Why We Need a Freudian Left

Nona Willis Aronowitz

in The Essential Ellen Willis

Excerpts from a book-length project tentatively titled “The Cultural Unconscious in American Politics: Why We Need a Freudian Left” are presented. This book begins by discussing the cultural radical ... More

Excerpts from a book-length project tentatively titled “The Cultural Unconscious in American Politics: Why We Need a Freudian Left” are presented. This book begins by discussing the cultural radical impulse that emerged during the mid-1960s and reached the peak of its influence around the turn of the decade. It cites how large segments of the middle class, and millions of young people of all classes, regarded freedom, pleasure, and self-expression—sexual and otherwise—as important personal and social values. It then considers the defeat of cultural radicalism and traces the key events and attitudes conditioning the retreat from a bold feminism and, more broadly, radicalism. Finally, the book addresses Sigmund Freud’s ideas about the influence of the unconscious on human behavior, especially the compelling power of libido. It presents examples of how sexuality and its cultural implications can help shed light on both history and social life.Less

Brazil's Black Rome and the Remaking of Bahian Regional Identity

Scott Ickes

in African-Brazilian Culture and Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil

This chapter introduces the argument that African-Bahians and their allies were central players in the remaking of Bahian regional identity. This occurred mainly through the major religious festivals ... More

This chapter introduces the argument that African-Bahians and their allies were central players in the remaking of Bahian regional identity. This occurred mainly through the major religious festivals in Salvador, the capital of Bahia. The festivals provided opportunities for African-Bahians to perform their cultural practices, such as Candomblé ritual, samba, and capoeira. After 1930, politicians and journalists began to celebrate these practices as essential components of Bahian regional identity. The chapter also situates these arguments within the historical literature and elaborates on the author's argument that the process of cultural inclusion should be understood as a process of the formation of hegemony.Less

Serve the People: Socialist Transformations of Shanghai Food Culture

in Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai

This chapter demonstrates the socialist transformations of Shanghai food culture. Even the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) recognized the value of the city's many different forms, restorative and ... More

This chapter demonstrates the socialist transformations of Shanghai food culture. Even the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) recognized the value of the city's many different forms, restorative and reflective, of culinary nostalgia, although it also added its own distinctive varieties to the mix. The Bureau of Social Affairs (BSA)'s analyses of Shanghai-working-family diets complemented the comparatively conservative minshi rhetoric that underlay its investigation into the city's rice-price problems. Many are hopeful that the CCP can help solve the food problems in Shanghai. Its long-term plan for Shanghai was to transform it from a center of commercial capitalism into the most important industrial city in all of China. Cultural Revolution politics restructured Shanghai's restaurant industry to accord with a new vision of a proletarian China, and restaurants ceased serving as vehicles for the appreciation of the country's diverse regional cultures.Less

My Life as Editor

Jeffrey J. Williams

in How to Be an Intellectual: Essays on Criticism, Culture, and the University

This is a personal essay recounting the author's experience editing a literary journal, "The Minnesota Review." It talks about the everyday activities of an editor, as well as the general philosophy ... More

This is a personal essay recounting the author's experience editing a literary journal, "The Minnesota Review." It talks about the everyday activities of an editor, as well as the general philosophy of editing. It discusses the shifting focus of criticism through the 1990s and 2000s, notably the waning of literary theory and rise of cultural studies.Less

Introduction

Stanley Aronowitz

in The Essential Ellen Willis

This section contains excerpts from a book-length project tentatively titled “The Cultural Unconscious in American Politics: Why We Need a Freudian Left.” The book’s central argument is that our ... More

This section contains excerpts from a book-length project tentatively titled “The Cultural Unconscious in American Politics: Why We Need a Freudian Left.” The book’s central argument is that our understanding of cultural and political crises would be incomplete without a psychoanalytic dimension. The three draft chapters written integrate many of these elements with a nuanced and persuasive account of the salience of radical psychoanalytic thought. The book’s starting point is Sigmund Freud’s ideas about the influence of the unconscious on human behavior, especially the compelling power of libido. The book also finds the basis for its claims about radical psychoanalysis in Erich Fromm’s early work, Herbert Marcuse’s seminal Eros and Civilization, and especially in the many writings of Wilhelm Reich.Less

‘Bless hierarchy’: the cultural politics of Hill’s later work

Alex Wylie

in Geoffrey Hill's Later Work: Radiance of Apprehension

This chapter begins with a discussion of hierarchy and hegemony in Hill’s later work. The importance of Hill’s troubled conception of intrinsic value is pursued here, and its centrality to hierarchy ... More

This chapter begins with a discussion of hierarchy and hegemony in Hill’s later work. The importance of Hill’s troubled conception of intrinsic value is pursued here, and its centrality to hierarchy as a pre-political “unknown order” which is a revocation of Eliot’s “ideal order” in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’. The discussion here considers some of the thornier implications of Hill’s arguments regarding hierarchy and intrinsic value, with its implications around canonicity and democracy. The chapter continues with a consideration of Hill’s sense of difficulty and its cultural-political implications, developing the arguments about democracy and the democratic, concluding with a lengthy discussion of the ontological sense of Hill’s later work, and its cultural-political implications, drawing on Gabriel Marcel, and George Steiner. The chapter is at heart a meditation on elitism as a cultural-political concept the early twenty-first century, and what Hill makes of it in his later work.Less

Historic Preservation in Nazi Germany: Practices, Patterns, and Politics

Joshua Hagen

in Heritage at the Interface: Interpretation and Identity

This chapter offers a critical examination of historic preservationist practices to expand our understanding of the Nazi regime’s ideologies and objectives regarding historic places and national ... More

This chapter offers a critical examination of historic preservationist practices to expand our understanding of the Nazi regime’s ideologies and objectives regarding historic places and national heritage. Rather than catalogue the actual techniques of historic preservation, this chapter focuses on the cultural politics animating the regime’s efforts to construct its vision of national history, heritage, and memory. To do so, the chapter surveys the Nazi regime’s efforts to “preserve” three generalized places: the city, the town, and the villageLess

Conclusion: “The Clock is Ticking”

Thomas Jundt

in Greening the Red, White, and Blue: The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America

Green consumerism has come under attack as a form of political expression that avoids the more difficult work involved in traditional forms of political organizing. Such attacks often ignore the ... More

Green consumerism has come under attack as a form of political expression that avoids the more difficult work involved in traditional forms of political organizing. Such attacks often ignore the reality of the hegemonic power of the corporate capitalist state. However limited the political effects may be, from the earliest days after the environmental and psychic shock waves of the Bomb to the counterculture days of the sixties and up through the present, the alternative of green consumption has existed as a sanctuary within the corporate capitalist state where citizens no longer trust their government to place their interests before the interests of corporations. Ultimately, structural changes will require greater democracy, and the disembedding of corporate capitalism from the state. Until that unlikely transformation, many citizens will continue to take what shelter they can find in green consumerism.Less