Pensamos que somos historia porque sabemos que somos historia: context, self and self-construction in women's testimonial writing from revolutionary Cuba

Kumaraswami, P. (2006) Pensamos que somos historia porque sabemos que somos historia: context, self and self-construction in women's testimonial writing from revolutionary Cuba. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 83 (6). pp. 523-539. ISSN 1475-3839 doi: 10.3828/bhs.83.6.6

Abstract/Summary

This article presents a group of women-authored testimonial texts published between 1959–1989 in revolutionary Cuba. Despite the recent scholarly debates within Latin American Cultural Studies regarding Latin American testimonio, these texts have received little or no critical or theoretical attention within or outside Cuba. The article therefore starts by situating them within the specific context of revolutionary culture, especially with reference to questions of gender, genre and publication. Having established that the texts as a whole privilege the collective revolutionary context and revolutionary experience over gendered or generic aspects, the seven texts are then grouped under a more specific contextual category, as narratives of voluntary work (participation and observation), in order to provide a clearer structure for their description and analysis. Each of the texts is then described within its sub-group, and the article ends by indicating how such texts challenge testimonio paradigms by positing a relational notion of subjectivity.