From the moment that Cuba passed into the world at large as a subject deemed worthy of sustained scholarship—which is to say, ever since January 1, 1959—the topic of Cuba developed into something of a Rorschach blot: Cuba as a point of view. Cuba as a politics. Cuban studies—what was once upon a time known as “Cubanology”—emerged out of a charged environment of polemics—that is, a politics—with defenders and detractors of the revolution in robust dispute about almost all facets of the Cuban condition, past and present. Disinterest and dispassion have rarely been hallmarks of Cuban studies. Objectivity—perhaps. Neutrality—never.
Much has changed in the intervening decades. Cuba has changed. The literature on Cuba has changed. Social scientists have introduced complexity. Humanists have offered subtlety. Detachment has reduced engagement. Mostly. Traces of the politics persist, of course, inscribed in new paradigms of scholarship, precisely within the very narratives rich with complexity...
