This article was downloaded by: [The University of British Columbia]

On: 06 October 2014, At: 11:37

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,
UK

Rethinking Marxism: A Journal

of Economics, Culture & Society
Publication details, including instructions for authors
and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrmx20

Foucault and the New Man:

Conversations on Foucault in
Cuba
Sam Binkley & Jorge Capetillo-Ponce
Published online: 20 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Sam Binkley & Jorge Capetillo-Ponce (2008) Foucault and the New
Man: Conversations on Foucault in Cuba, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics,
Culture & Society, 20:3, 452-463, DOI: 10.1080/08935690802137456
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935690802137456

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the
information (the Content) contained in the publications on our platform.
However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or
suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed
in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the
views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should
not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,
claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection
with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sublicensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

RETHINKING MARXISM

VOLUME 20

NUMBER 3

(JULY 2008)

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

Foucault and the New Man:

Conversations on Foucault in Cuba
Sam Binkley and Jorge Capetillo-Ponce
The following narrative serves as a companion piece to Foucault, Marxism, and the
Cuban Revolution: Historical and Contemporary Reflections. It presents excerpts
from several conversations conducted by Sam Binkley with professors at the
University of Havana in June 2007, many of whom participated in a conference
held in 1999 on the topic of Michel Foucaults work. Drawing on their testimonies and
experiences, these discussions extend our inquiry into the reception of Michel
Foucaults work in Cuba, and the relevance of Foucaults ethical theory to
revolutionary praxis and socialist ethics. Discussants describe changes in their
intellectual outlooks following the collapse of the Soviet Union, surveillance in
Cuba, Cuban nationalism, and the ethics of socialist revolution.
Key Words: Cuba, Michel Foucault, Panopticism, Marxism, Socialist Vanguards, Ethics
of Self

In the preceding article, Foucault, Marxism and the Cuban Revolution: Historical and
Contemporary Reflections, we set out to investigate Michel Foucaults powerful
intellectual legacy and its relevance to the Cuban revolution. In what follows, we
shift the focus of this discussion from speculative historical and theoretical reflection
to memory and testimony, related through a series of conversations held in Havana,
21
/9 June 2007. The original intention of these conversations was to gather responses
to our article from Cuban scholars who participated in a 1999 conference on Foucault
at the University of Havana, and to edit their responses into a scholarly interview and
discussion.1 This effort was, however, frustrated by the innumerable difficulties that
plague all efforts at academic exchange with Cuba. Restrictions on communication
between Cuban and American scholars prevented us from making our article available
prior to the interviews, and the subtle and largely implicit norms governing public
1. These interviews were conducted by Sam Binkley during a visit to Cuba with a delegation of
scholars participating in the Research Network in Cuba. This visit was sponsored by members of
the Radical Philosophy Association who have for nearly twenty years made a regular event
of bringing scholars in philosophy and the social sciences to meet with their Cuban counterparts
for discussion and research. For more on the Research Network in Cuba, visit: http://
www.cubaconference.org/. Research support was also provided by the Office of Academic
Affairs, Emerson College, Boston.
ISSN 0893-5696 print/1475-8059 online/08/030452-12
2008 Association for Economic and Social Analysis
DOI: 10.1080/08935690802137456

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

FOUCAULT IN CUBA

453

discussion of political matters in Cuba, particularly with foreigners, hampered our

ability to elicit the trust of some would-be participants. A particular anxiety, for
which self-censorship is a far too crude (though not wholly inappropriate) term, led
some discussants to request anonymity, to seek modification to their text, or to
withdraw entirely after the interview. This made it clear that the interview piece, as
we had envisioned it, would not be possible.
Indeed, the conventions of political discussion in Cuba (so inaccurately compared
by many outside observers to the repressive measures imposed in Soviet-bloc
countries), colored all these conversations to some extent. In Cuba, where the
rhetorical styles of academic discourse are collapsed together with those of political
oratory and civic exhortation, and a powerful and very genuine sense of national
loyalty permeates daily life, it can be very difficult to determine if youve tapped into
someones genuine experience or if youre being fed a line*/or exactly where the
boundary between these two might lie. Yet, after many hours of conversation with
more than half a dozen scholars (only some of whom were involved in the original
conference), Binkley left feeling that each of the discussants had participated with
integrity and good faith in an honest academic exchange with an American readership. They had left us a unique record of their thoughts and insights on a range of
questions related to Foucaults work and its reception in Cuba, and the Cuban
revolutionary process as they had experienced it. Thus, it is the aim of the narrative
that follows to draw out the lessons of those conversations and, on the basis of the
testimonies of Cuban scholars themselves, to extend the inquiry begun in the
preceding article into the intellectual reception of Foucaults work in Cuba and the
specific ethical dynamism of the revolutionary process in Cuba, understood from a
Foucaultian perspective.2

