Copyright By Hector Amaya 2003 The Dissertation Committee for Hector Amaya certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Viewing Political Selves in Film: A Comparative Reception Study of Cuban Films in Cuba and the United States Committee: Janet Staiger, Supervisor John D. Downing Kathleen M. Higgins Mary Celeste Kearney Michael Kackman Viewing Political Selves in Film: A Comparative Reception Study of Cuban Films in Cuba and the United States by Hector Amaya, Licenciado, M.C.S. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2003 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the advice and support of many. My gratitude goes to my adviser, Janet Staiger, who walked with me every step of the way, acting as an invaluable guide in all matters. Besides being my advisor, she has been my mentor; her academic and ethical standards have helped me envision a professional life where generosity is in harmony with responsibility. Thanks also to John Downing for his expert advice, political commitment, and the joy he brought to my life in the Ph.D. program. I thank Kathleen Higgins for her expertise, and the kind way in which she guided me through tough issues. Mary Kearney deserves my gratitude for sharing her rigor and passion for scholarship, as well as for allowing me an opportunity to grow. Finally, my gratitude to Michael Kackman, whose late addition to my committee was a godsend and who expertly commented on the topic on such short notice. I am honored to have the trust of such wonderful group of people. I also want to thank Sonia Labrador-Rodriguez, who guided me through some of the early intricacies of the project. Chris Lucas, Avi Santo, Kyle Barnett, Dustin Harp, and Mark Tremayne lent me their editing skills, reading chapters of my work in an admirably expedient fashion. Thank you. I also thank the professorate, staff, and students of the RTF department for making my stay in Texas a great experience. Finally, the staff of LANIC, in particular Kent Norsworthy and Carolyn Palaima, gave me a space to learn and work in an exquisite Latin-America-phile community. I am lucky to count them as my friends. iv My very special gratitude to my friend (and mentor) Denise Blum who read, edited, and expertly commented on each and every page of my writing. Her love for Cuba and for Cubans and her knowledge of the island exemplify reflexive scholarship, teaching the balance between knowledge production and ethics. Aside her invaluable professional mentoring, Denni gave me moral support, laughter, and games; she also kept me going, inspired me, and provided the structure needed to accomplish this project. I must also thank my friend, peer, and, now, my wife, Jennifer Petersen, for making the writing process not only humane, but also joyful. As my friend, she saw that I remained sane, aware of what was happening in the world, and attuned to films and music; as my peer, she kept me mentally sharp and intellectually stimulated. As my wife, she gave me a center. If this was not enough, Jen also read my work and her editorial and theoretical talents brought coherence to many of my ideas and propositions. Finally, I wish to thank my parents, Mita and Hector, who are the real origin of this dissertation and to whom this work is dedicated. They are the structure in my thought, my moral fiber, and my perseverance; whatever wisdom I may have I had only borrowed from them. My siblings, Angelica, Macky, and Cesar and their partners Eleazar, Ritchie, and Mayra, also deserve my thanks for so patiently supporting my endeavors and so generously providing when I was in needed. I could not have accomplish anything without them v Viewing Political Selves in Film: A Comparative Reception Study of Cuban Films in Cuba and the United States Publication No. __________ Hector Amaya, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2003 Supervisor: Janet Staiger The author analyzed political viewing of five Cuban films in Cuba by official cultural writers and compared this to the viewing of the same set of films by critics, essayists, and film commentators in the United States. The analysis used Janet Staiger’s film reception theory, the work of Michel Foucault on technologies of self, and Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas on cultural fields and habitus as theoretical frameworks. Each set of vi evidence was analyzed in relation to the types of political identities available at the time in each country within cultural institutions, and then each set was compared with the other. In Cuba, official workers, responding to the Cuban government’s need for cultural policies, crafted an interpretive apparatus based in debates that explored the relationship between aesthetics and politics. The interpretive apparatus, which the author termed “revolutionary hermeneutics,” became a preferred rationale for interpretation and cultural evaluation, a discipline, that shaped the Cuban cultural field from 1958 to 1985, the period the author studied, and that cultural workers used to interpret and value Memories of Underdevelopment (1968, d. