‘Liberating’ the self

Abstract

: A generation of Cubans that came of age as digital social networks emerged has received international media attention for using blogs to vent their conflicts with the Cuban government. One of their primary objections is the limited access of Cuban citizens to the world wide web due to government regulations. Despite material and legal limitations to internet use, blogs nonetheless provide unprecedented participatory spaces. One internationally recognised Cuban blogger characterised the internet as a ‘mutilated’ space because it ‘has several pieces missing’. She calls for the freeing of information and expression in her ‘Habeas Data’ entry and seeks her personal ‘liberation’, the bureaucratic nomenclature for an exit permit. But not all blogs focus on the restrictions. This article considers the culture of blogging more broadly in order to understand what experiences these practices contribute to as they provide spaces of self description, embodiment and self-management. Michel Foucault's idea of biopolitics and Joanna Zylinska's work on bioethics in new media provide a useful framework for considering the connection between politics and life as articulated in Cuban blogs. The article proposes that blogging in Cuba is a relational activity that makes possible control and freedom, and examines various blogs to determine how media practices and the self are redefined through digital social networks.