Article Title：The 'new woman' in Cuban revolutionary discourse:: Manuel!Cofino's The Last Woman and the Next Combat (1971)
Abstract：
Che Guevara's Socialism and Man in Cuba ( 1965) hails the creation of 'a new man', or a new revolutionary identity for all Cubans. This article examines the politics of gender in the creation of this identity in the first decade of the Cuban revolution, with a focus on the female counterpart of the new man. In speeches of leaders and policy makers of the time I look at positive and negative role models offered to women, and analyze the extent to which these roles become reproduced in a revolutionary novel, Manuel Cofino's The Last Woman and the Next Combat ( 1971). Since this is a strikingly cinematic novel, I use Laura Mulvey's theory of the gaze to describe the rigid construction of gender in the text, but I also look at how this gaze can be appropriated and contested by female readers who can experience a pleasurable identification. Ultimately, this novel represents a significant trove not only of the gender images of official revolutionary discourse but also of the ways they can be subverted. The novel is thus a crucial piece in the archaeology of the liberatory politics that are being promoted by some Cuban writers today.
Keywords: revolutionary discourse; Cuban literature; gender theory; film theory; identity/identification
DOI: 10.1080/0958923042000331470
Source：JOURNAL OF GENDER STUDIES
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