This collection examines Cuban cultural production during the Special Period of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Contributors address the cultural forms; and the associated ethics and practices of labor, leisure, and bureaucratic organization that arose in the transformation of the socialist cultural infrastructure.  

Writing the Special Period: An Introduction--Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
PART I: FOREIGN COMMERCE
Truths and Fictions: The Economics of Writing, 1994–1999--Esther Whitfield
Filmmaking with Foreigners--Cristina Venegas
Spiritual Capital: Foreign Patronage and the Trafficking of Santería--Kevin M. Delgado
PART II: PLURAL NATION
Multicubanidad--Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
Preemptive Nostalgia and La Batalla for Cuban Identity: Option Zero Theater--Laurie Frederik Meer
Wandering in Russian--Jacqueline Loss
The “Letter of the Year” and the Prophetics of Revolution--Kenneth Routon
PART III: TRANSNATIONAL PUBLICS
El Rap Cubano: Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop the Movement!--Roberto Zurbano, Translated by Kate Levitt
Audiovisual Remittances and Transnational Subjectivities--Lisa Maya Knauer
Ending the Century with Memories . . . : Paper Money, Videos, and an X-Acto Knife for Cuban Art--Antonio Eligio Fernández, “Tonel,” Translated by Kate Levitt

ARIANA HERNANDEZ-REGUANT is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of California, San Diego, USA.