The Experience of Foucaults Books in Cuba

In a 1978 interview with the Italian scholar Duccio Trombadori, Foucault (1991)
invoked the phrase experience-book to distinguish his works from the truth books
or demonstration books more typical of the philosophical and historical canon. It
was his hope that his books would have a specific transformative experience on his
readers, invoking a decentering of the forms of subjectivity and the taken-for-granted
categories of subjective self-understanding that had become naturalized within
specific configurations of power and social order. This phrase seems apt for a
discussion of the initial reception of Foucaults works in Cuba. The situation in which
these were first received in Cuba was one in which old ways of thinking were already
in crisis and in which the specific experience of his works resonated with particular
force, at least for the small circle who had access to them.
2. Through careful editorial practice, we have attempted to preserve the authentic voice and
the intended meanings of each of those represented here. While all participants have reviewed
and approved the transcriptions that follow, any misrepresentation of their intended meanings
remains entirely the responsibility of the authors.

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

454

BINKELY AND CAPETILLO-PONCE

More precisely, Foucaults works started to be read in Cuba in the late 1980s and
increasingly into the 1990s. This was the time of Glasnost and Perestroika, and later,
with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the economic isolation of Cuba*/the beginning of
what Fidel Castro termed the special period in a time of peace. These were times
of great economic hardship and crisis in Cuban society, in which food shortages and
the fraying of the social order accompanied a wider crisis in the intellectual status of
Marxism generally. To judge from the comments of these scholars, Foucaults works,
which had already begun to appear on the margins of scholarly life in the late 1980s,
conveyed a unique sensibility*/a distinct experience*/in this context. The following
exchanges took place with three Cuban scholars, all of whom shared rich memories of
their first encounters with the works of Foucault. Questions were posed to each of the
scholars in turn.
Q: How did Perestroika and Glasnost impact academic culture in Cuba?
A: Perestroika was a very powerful influence in Cuba, but it did not have the effect
we had hoped for. In 1989, there was the idea of creating a Perestroika-like process in
Cuba, and in this context Foucault became a sort of Perestroika-author. But it soon
became clear that there would be no Perestroika or Glasnost here*/a sentiment that
was driven home for many Cuban scholars with a speech given by Fidel himself, in
which he stated that Perestroika is another mans wife. This was a time of great
tension at the universities between the older generation, trained in the old Soviet
traditions, and the younger generation who wanted to do things differently. This
tension today is not as pronounced, as the majority of these younger people have
since left Cuba for good.
But after the end of the Perestroika period and the beginning of the Special Period,
there was a void or a vacuum. In many classes and for many professors it was unclear
what type of Marxism to teach. I would say that now there remains no central
program in the teaching of Marxism in Cuba. For more than ten years, every professor
has been teaching his or her own notion of Marxism, based on what he or she thinks.
Some teach Gramsci, or Foucault, who is not a Marxist proper, but is some sort of
approximation of Marx. Professors teach the elements in common between Foucault
and Marx.
Q: Cuban socialism has always differed from the Soviet model, but after 1990 these
differences were openly celebrated. How did you experience the end of Soviet
influence on your intellectual work?
A: Yes, the Soviet model was distanced at that time, but this doesnt mean that all
Cuban intellectuals went through the same process in the same way. Some people
were, and remain today, more orthodox, or more die-hard than others. But I think
that since those years of crisis there has been an advancement in general concerning
the thought of Marxism, and a greater willingness to branch out. I studied in the USSR,
so I had this somewhat Sovietized view. When the Soviet camp collapsed, and as I read
about the collapse of socialism and what was going on, there was a time when I fell
into a deep existential and intellectual crisis. I felt awful; my scholarship, my

