Havana Beyond the Ruins: Cultural Mappings after 1989

摘要

A great deal of cultural studies research has looked at the Cuba of the post-1990 crisis years - usually focusing on notions of dystopia, collapse, disillusion, social fragmentation and so on - and, within that focus, has tended to concentrate on Havana, as the two editors observe at the start of this collection. However, little has actually been written exclusively about the city during that period. Instead, historians have often set contemporary Havana in a historical context of chaotic but luxuriant evolution but left out of their depiction any analysis of the city as it is currently, rather than as it was. Yet the fascination of cultural studies, and indeed of Cuban authors, with the dilapidated city that Havana seems to have become has created an orthodoxy that sees the 'city in ruins' as a metaphor for 'the revolution in ruins' after 1990. Indeed, that has also been the theme picked up by a flood of media visitors, certainly driven by the travel industry's enticement to 'see Cuba before it changes'.