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea), Lucia (1968, d. Humberto Solás), One Way or Another (1974, d. Sara Gómez), Portrait of Teresa (1979, d. Pastor Vega), and Up to a Certain Point (1983, d. Alea). U.S. critics, influenced by the political changes of the 1960s, which made common feminist and leftist ideas about culture and the politicization of all things Cuban, interpreted and valued the same Cuban films with hermeneutic tactics that included anti-totalitarianism, feminism, auteurism, and Marxism. The range of these tactics failed to show the disciplining of the Cuban revolutionary hermeneutics but did provide evidence of the complex ways in which cultural interpretation served U.S. cultural workers in their negotiations of the cultural field’s relation to economic and political structures (the field of power). As in the Cuban case, the relationship between the cultural field and the field of power shaped the critics’ understanding of the Cuban films. vii Contents 1: Introduction to the Project 1 Goal and Objectives of the Project 3 Theoretical and Methodological Contexts 7 Self, Subject, and Individual 12 Radical Selves in U.S. Film Theory 14 Revolutionary Selves in Cuban Cinema 28 Dissertation Outline 35 Notes 39 2: Theories and Methods for Technologies of Self in Film Interpretation 53 Structures, Habitus, Agents, and Change 56 Technologies of the Self 66 Film Viewing as Technology 71 Citizenry 86 Governmentality 92 Conclusion 96 Notes 98 3: Cuban Culture, Institutions, Policies, and People 109 The Cultural Vanguard and the Politicization of Cuba 115 1959-1961: The Beginning of a Cultural Revolution 116 1961-1970: The Sixties or Cultural Experimentation and Idealism 126 Cultural Policing and “Palabras a los Intelectuales” 128 Reorganization of the Cultural Field 138 1970-1985: Institutionalization and Cultural Accountability 145 Cultural Normativity 148 Women and the Revolution 154 Cultural Institutionalization 160 Conclusion 166 Notes 170 4: Cuban Revolutionary Hermeneutics as Aesthetic Inquiry 185 Discourse 1: The Politicization of Cultural Work and Workers 189 Discourse 2: Culture as Transformation 196 Sets of Knowledges 205 Discourse 3: The Cultural Vanguard in the Revolution 207 Discourse 4: The Aesthetics of Revolutionary Culture 218 Discourse 5: Proper Objects of Aesthetic Reflection 229 Discourse 6: The (Ideal) Relationship of People to Culture 238 Discourse 7: The Policing of Culture 248 Conclusion 250 Notes 254 viii 5: Cuban Criticism as a Social Practice 274 Memories of Underdevelopment 280 Lucia 296 One Way or Another 316 Portrait of Teresa 329 Up to a Certain Point 348 Conclusion 350 Notes 353 6: The U.S. Field of Culture: Feminisms and Leftisms 363 The Libretto: Ideological Dispositions 367 The Stage: The Field of Culture 375 The Academy and Subjugated Knowledges 382 Feminist as Preamble to Hermeneutics 386 Feminist Film Criticism 392 The Politicization of Film in Feminist Criticism 393 Hermeneutics and Critical Approaches 396 Feminist Aesthetics 401 Epistemology 404 Conclusion 404 Notes 407 7: U.S. Reception of Cuban Film 422 Memories of Underdevelopment 426 Lucia 445 One Way or Another 461 Portrait of Teresa 466 Up to a Certain Point 484 Conclusion 495 Notes 500 8: Conclusion 515 Review of research 516 Culture and Reception in Cuba and the United States 518 1. Film Reception Exists within Institutionalized Contexts 521 2. Cultural work Is often Politicized 523 3. Hermeneutics Guides Film Interpretation 526 4. Normative Ideas of Self Are Part of Hermeneutics 529 Implication for the Field 535 Notes 536 Appendix: Film Summaries 538 Bibliography 544 Vita 564 ix 1 Introduction to the Project Until 1971, general audiences from the United States of America were denied the opportunity to see revolutionary Cuban cinema.1 The first opportunity came when the non-profit radical film organization American Documentary Films (ADF) joined efforts with the Cuban Film Institute (Instituto Cubano de Artes e Industria Cinematográficos, ICAIC) to organize a Festival of Cuban Films in several United States cities, with an opening festival in New York City. After reaching agreements that included inviting the Cuban directors Alfredo Guevara, Santiago Alvarez, Jorge Fraga, and Saúl Yelin to attend the Festival, ADF went ahead and started to promote the Festival and its special guests. The venue for the Festival was the Olympia Theater in New York City where, from March 24 to April 2, 1972, seven feature films and fifteen documentaries, all of which had received international prizes and acclaim, would be exhibited for the first time in the United States. The event was noteworthy not only because it marked the debut of Cuban film in U.S.