Can Adaptations Create Dialectical Sites within the Skopos Theory? An Exploratory Study of Inconsolable Memories and Memories of Underdevelopment

Abstract

This is an exploratory study of the adaptation of the novel Inconsolable Memories (1965) by Edmundo Desnoes into the film Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) by Tomas Gutiérrez Alea under the Skopos theory. This study is a part of a larger ongoing investigation into the cinema of Gutiérrez Alea, in which the researcher is looking at the various techniques he utilizes across his films to generate a social dialectic. The study is located in the skopos defined by Gutiérrez Alea – diminishing the role of the cultural archetypes such as patriarchy and identification with the colonizer that were deeply ingrained in the Cuban people, which he felt, were hampering the continuous progress of the socialist revolution. Here, I’m exploring the strategies he uses in the process of creating a dialectical text as a means of social reform. Gutiérrez Alea has created the adaptation through a collaboration between himself and the author of the novel, Edmundo Desnoes. The study hopes that this collaboration may also reveal a dialectical relationship under the same skopos between the two texts themselves, and the manner in which they interact and modify each other.