Queer (Im)possibilities in Cuba II

• In Event: Dissident Sexualities, Culture and State in Late Socialist Cuba

Abstract

Especially since the 2000s, Cuba’s state-based Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX) has visibly promoted LGBTI rights. This new visibility of LGBTI rights draws from and builds upon CENESEX’s historical trajectory rooted in sex education and scientific discourses of sex (e.g., sexology). It stems as well from shifts within state practices, including Mariela Castro’s own participation as the Director of CENESEX. New organizations have emerged and new political identities have become visible, primarily through the modernizing lens of late socialism in Cuba. In this paper I wish to examine and explore the conditions that shape and naturalize political subjectivities and their concomitant rationalities, and to understand in this case how the Cuban state’s recognition of LGBTI rights in itself contributes to (or not) queer possibilities. If we understand “queerness” as anti-normative, to what extent can any state, particularly a state that directly manages social mobilization and frames group identity, actually encourage or create queer possibilities? As certain kinds of identities are naturalized through state-based practices, does this give way to or erase other (queer) possibilities? To what extent does this opening actually challenge the heteronormative underpinnings of the socialist state, and how if at all is this any different from neoliberal heteronormativities or rationalities? I address these questions in the context of Cuba’s specific history and as a way to problematize the discussion of queerness, socialism and capitalism taking place in the context of Latin America’s purported shift to the Left and ongoing processes of neoliberalization.

Author

• Amy C Lind, University of Cincinnati