Media coverage
1
Media coverage
Title El género policial en Cuba Degree of recognition International Media name/outlet New Books Network Media type Web Duration/Length/Size One hour Country/Territory United States of America Date 31/01/22 Description In the first conversation of 2022, I speak with Carlos Uxó about his research El género policial en Cuba: novela policial revolucionaria, neopolicial y teleseries (Lausanne: Peter Lang Publishing, 2021) and about the ability to reinvent oneself through research, since his doctoral thesis on Afro-Cuban characters in Cuban literature revealed to him a broad cultural universe; among the many readings of those years was a crime novel by the Cuban writer Lorenzo Lunar… and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
El género policial en Cuba argues that the boom of crime fiction in Cuba beginning in 1971 is linked to the cultural and political redefinition that took place in the first decades of the Cuban Revolution of 1959. The proliferation of crime novels, their massive print runs, and their promotion by official organizations were not merely a literary and publishing phenomenon; they must be analyzed in relation to the cultural policy of the long Quinquenio Gris (1971–1976).
This book also argues that the decline of the revolutionary crime novel and the development of the neopolicial in the 1990s reflect changes in the Cuban sociopolitical context. The gradual opening of the 1980s, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and the beginning of the Special Period rendered the epic tone of revolutionary crime fiction outdated, making possible a type of detective fiction that questioned what had previously been considered unquestionable.
Finally, Uxó proposes that the analysis of Cuban crime fiction must incorporate police television series, and he dedicates the final chapter to this subject. His analysis begins with the thesis that the Revolution instrumentalized television as a means of mass education in revolutionary principles, an educational project as part of which programs centered on the new legality soon began to be broadcast. Police television series have played a role parallel to that of narrative fiction, analyzed here for the first time.
Carlos Uxó is Senior Lecturer at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and previously worked at La Trobe University (Melbourne), Dublin City University, and Correspondence School (Wellington, New Zealand). He began his career as a specialist in the Spanish writer Carmen Martín Gaite, later focusing on Cuban narrative of the revolutionary period, with particular emphasis on the crime genre and the representation of Afro-Cuban characters in post-1990 fiction. His research focuses on the ways in which certain cultural policies materialize in narrative, but also on the ways in which narrative contributes to influencing and/or undermining cultural policies and entrenched sociocultural perceptions (for example, hegemonic racial perceptions, or understandings of crime and criminalization). He is the author of two books: Representaciones del personaje del negro en la narrativa cubana. Una perspectiva desde los Estudios Subalternos (Madrid: Verbum, 2010) and El género policial en Cuba: novela policial revolucionaria, neopolicial y teleseries (Lausanne: Peter Lang 2021). His editorial credits include the first monograph dedicated to Leonardo Padura, The Detective Fiction of Leonardo Padura Fuentes (Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University Press, 2006) and Cuba Today. 50 Years On (Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 15.2; December 2009). He has also published articles in specialized journals, focusing on contemporary Cuban literature and Cuban crime fiction, as well as internet policies in Cuba.
Interview by Yasmín Portales Machado, science fiction writer, LGBTQ activist, and someone curious about the relationships between cultural consumption and politics in Cuba.Producer/Author Yasmín Portales Machado URL https://newbooksnetwork.com/es/el-g%C3%A9nero-policial-en-cuba Persons Carlos Uxo Gonzalez