Cuban women and gay men are subjugated to discrimination and prejudice, experiencing different forms of injustice and violence because of their race, gender, class, and sexuality. Scholars working in fields such as African Diaspora Studies, Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies, among others, have highlighted the core role played by intersectional analyses of cultural expression as a way to challenge the overlooked position of these social groups in dominant narratives about the island.
The rationale for organizing this session stems from the fact that, despite the growing visibility of Afrodescedant individuals, women, and gay men in Cuba in various spheres of cultural production, they continue to face marginalization and erasure in mainstream discourse. By featuring presentations on a range of topics related to the socio-political implications of Afro/Cuban cultural and visual production, this panel seeks to contribute to filling this gap by bringing together scholars, artists, and activists who engage in the study and promotion of this field of study to inspire new forms of cultural expression and social change.
Scerbo will open the session with a decolonial feminist analysis of the work of Afro-Cuban artist Harmonia Rosales, who critiques the limited representation of Black women in art and media by placing them in positions of power and subverting dominant narratives. Rosales draws on traditional African mythology, recreating mythical and religious spaces while reinventing the role of Black women. The three paintings analyzed here, respectively The Birth of Oshun, The Creation of God, and The Virgin, denounce the historical processes that proscribed and condemned non-Western spiritual traditions in the Caribbean.
Valecce will continue with a critical analysis of Batería (2016), a short documentary on the cruising of darker-skinned and lower-class gay men in Havana. Valecce is positing a reevaluation of invisibility—often seen as negative by queer academic production— through the visual proposal of Sainz to portray racial and queer representations in contemporary Cuban film production. Valecce will also offer an analysis of ¿Grandes Ligas? (2009) a short documentary focusing on baseball's female teams. In doing so, the director identifies and examines a profound masculine, hegemonic, and misogynist social structure that refuses to recognize women's baseball teams, a rejection that is socially accepted in Cuban culture.
Cuesta will propose a study of the trajectory of the Black, queer, and feminist music duos “Krudxs Cubensi” and “Okán” by reading them from a materialization and exploration of various political agendas that start from their own bodies in order to destabilize the hegemonic discourses that make up the still dominant patriarchal, heteronormative, white imaginary in Cuba. The presentation will explore how “Krudxs Cubensi” and “Okán” have turned their own bodies and respective music videos and visual works into a field of experimentation to fight the Cuban political status quo. By exposing the conditions of poverty in which Black and lesbian women live, Cuesta will reveal how “Krudxs Cubensi” and “Okán” try, from their queer and non-binary bodies, to expose these long exclusions from institutional agendas.
To conclude the session, Ruiz-González will offer an exploration of Cuban-American Carmen María Machado's comic The Low, Low Woods (2020) in which she presents several types of monsters as a consequence of collective trauma in a small mining town. Ruiz-González will focus on the analysis of female monsters like the deer-woman, the witch, and the hollow women by exploring how monster narratives are derisive towards women’s non-conforming behavior as a means of neutralizing the challenge posed to dominant, hegemonic, patriarchal norms’, but at the same time fetishizing the women who commit that act.
This panel session features four formal presentations conveyed through multimodal approaches. The four women panelists come from different academic ranks, geographic locations, disciplines, and institution types (including two historical Black institutions). To promote discussion, each panelist will have no more than 12-13 minutes each to present their paper. Emphasis will be put on lively interactions between the presenters and the audience.