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

FOUCAULT IN CUBA

455

upbringing, my training seemed to be called into question. When I first arrived in the
Soviet Union as a student, I thought I had come to a perfect society, but as my studies
continued there I began to notice contradictions. At that time I didnt have a
theoretical outlook that would allow me to understand these things as I was only
twenty years old. And when I came back to Cuba I started to teach scientific
communism just as I was trained in the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet bloc
collapsed, all my mental patterns came down. I had to change my field of research. I
started to study ethics, and I started to read philosophers of other trains of thought. It
was at that time that I took a course with a visiting Argentinean professor of
philosophy, Susana Paponi, who taught a course on Foucault and postmodernism in
1993. This was an important event.
In one of the worst years of the crisis, I started to write differently. With Foucault, I
realized that I had been viewing the world in a black-and-white perspective, but that
there were other ways of examining the history of ethics. I underwent something of a
transformation through my encounter with Foucaults work. Also at this time, the
syllabi of the classes in political theory began to change. We slowly started to
introduce the notion of power in new ways, and particularly, from Foucault I began to
teach that power was not only a relationship between the one governing and the one
being governed, but that power was everywhere. These different, unorthodox views
presented a shock for some of our students. I remember one student in the school of
biology came to me in a very accusatory tone and asked, Professor, was this book
published in Cuba? I had to explain that as university students it was very important
for them to read texts from other countries, that this was a Marxist author and that
the student should just relax. When I introduced the idea of civil society, one student
became very upset and accused me of being counterrevolutionary!
Q: So reading Foucault went deliberately against the Marxism imposed by the Soviets?
A: In some ways yes. I also studied in the Soviet Union, in Moscow in the 1980s, which
means that I studied the hard Marxism of the pre-Perestroika times. The Soviets
had no idea that Foucault existed. I did not encounter him until I returned to Cuba in
1985. At that time, all through my philosophical studies, we read original texts up to
and including the works of Marx, but for all the material that followed, all the postMarxist writers, we studied them only as they were interpreted by the official Marxist
theorists. We did not have any contact with any original texts after Marx. And of
course the Soviets were very critical of all Western Marxists. They were termed
bourgeois philosophy. And by this I dont mean the German Frankfurt school or
even Gramsci*/they had never heard of these authors. We studied from a
standardized manual titled Critique of Contemporary Bourgeois Philosophy, which
included everything from after Marxs death to the existentialism of the 1950s. When I
came back to Cuba we were already in the midst of Perestroika, and I was beginning
my first job at the University of Havana. Together with my colleagues, I began to
rethink some of the basic beliefs of this kind of Sovietized Marxism. Of that
generation of professors, there are only a few left here in Cuba; the others have left.
During that time, several of us formed a private library. It was like a reading club.
To be a member of a library club, you had to donate a couple of books, but these

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

456

BINKELY AND CAPETILLO-PONCE

could not be just any books. These had to be special books, something like Foucault
for instance. So my first contact with Foucault originated in this library, as we lent
each other books, or photocopies, and things were passed around among members of
this lending group. It is said by the faculty of the School of Philosophy that all of the
books reflecting the Western Marxist tradition were taken out of the library by the
Soviet advisors who visited the university to help with its restructuring in the 1970s.
Before that the library collection was more diverse: in the 1960s, it was possible to
read Marxists who were not Soviet Marxists, such as Marcuse, Gramsci, Luka
cs, the
Frankfurt school critics. All were there before the 1970s, before the notorious gray
days, in which the presence of the Soviets was strengthened, and eventually
curricula and syllabi were copied directly from the Soviet universities. In this
environment, the private library served to provide us with an alternative, and this is
where I discovered Foucault. As compared to the dogmatic approach that I was used
to, Foucaults work*/his prose, his style of thought*/was quite inspirational.
At that time, we had a line, a queue of people waiting for the copies of Foucaults
texts to become available. I always tell people with big libraries that it is not the
same feeling as when you read a book that is very difficult to get; it becomes very
special. Thats how we started to read Foucault. We particularly read The Order of
Things, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, Madness and
Civilization, and of course The History of Sexuality. Later, in the 1990s, we had the
chance to read articles on biopower, the microphysics of power, and other texts. For
us, Foucault provided a tool to oppose this official metalanguage of the apparatus of
power. His analysis of microphysics, capillary power, and so on fit well with my
experience, coming from the Soviet Union, in which all power came from above in a
very official way.

Is Cuba a Disciplinary Society?

