Abstract
The study of the raise of Afrocubanismo enables understanding of how, during the 1920s, Cuban nationalism adapted in order to exploit the recombinant qualities common to the territories of the Caribbean. Drawing on Fernando Ortiz’s, Stuart Hall’s and Paul Gilroy’s theories on the formation and construction of identities, this article brings a focus on the positions of enunciation within the practices of representation of blackness by cultural theorist Fernando Ortiz and visual artist Jaume Valls, in order to illustrate their role and the role of other members of the Catalan-Cuban intellectual community in the movement of Afrocubanismo and the reshaping of the idea of Cuban national identity during the 1920s. The analysis includes a comparison of graphic artists Lluis Bagaria’s and Jaume Vall’s representations of blackness in the Catalan-Cuban journal La Nova Catalunya (Havana, 1908–1959) in order to illustrate the processes of transculturation expressed through the representation of black subjects in the journal as part of the wider processes of recreation of identities within the Catalan-Cuban intellectual community during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The article addresses the limitations of nationalistic points of view to grasp de complexities of diasporic realities and highlights the usefulness of the concept of transculturation to understand processes of formation of identities in twentieth-century Cuba.
Highlights
I move slowly in the world, accustomed to seek no longer for upheaval
This paper brings a focus on the positions of enunciation within the practices of representation of cultural theorist Fernando Ortiz and visual artist Jaume Valls, in order to illustrate their role and the role of other members of the Catalan-Cuban intellectual community in the movement of Afrocubanismo and the reshaping of the idea of Cuban national identity during the 1920s
I compare graphic artists Lluís Bagaria’s and Jaume Valls’ visual representations of blackness in the Catalan-Cuban journal La Nova Catalunya (Havana, 1908–1959) in order to illustrate the processes of transculturation expressed through the representation
Summary
The study of the raise of Afrocubanismo enables understanding of how, during the 1920s, Cuban nationalism adapted in order to exploit the recombinant qualities common to the territories of the Caribbean. Josep Conangla worked on the Cuban newspapers El Nuevo País, Cuba, El Nuevo Día, El Mercurio, La Noche and El Sol, founded Revista Parlamentària de Cuba and he was copy editor of the Minutes of the Cuban Parliament, founder of the first Cuban journalistic association, Asociación de Reporteros de La Habana, and was a member of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País, the Sociedad Geográfica de Cuba, the Sociedad Cubana de Autores and the Sociedad Bibliográfica de Cuba He has been considered a precursor of avant-garde poetry in Latin America and Catalonia and his political and philosophical essays are key documents for the study of nation-making processes in the Atlantic, in which Afrocubanismo is embedded.. Far from being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past. (Hall 236)
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