Poveda's Migratory Discourse of Cubanía
Subject Area
Hispanic Caribbean Studies
Abstract
This paper explores the poet José Manuel Poveda’s role in the formation of a Cuban national identity in the first decades of the new Republic (1902-1933) and seeks to demonstrate the continuity between Poveda’s thought and later 20th century discourses of Cuban identity. Poveda’s name does not typically come up in this context, in fact, Poveda is often tagged as an eccentric aesthete, obsessed with crafting his artistic personality and inspired largely by foreign masters. What Poveda has to do with the formation of a Cuban national identity remains to be explored in depth. Departing from Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s theory of the Cuban condition as inherently “translational,” I argue that Poveda’s appropriation of foreign models is not derivative but basic to his own search for a “Cuban vernacular,” one that shares the features – transitoriness, uprootedness, process – of Fernando Ortiz’s cardinal metaphor of the ajiaco. By the time that Ortiz publishes “Los factores humanos de la cubanidad,” and Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940), the dust has settled on Poveda’s epitaph, but Poveda’s critical consciousness, as I hope to show, anticipates the “migratory” discourse of cubanía developed in these works.
Brief Bio Note
Kathrin Theumer received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature with an emphasis in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her scholarship focuses on fin de siglo and twentieth century Latin American literature with a regional emphasis on the Hispanic Caribbean. Her research interests include gender studies, poetry and poetics. She has published on the interpoetic relationship between Julián del Casal and Fina García Marruz as well as heteronymic embodiment in the Cuban poet José Manuel Poveda.
Keywords
Cuba, National identity, Poetry
Location
Coastal Georgia Center
Presentation Year
2016
Start Date
4-8-2016 2:20 PM
End Date
4-8-2016 2:40 PM
Embargo
10-1-2015
Recommended Citation
Theumer, Kathrin L., "Poveda's Migratory Discourse of Cubanía" (2016). South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL). 7.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/seccll/2016/2016/7
Poveda's Migratory Discourse of Cubanía
Coastal Georgia Center
This paper explores the poet José Manuel Poveda’s role in the formation of a Cuban national identity in the first decades of the new Republic (1902-1933) and seeks to demonstrate the continuity between Poveda’s thought and later 20th century discourses of Cuban identity. Poveda’s name does not typically come up in this context, in fact, Poveda is often tagged as an eccentric aesthete, obsessed with crafting his artistic personality and inspired largely by foreign masters. What Poveda has to do with the formation of a Cuban national identity remains to be explored in depth. Departing from Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s theory of the Cuban condition as inherently “translational,” I argue that Poveda’s appropriation of foreign models is not derivative but basic to his own search for a “Cuban vernacular,” one that shares the features – transitoriness, uprootedness, process – of Fernando Ortiz’s cardinal metaphor of the ajiaco. By the time that Ortiz publishes “Los factores humanos de la cubanidad,” and Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940), the dust has settled on Poveda’s epitaph, but Poveda’s critical consciousness, as I hope to show, anticipates the “migratory” discourse of cubanía developed in these works.