These comments exemplify a thread that is consistent throughout the Cuban
discussion of Foucault, and will doubtless seem odd to the Anglo-American reader:
they contain an uncharacteristically affirmative resonance regarding Foucaults work,
and a tendency to link Foucaults critique of power with those advanced by Marxism.
Yet, turning from the reception of Foucaults books in Cuba to the application of
Foucaultian theory to the analysis of Cuban society itself, a different set of responses
and discussions emerges. Indeed, perhaps one of the most urgent (and difficult)
questions for Cuban scholars was the relevance of Foucaults analysis of social control
to the actual practices of surveillance and policing in Cuba. Of course, these practices
can be viewed in different ways. For those sympathetic to the Castro government, the
deep penetration of a policing apparatus into the private lives of Cuban citizens is a
necessary measure against an American-inspired threat to national security. For
others, it represents the typical trappings of totalitarianism. In either case, it is
undeniable that Cuban society is permeated with a surveillance and security presence
that has wide social and cultural implications*/effects, one could argue, that
precisely replicate those of panopticism as Foucault described it. Indeed, the

FOUCAULT IN CUBA

457

question, Is Cuba a disciplinary society? proved to be one of the most contentious

of our provocations for the Cuban scholars, as demonstrated in the following
exchange which took place with one professor, yet the question itself was not
ducked or avoided in any way.

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

Q: Is Cuba a disciplinary society, as the term is developed by Foucault?

A: Well, this is a difficult question. The Cuban revolution represents an ongoing
process in which society itself is transformed and revolutionized. Yet revolution
itself requires a discipline. Revolutionary processes such as these typically begin as
undisciplined. The Cuban revolution initially lacked discipline. Soon it became
obvious that it needed a new form of discipline because otherwise it would have
dissipated into a chaotic process that would never have reached its goals. So the
process of organization, in a certain way, took shape through the organization of
revolutionary institutions*/education, of mass organizations, of the party system, et
cetera*/this process came to manifest a disciplinarization of society. Now, many
questions can be asked of this process. The first question would be: Was this
discipline good or bad? What effect does discipline have on the formation of a
revolutionary civil society, or on the ability of society to develop on the basis of a
certain type of freedom? How does discipline affect the form of the revolution as
a balance between liberty and order? So, rather than asking if the Cuban revolution
became disciplinary, it is more useful to ask how discipline affected its revolutionary objectives.
Q: In our article we attempted to use Foucaults analysis to describe the history of the
Cuban revolution in terms of two distinct moments: one defined by a popular creative
force, drawing on a very spontaneous revolutionary ethic, and a later moment
defined by discipline, in which the good revolutionary behaves more as a docile body.
Do you generally agree with this approach?
A: To some extent, yes. There is a stage, 1959 to 1975, when there are fewer
institutions of state through which the people could express their demands and their
desires, and to make known their claims. At this time the revolutionary process
manifested itself through a closed dialogue between the leader*/Fidel*/and the
people, at Revolution Square. There was a very powerful sense of the revolutionary
process itself as a living and spontaneous force, one in which all Cubans should share
in their daily lives, characterized by the very strong personality and charisma of Fidel.
At popular meetings held at Revolution Square, many legal and governmental matters
were resolved, laws were passed, many measures of the state were approved, all in
open-air, large mass meetings. It was a method used until 1975, when there was a new
constitution and a new electoral and legislative process instituted by the National
Assembly of Peoples Power. In my own research, I have described this process as the
technification of politics, in which political processes are no longer spontaneous, but
administrative and bureaucratic. This is similar to, but not the same thing as,
discipline.

458

BINKELY AND CAPETILLO-PONCE

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

Q: If it is possible to speak of a disciplinarization of the revolution, then what part did

