She Is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body |
She Is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body
Oxford University Press
2015-12-01
240 Pages
53 images
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 9780199968169
Paperback ISBN: 9780199968176
Melissa Blanco Borelli, Senior Lecturer in Dance
Royal Holloway University of London
- Weaves together historical method, auto-ethnographic, and performative writing
- Sits at the precipice of scholarly and public interest in Cuban cultural history
She is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body traces the history of the Cuban mulata and her association with hips, sensuality and popular dance. It examines how the mulata choreographs her racialised identity through her hips and enacts an embodied theory called hip(g)nosis. By focusing on her living and dancing body in order to flesh out the process of identity formation, this book makes a claim for how subaltern bodies negotiate a cultural identity that continues to mark their bodies on a daily basis. Combining literary and personal narratives with historical and theoretical accounts of Cuban popular dance history, religiosity and culture, this work investigates the power of embodied exchanges: bodies watching, looking, touching and dancing with one another. It sets up a genealogy of how the representations and venerations of the dancing mulata continue to circulate and participate in the volatile political and social economy of contemporary Cuba.
Table of Contents
- Prologue, Entre Familia/Between Family
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Historicizing Hip(g)nosis
- Interlude 1: Echando Cuentos/Telling Stories
- Chapter 2: Hip(g)nosis at Work: Rumors, Social Dance and Cuba’s Academias de Baile
- Interlude 2: A Marriage Proposal
- Chapter 3: Hip(g)nosis as Pleasure: The Mulata in Film
- Interlude 3: Lost Baggage
- Chapter 4: Hip(g)nosis as Brand: Despelote, Tourism and Mulata Citizenship
- Conclusion or Rear Endings
- Index