the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) play in this process?3
A: Every revolutionary process has the problem to which the CDRs were addressed.
Every revolution creates its opposition or counterrevolution. Everybody in a
revolutionary society is not a revolutionary, and they dont have to be. In Cuba,
the vast majority supported the revolution, but there was a minority who did not
support the revolution. There is the danger that this minority may mobilize against
the revolution in certain sectors. These groups, these counterrevolutionary organizations, were not separated from the mainstream only by differences of opinion: these
often developed into militant groups who engaged in armed struggles against the
revolution. The CDRs represented a local response to these threats by people who
supported the revolution, but it was not the function of these committees to serve as
part of the apparatus of discipline in the sense that Foucault describes. There was
surveillance, but not for the purpose of domination. It was simply necessary for
revolutionary organizations to organize themselves, and every organization involves
discipline. This is part of the revolutionary process. As time went on, CDRs began to
expand their aims to include objectives not limited to defense. They began to widen
their field of activities to a variety of civic functions, such as administering
vaccinations and other things having to do with education, and why not?
Q: This might sound like an outsiders view, but it seems to me that in contrast to the
European experience of communism, time and space in Cuba does not so readily lend
itself to disciplinary techniques. Foucault is specific that disciplinary societies involve
the tight control of schedules, the firm demarcation of spaces*/perhaps socialism in
Cuba has always taken, shall I say, a Caribbean form? [laughter] And in light of this, is
it possible to speak of Cuba as a disciplinary society?
A: Yes and no. Yes because, in certain ways, there are disciplinary processes
developed by the revolution, which I have described. No, because such levels of
absolute order do not exist here, or anywhere else for that matter. Inevitably there
are certain things that are uncontrollable. Because human beings are complex and
creative, they are always improvising their ways through life, they always find
crevices, failures, or shortcomings of the disciplinary apparatus, bending time
schedules and blurring spatial demarcations. This is perhaps more true in Cuba,
and in other developing countries, than in more industrialized countries. But in all
cases, even buildings constructed with the panoptic function in mind fall short of
achieving the perfection of a panoptic situation. In this sense, I would not say that
Cuba has ever been an entirely panoptic society. While there is surveillance, it serves
the legitimate purposes I discussed earlier, of the defense of the revolution. In my
personal view I would rather have more police around, more than is normal in other
3. Committees for the Defense of the Revolution comprise small citizen groups or block
associations whose responsibilities include a range of civil duties.

FOUCAULT IN CUBA

459

places, so that people who are undisciplined, who abuse other people, can be subject
to control.

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

Nationalism and Revolutionary Process

Reflection on the Cuban revolution as a social, cultural, and ethical enterprise
necessarily demands some engagement with that countrys own powerful experience
of nationalism and populism. Indeed, as the previous article makes clear, the ethical
transformation envisioned by the political vanguard is one that takes place in and
through a profound engagement with the authenticity of the national population,
envisioned, sometimes in romantic terms, as intrinsically bound with rural life and
agrarian labor. These themes have always played a prominent part in the reality of
Cuban socialism and, in many ways, it is its uniquely nationalist emphasis that has
distinguished Cuban socialism from its Soviet-bloc counterparts. Indeed, as this
discussion with a Cuban professor makes clear, woven into the story of Cubas
nationalism are the same themes of revolutionary dynamism and a renewed ethics of
the self that surfaced elsewhere in our conversations.
Q: While orthodox Marxism has held that nationalism is a fiction that will wither away
with the arrival of socialist revolution, Cubas experience seems quite different. What
is the relationship between Cuban socialism and its nationalist self-understanding?
A: It is true that socialism and nationalism in Cuba are deeply intertwined. Cuban
nationalism has a long tradition, and is deeply tied to the colonial history of Cuba and
its relationship with the United States. The United States is Cubas intimate enemy,
both admired and hated. Cubans have long appropriated the American way of life in
leisure and comfort, and they have long associated the American presence with
technological modernity, represented in a range of consumer goods, from televisions
to cars, radios, and so on. Before 1959, many Cubans sent their children to study in
the U.S., and many people admired the paradigm of modernity that the U.S. implied,
but at the same time many also held feelings of resentment against U.S. interference
in many aspects of Cuban life. You cannot understand Cuban nationalism without
grasping this tension. In the first decade after the triumph of the revolution, this
nationalism took the form of a very clear anti
/U.S., anti-imperialist sentiment that
had deep roots in popular culture. This sense came from below; it was a popular
sentiment. At this time, the revolution was seen as some sort of celebration, a party,
a popular expression rising directly from the people and from the peoples authentic
ways of life, not as a mobilization of the state.
Q: Did this strong, popular, and celebratory nationalist spirit translate into
differences between Cuban socialism and the internationalist vision promoted by
the Soviet bloc?
A: Yes, this created important differences. One of the reasons that some thinkers,
such as Sartre and de Beauvoir, were so drawn to Cuba was that it seemed to

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

460

BINKELY AND CAPETILLO-PONCE

represent an alternative to both capitalism and socialism. Cuban socialism was a very
authentic movement. Reading about Sartres conflicted position regarding the French
Communist party, one can read between the lines the reasons for his enthusiasm for
the Cuban revolution. Sartre saw in Cuba the possibilities for an authentic socialism as
an alternative to Stalinist versions. And one of the things he noticed was the
dominance of spontaneous, popular-nationalist democracy. In the initial stages of the
Cuban revolution, at the time of Sartres famous visit, there was a lot of popular spirit
and spontaneous, celebratory revolution, and much of this sentiment appealed to a
notion of the national origin, of the popular soul of the nation, but everybody knows
that these types of things do not last. The revolution, at least up until 1970, remained
in a state of perpetual economic crisis, because spontaneity and economic
organization do not always get along very well. Popular enthusiasm was wonderful
in providing a general sense of optimism and excitement, but was not so good
concerning the economic organization of society in general.
Q: This seems to be one of the problems encountered during the events of the sugar
cane harvest in 1970.4 This event seems to illustrate a case in which spontaneity did
not meet the requirements of structure and organization.
A: The sugar harvest was the highest peak of the project of popular spontaneity. It
represented a complete country mobilized, sent to the sugar cane fields, where it was
believed that contact with this form of labor would bring about a change in society
and in individuals. My father was a lawyer, for instance, who had never worked in the
country. Before the revolution, he had never worked with his own hands. With the
sugar cane harvest of 1970, he was cutting cane for three months. Of course with all
this unskilled and inexperienced labor applied to this sort of work, productivity was
very low, and it even cost more to sustain these urban professionals in this effort than
it would have to keep them at their regular jobs. Also, the damage to the economy
affected by the absence of so many professionals from their jobs in the cities was
quite measurable. But this was part of the mobilization. The failure of the harvest of
1970 was very important, because it forced Fidel to admit that the economic reforms
he envisioned had to be undertaken with more structure, and with less emphasis on a
romantic notion of a popular, national mobilization. He had to renegotiate the
relationship with the Soviet Union in order to secure the economic support he
needed. So he aligned with the Soviet-bloc countries, and started to depend on Soviet
exports. And soon there was a new constitutional model very close to that of the
USSR. Another important moment came in 1968 with the Prague Spring. This was a key
turning point in the history of Cuban and Soviet relations. When newspapers started
to publish stories about the uprisings in Prague against the Soviets, there were a lot of
expectations as to how Fidel would respond. The call for socialism with a human face
resonated very well with what was happening in Cuba, and there was a hope that
there would be a rejection of the policy of violence against a socialist country like
4. The sugar cane harvest of 1970 saw a mass mobilization of workers from across Cuban society.
The national effort, which touched every aspect of Cuban social and economic life, failed to
meet the goal of a ten-million-ton harvest.

FOUCAULT IN CUBA

461

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

Czechoslovakia. But Fidels condemnation never came. He gave a very neutral

speech, which avoided criticizing specifically the policies of the Soviet Union. This
was read as a bad symptom of things to come in Cuba, and for the high-spirited
revolutionary spirit that characterized the sugar harvest. This brought a break with
many Western intellectuals, and seemed to work against the revolution characterized
by sheer popular will.

Foucault and Socialist Ethics

In our article, we argue for a Foucaultian reading of the Cuban revolution centered on
an analysis of the revolutionary vanguard, characterized as a distinct ethical type. We
argue that Foucaults discussion of ethical practice as an art of living and as a
technique of self-transformation provides a provocative view of the ethical conduct
of the Cuban revolutionary vanguard. Discussing this thesis with Cuban scholars drew
many responses and evoked deep feelings of nostalgia and at times disillusionment,
particularly when the conversation turned to the contemporary possibilities for the
practice of a socialist ethics. Professional salaries in Cuba often do not cover even
minimal costs of living, and daily life in Cuba requires wide participation in
underground economies and other forms of illegal conduct that are patently offensive
to many Cubans themselves, particularly those with memories of the radical phase of
the revolution. Thus the question of ethics, which constitutes the central concern of
our paper, proved to be among the most difficult topics for discussion with Cuban
scholars, evoking deeply conflicted feelings about the past and the future of the
revolution. This point is illustrated in excerpts from two conversations.
Q: Revolutionary processes are often theorized in terms of the struggle of a
revolutionary vanguard. There was a revolutionary vanguard, struggling against
Batista, and through this struggle there developed an ethic of cooperation and
solidarity which became the seed of what Che called the new socialist man in Cuba
(Guevara 2005). To what extent do you accept this argument?
A: While it can be argued that there existed an ethics developed by the Sierra Maestra
groups and embodied in Ches call for a new socialist man in Cuba, it does not
necessarily follow that this ethic translated immediately to the wider population. Che
called for a man with a new ethics, one defined by cooperation and solidarity against
imperialism, and this was an ethics one could learn as one became closer to the
working Cuban people themselves in the countryside. But this ethics did not
necessarily appear in Cuba until some time after the revolution. Only later did the
people become aware of their quality as revolutionaries, and become more involved
in the revolutionary process. But until this time, the ordinary citizen, who was not
directly involved in the revolution, was not taking part in a new ethical life of any
kind. The citizen remained gripped with a guilty conscience that was short of the true
condition of the revolutionary. The majority who did not follow the vanguard or
participate in the revolutionary adventure only later came to feel the need to become
revolutionaries, to remove from themselves the remains of the old Cuban society. Not

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

462

BINKELY AND CAPETILLO-PONCE

until the Bay of Pigs did the citizens believe themselves to be doing important history
in their daily lives. There was a feeling that combat would be the best way to affect
this change in themselves, and it was for this reason that people requested permission
from Fidel to invade the Dominican Republic. They wanted to overthrow the regime
of Trujillo there in 1959, because they felt guilty that they had not fought in the
guerrilla war against Batista, and they did not feel that they were revolutionary
enough. Engaging in combat would be the way that they would bring about this
change. This was postrevolutionary guilt, but not yet revolutionary ethics. It was later
that the revolutionary transformation was pursued in more economic, or civic, tasks,
such as work in the countryside or with the CDRs, for example. But the revolutionary
ethic never lost its deep tie to military combat. If you go to the university you will see
a sculpture of an owl, which represents the educated revolutionary scholar. The owl is
wise, but he also holds a gun, representing his revolutionary commitment. In this way,
the revolutionary remaking of the self is still tied to the image of military struggle as
practiced by the original militants in the mountains, not so much to industrial work or
the collective effort of the worker as it was in other countries. Ches image, in his
military fatigues, tells people to keep on with this process.
Q: How has this legacy of the revolutionary citizen continued today? Is it still possible
to speak of a distinct form of ethics or a work of the self that is part of the Cuban
revolutionary process?
A: Yes and no. You can still talk about the revolutionary type in Cuba, you can still talk
about the dignity of the citizen to a certain extent, but you cannot talk about the
asceticism that characterized the Cuban revolution in its early stages nor can you
speak of the egalitarian character of the Cuban revolution as it was conceived in
1960, for instance. There are many reasons for this: the dual currency system that
currently exists in Cuba has propagated a logic of inequality among wide sectors, and
a spirit of egalitarianism like the one that existed in the 1960s does not exist in its
original form. Also, conditions of life in Cuba today are such that everyone has to
engage in activities that are illegal and against the spirit of the revolution. There is no
choice. But personally I remain very optimistic, because I trust in the force of
revolutionary ideology and in the work itself of the revolution. Because what is in the
midst of all this is what Che called the New Man, which was expressed in the first ten
years of the revolution, though we rarely hear about this today. Nobody says he
doesnt exist; we simply do not talk about him anymore. And sometimes that makes
me feel pessimistic.

Acknowledgments
An immense debt of gratitude is owed to all the participants in this conversation, but
especially to our translator and facilitator, Fabiola Engracia Carratal-Mart, who
directed Sam Binkley in this project for ten sweltering days in Havana, negotiating
with him everything from the complexities of Havanan urban transit to the
subtleties of Cuban academic protocol. She will always remain his boss.

FOUCAULT IN CUBA

463

References

Downloaded by [The University of British Columbia] at 11:37 06 October 2014

Foucault, M., and D. Trombadori. 1991. Remarks on Marx: Conversations with Duccio
Trombadori. New York: Semiotext(e).
Guevara, Che. 2005. Socialist man in Cuba. In The Che reader, ed. D. Deutschmann.
Melbourne: Ocean Press.